Amfleet vs Heritage

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M

MontanaJim

Service Attendant
Joined
Nov 14, 2011
Messages
225
Is Amfleet II used on most long distance routes? Are the diners on the crescent and other eastern trains heritage, i.e refurbished old time passenger train diners?

How do the heritages and amfleet coaches compare as far as window size, chair size, legroom, etc?

Are there any heritage coaches or sleepers in use today?

I also miss the days of the slumbercoaches. I think Amtrak needs to give single travelers an affordable option for sleepers. Right now single travellers like me have to book a whole room, thats too expensive for many of us.
 
IIRC, all of the diners assigned to the "Silver Service" trains are Heritage-era diners. None of the Heritage coachs were retained by Amtrak during the mid-1990s. They were all put up for resale, and replaced with the Amfleets. I understand why Amtrak did this, though I find it to be in some ways penny-wise and pound- ( or should I write dollar) foolish. One saves costs by getting rid of cars that are non-standard with the rest of the Fleet, but at the same time, the order of replacement Viewliner coaches was cancelled, resulting in an overall reduction in carrying capacity. :( :angry:

The Heritage sleepers *were* replaced by Viewliner sleepers. One disappointment I have regarding the Viewliner sleepers is that as a whole, they seem to be wearing out much faster than the cars they replaced. :( :eek:

I, too, think that single passengers should be given the option of having an alternative similar to the old slumber coaches. Were there any downsides to these cars (uneconomical, or low profitability, whatever) ?
 
All single level trains that have diners, run with Heritage dining cars at present.

Not sure about coaches, but I do know that VIA Rail brought some of Amtrak's Heritage sleepers when Amtrak put them out to pasture. But otherwise you won't see any Heritage sleepers on Amtrak trains today.
 
From what I understand, Heritage coaches remained on the Clockers and Adirondack until the early 2000s, but they are all retired now.
 
When we rode the Crescent a couple of weeks ago, the dining car was much nicer than the one on the Superliner, old looking with wood and antique lighting...very nice....Bill
 
I agree with the comment about the longevity of the V/L sleepers! :D

But, you have to remember that there are no railcar manufacturers in the U.S. with any real experience. Bombardier is Canadian with its plant in New York.

The last real cars built were the Amfleet II's. They were built by the Budd Co., which changed its name to Transit America. This allowed Budd to get out of the railcar business and retain the Budd name for its other divisions.

AmerRail did a pretty good job building the Viewliners! :lol: The only major problems is the digital light control system and the improper maintenance of the cars.

Amtrak is planning on building more V/L's and sent engineers to talk to the maintenance guys about how to eliminate current problems.

Who will build them, I don't know. Most recent railcar companies, like AmerRail, get a contract and go bankrupt before finishing the order.

I also agree on the plastic interiors! :( They're cracking badly and there is no one making replacement parts!

Most of the suppliers for the V/L's went out of business, too! <_<

MJ B)
 
It was probably PV, the Clockers were the last to have them in regular service. The Club cars have been gone for a while, well before the last coaches made their exit.
 
Ride the VIA Rail's "Canadian!" It will illustrate why Amtrak should have kept the old equipment, and refurbished it for the modern day use they are used for now! The old Heritage equipment by far was/is some of the best. When at work, I would rather sleep in the employee dorm car (which is Heritage equipment) than to sleep in a Viewliner anyday! OBS...
 
One would think that if anybody on this forum voted "old" for everythng, it would be this 61 year old tottering,dottering fool.....but not necessarily.

I very much grew up in the pre-Amtrak era ad have many thoughts on the subject but not that I can go into very much as I am very busy today, as I often am. Can't ususally give very long answers to anything. (my only computer is at work, not at home)

But I will hare some thoughts, having had a lovely Canadian trip last October.

First, I was ill and facing surgery and the comforter beds were extremely welcome to my physical bod---more comfy than Amtrak,yes.

However, I was in a double bedroom and I missed the sofa we have for daytime use on Amtrak deluxe bedrooms.

ALso missed the tray foldout for anything we bring to our room. Have gotten spoiled to that on Amtrak. Amtrak patterned after airlines for that, putting fold out trays in both sleepers and coaches. The "old" trains did not have that. You balanced food in your lap.

Of course in the "good old days" we did not have showers all over the place aswe have today. Very few trains had them, they were usually not public but just in one or two specific private rooms. Often called master rooms. Extremely expensive.

Of course one of the neat things about the old cars is the farword view from the dome. Can't beat that.

But then, on a superliner if our room or seat is upstairs we are sort of in a dome the whole trip.(though no forward view). If the lounge is too crowded and too noisy, and I am in a deluxe room, I can see quite well out of my own room, which cannot be said for the old equipment.

The over all courtesy helpfullness is better, or more consistent,on VIA than on Amtrak.

In talking abut the "good old days" don't forget that not every train was run like the 20th Century Limited or the Broadway Limited. There were many very slow, multistop locals, trains which went long distances with no food or lounge or sleeper whatsoever. There was immense variety, far more than today .... you could find extremes in service level far more immense than anything on AMtrak, for better or for worse.

Oh, and there is also this---moving away from the point of this post a little bit, but think about all the fun we have today planning dummy trips to see how much it costs, checking on time status all day long for trains we are not taking ---when I was the age of some of the members of this forum, I would never have dreamed we could have this much fun someday, with computers. Of course that does not speak to railroad improvements as much as it does to societal improvements. But it is true the first computer was Amtrak not the airlines. ALSO--it means there are far fewer reservation foul-ups today than in the "good old days".
 
If you want a direct comparison between Amfleet I and Amfleet II, ride the Pennsylvanian between NYP-PGH.

The consist typically has one Amfleet I coach with 84 seats for people riding, say, between GNB-ALT, and several Amfleet IIs with 64 seats (IIRC) for those riding, say, PHL-PGH.
 
does the maple leaf use amfleet I? if so, then I know the difference. ive ridden the maple leaf and crescent, and noticed the crescents cars have much more legroom.
 
The Maple Leaf does use Amfleet I. There is a very noticable difference in legroom in a I vs. a II. The I's also have Automatic doors on both ends of the car for use on high level platforms in the Northeast.
 
When you think about it, the entire Amfleet is beginning to show its age.

How old were the heritage cars when Amtrak inherited them? 25? 30 years old? If my addition is correct, I daresay the first Amfleet I cars are now 30 years old or so.
 
Heritage Fleet's downfall involved a senator fishing with bigshots in a boat under a RR bridge. Silver-something came by, someone used the toilet in a HF car, and the big shots were, well, pooped on.

It was just too expensive to refit all the HF cars, what with their age soon requiring industrial x-raying of critical components. In fact, I was surprised the 2500-series crew/smoker cars were rebuilt from sleepers.

Of all the steam heat cars, almost all were Budd-built. ACF and others didn't want to pay Budd royalties for shot-welding of stainless steel, so they used carbon steel and "hung" stainless panels over them. This created horrible corrosion problems when water got trapped between steel layers. Lines that crossed through the snow belt had it even worse, with salt added to the mess. C&O removed the SS panels in a hopeless effort to stop the problem; C&O cars transferred to the B&O had it even worse. Pere Marquette cars had an even shorter life span.

Superliner cars all had hoppers when built. they also had speed switches that would dump waste at speeds of over 15 MPH. Changing them to 100% retention was easy, although early years had episodes of a supposedly closed system suddenly dumping on the tracks with a loud whine. This is the reason that bridges with homes underneath had a 10 MPH speed restriction for so long. Still, Amtrak even now still pays out claims from homes "dumped on" due to various malfunctions, even with the speed switch removed.
 
Besides Crew/smokers, Amtrak still runs a few HiLiners (ATSF) cars on the Oklahoma train. The Pacific Lounges are HiLiners too.

The HiLiner Diners (39980-85) were the last 12-wheel cars in use by Amtrak.

WHile AMtrak 9900 & 9901 were the prototype HiLiner cars (the upper sides sloped inwards), they did NOT become 39900 & 39901: those cars were newer cars, full coaches, taht were built with the ability to relocate one vestibule from higher level to lower; Amtrak did so (and with a few others too in the higher numbers) because they had plenty of Superliner coaches and not enough dorms (Super dorms weren't built until the second order). Long after 39900 & 39901 were rebuilt, 9900 & 9901 still sat near the paint shop at Beech Grove, and only recently disappeared. Both had the Phase One scheme.

I liked the HiLiner coaches, even though they were noisier, since the seats reclined further. Floor plates in the vestibules were about two inches higher than Superliner, which required bright yellow paint and warning signs. Hilinres had hand-pulled doors (heavy!) so anyone passing through had to stop at the step anyway.
 

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