An absurd Viewliner Sleeper idea of mine

[gswager]

Hamhock, I think your idea is brilliant!!!!! :wub:
I would eliminate the "H" bedroom completely. I am kind-of torn on what of two alternate possibilities. One would be that regular roomette, not a bedroom, should be handicap accessible. If I am remembering correctly, the old Heritage cars had a handicapped roomette. The other one would be that, in today's PC environment, that all bedrooms should be handicapped accessible, eliminate the need for just one special room.

Problem is it has to be accessible by wheelchair. Roomette is too small to be used by wheelchair, plus hallway.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

And what advantage does this have over the all-roomette arrangement proposed above, with 40 people?

I see a lot of roomettes with but one passenger in them. An all roomette car carrying only single passengers can hold 20, since Amtrak doesn't randomly share people in roomettes. The Slumbercoach can carry 38 individually ticketed passengers.

Were I in charge of Amtrak's sleeper program, I'd be running the single-level long-distance trains with 1 "Deluxe" bedroom car, 1 standard Viewliner, 1 All-Roomette car, and 1 Slumbercoach. That would provide for 10 Bedrooms, 2 Handicapped rooms, 32 double roomettes, and 38 Slumbercoach roomettes. This provides for a maximum 168 passengers, vs 128 with a set up of 4 Viewliners, which would provide 4 H rooms, 8 bedrooms, and 48 roomettes.

However, if we assume that 50 % of them contain one person, then that train carries 96 people. Whereas, my configuration would have 15 in the bedrooms, 4 in the H rooms, 48 in the roomettes, and 38 in the slumbercoach, or a total of 105. So on that level it better utilizes the space on a more realistic configuration. However, it also helps with space utilization on another level. Because single travelers would more be more likely to book duplex-roomettes, it leaves more double-roomettes availible to parties of two. So while I think 4 current Viewliners would normally run with a complement of about 96 passengers, mine would normally run with more like 120. 24 paying sleeping passengers is nothing to sneeze at.

I would even carry the new configuration a step further in trying to attract the wealthy traveler by turning 3 bedrooms into 2 nice, big ones and raising the price by 60 to 70 percent.

The Bedrooms can be opened up into "Bedroom Suites" by combining two adjoining bedrooms already.

I think the Sleeper Lounge is a badly needed facility for the LD trains which use Viewliners.
I envision it as being the place where the refreshments (coffee, juice, water, etc) can not only be accessed, but also offer a chair or two, to sit away from one's roomette (or I guess bedroom too). One of the things I like about Amtrak LD trains, are the people I meet. Today, that is really limited to being seated at the same table in the Dining Car. A Sleeper Lounge would offer another opportunity.

All Amtrak Long-distance single-level sleeper trains carry a lounge car, save for the Cardinal.

 

[wayman]

They'd be better served building viewliner slumbercoaches.

If you someday in a few decades are so rich that you can afford to own a private car, are you going to buy yourself a slumbercoach car?

It does seem to be his favorite car :lol:

Of course, buying two of those given a contract to run them on the Twilight Shoreliner and contract ticketing through Amtrak... that would generate a tidy sum with which to eventually buy a pretty sweet private car.

Personally, I want a caboose. But would Amtrak actually run a caboose (with HEP)? Do freights ever take on private cars (private cabooses), if you bill it as a private freight car you happen to be riding in?

 

[AlanB]

Hamhock, I think your idea is brilliant!!!!! :wub:
I would eliminate the "H" bedroom completely. I am kind-of torn on what of two alternate possibilities. One would be that regular roomette, not a bedroom, should be handicap accessible. If I am remembering correctly, the old Heritage cars had a handicapped roomette. The other one would be that, in today's PC environment, that all bedrooms should be handicapped accessible, eliminate the need for just one special room.

Problem is it has to be accessible by wheelchair. Roomette is too small to be used by wheelchair, plus hallway.

Exactly, ADA requires a wheelchair accessible room and the standard hallways on train cars aren't wide enough for that. And you can't widen the hall any without reducing the size of the bedrooms and roomettes, something that we wouldn't want to see.

 

[Tony]

All Amtrak Long-distance single-level sleeper trains carry a lounge car, save for the Cardinal.

Ah, if they could just keep the "rif-raf" from coach from using the lounge car, I would agree that it would serve better as a sleeper passenger lounge.

But we just went thru that (coach passengers spending the night in the lounge car) in another thread.

 

[Tony]

Problem is it has to be accessible by wheelchair. Roomette is too small to be used by wheelchair, plus hallway.

If I remember right, in the old Heritage sleeper, the one handicapped roomette was only slightly larger. Yes, it did have a larger door, but eliminated at least one seat (possibly both?) for create room for the occupied wheelchair. It was only intended to be use by one passenger; the one handicapped passenger. Any non-handicapped traveling companions booked regular accomodations at regular prices.

If I understand the ADA correctly, it only requires reasonable accomodations for those handicapped. Not all their friends and family.

 

[ceblack]

Wouldn't a simpler method of accomplishing most of the original poster's objectives be just to take out roomettes 1 and 2 and put in a Bedroom C in each Viewliner? That would maintain a standard car layout for easier consist management and still give you 20 roomettes (10 per car) and 8 bedrooms (3 standard/1 handicapped per car). It doesn't provide a sleeper lounge, but the lounge in the modified floorplan looks like it would feel crowded once more than 3 or 4 people were inside.

I'm sure Amtrak will incorporate this into their Viewliner Rebuild Program. Anyone want to place bets on what year (or decade) that will begin?

I must admit I was quite surprised when I first saw a floorplan diagram of a Viewliner (I've never been inside one) at how few bedrooms there were compared to roomettes. While the Viewliner roomette seems to have a little more space than a Superliner roomette, I still think there would be more demand for bedrooms from those who want a little more space than a roomette provides for two people. Superliners have a 2:1 ratio of "full sized" bedrooms (encompassing Bedrooms, Family Bedrooms, and Handicapped Bedrooms) to roomettes, while the ratio on Viewliners is 4:1. Perhaps there was a shift in ridership trends between the design of these two car types?

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of load factor for various routes by coach/roomette/bedroom, although I don't think such data is easily available to the public. I assume someone at Amtrak monitors such data and that it -- along with forecasted ridership trends -- would be factored into any designs for new equipment (okay, I'm probably dreaming on multiple levels here).

 

[Hamhock]

Wouldn't a simpler method of accomplishing most of the original poster's objectives be just to take out roomettes 1 and 2 and put in a Bedroom C in each Viewliner?

Yeah, it more or less does. As usual, I don't see the forest for the trees when I'm thinking about ideas. I'm really pleased this has generated such a lively discussion, though. It seems like many of us have good feedback regarding how we'd like to tweak the Viewliner sleeper car.

It doesn't provide a sleeper lounge, but the lounge in the modified floorplan looks like it would feel crowded once more than 3 or 4 people were inside

It wouldn't necessarily feel too confined; my intent was for the lounge to be open-air to the corridor/hallway. There would be room for at least 6-8 perimeter seats along the remaining walls. Again, the idea was to give a private lounge space for sleeper passengers; one unencumbered by the coach hoi polloi and whatnot in the all-access cafe/lounge car without needing an additional lounge car for said purpose.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

All Amtrak Long-distance single-level sleeper trains carry a lounge car, save for the Cardinal.

Ah, if they could just keep the "rif-raf" from coach from using the lounge car, I would agree that it would serve better as a sleeper passenger lounge.

But we just went thru that (coach passengers spending the night in the lounge car) in another thread.

Honestly, coach usually contains the more interesting passengers. Why avoid them?

 

[Guest]

Honestly, coach usually contains the more interesting passengers. Why avoid them?

The coach people hanging out for most, if not the entire LD trip, in the lounge, makes it seems more like an inner-city bus station. Are those types of people "interesting"? I guess so. It is representative of all coach passengers? No, of course not. I am sure that most coach passengers who do go to the lounge, rest and relax for a time, and then return to their seats. It is the ones who camp out there, including sleeping there with a newspaper over their eyes, who give the lounge a "vagrant" feel.

But it doesn't make it feel like, for example, an Acela Lounge on wheels.

 

[Hamhock]

Honestly, coach usually contains the more interesting passengers. Why avoid them?

I've traveled overnight via long-distance trains on perhaps 12-13 occasions. On each and every trip, there has been at least one inebriated slob from coach who annoyed everyone in the lounge/cafe car. If I wanted the Greyhound experience, I'd ride Greyhound.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Greyhound buses don't have lounges. And inebriated slobs are fun to laugh at. Seriously, society puts on comedy Mel Brooks can't touch, every day, and in every way. You just need to let yourself see it. And sometimes you meet someone you can like and laugh WITH rather than AT.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I see a lot of roomettes with but one passenger in them. An all roomette car carrying only single passengers can hold 20, since Amtrak doesn't randomly share people in roomettes. The Slumbercoach can carry 38 individually ticketed passengers.
Were I in charge of Amtrak's sleeper program, I'd be running the single-level long-distance trains with 1 "Deluxe" bedroom car, 1 standard Viewliner, 1 All-Roomette car, and 1 Slumbercoach. That would provide for 10 Bedrooms, 2 Handicapped rooms, 32 double roomettes, and 38 Slumbercoach roomettes. This provides for a maximum 168 passengers, vs 128 with a set up of 4 Viewliners, which would provide 4 H rooms, 8 bedrooms, and 48 roomettes.

I've been one of those single passengers. And I've liked it. I think if I had a choice between a Viewliner Roomette and a slumbercoach, I'd go for the roomette. Of course, offering people choices does have value.

On the other hand, if a slumbercoach effectively improves efficiency of the sleeping cars on the train by 20%, does that really matter? Some of that efficiency is going to be lost by the need for extra spare cars.

What if, instead, Amtrak modified all of the Viewliners so that three of the twelve current roomettes had separate doors into the hallway for the upper half vs the lower half, with a more solid partition between the upper half and lower half, and then took out another roomette and maybe part of the changing room space in order to make space for six coach-sized seats?

I think there ought to be full length Viewliner Lounge cars that would be accessible to the coach passengers as well as the sleeper passengers.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

If you someday in a few decades are so rich that you can afford to own a private car, are you going to buy yourself a slumbercoach car?

No, I'd buy an Amfleet and make it into a business car.

But isn't part of the point of a business car to have nice, big windows, a feature which Amfleet cars don't offer?

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

Personally, I want a caboose. But would Amtrak actually run a caboose (with HEP)? Do freights ever take on private cars (private cabooses), if you bill it as a private freight car you happen to be riding in?

I think if you had a caboose with HEP and that had otherwise been upgraded to meet Amtrak's standards, the only problem you run into is that Amtrak's rates are per car per mile. You don't get any discount for the tiny interior of the caboose compared to a more typical private car. So if you're trying to recover any of the costs from chartering the car, you'll have a much harder time.

Somewhere I came across the website for one particular private car (I don't remember which one) which claims that freight railroads won't move occupied private cars. I assume that one issue here is that a freight locomotives don't have enough power to start the whole train moving at once, so they compress the slack in the couplers; if you happen to be in a car near the back of the train (say, if you're the brakeman riding in the caboose fourty years ago) you can experience a rather large jerk, which I think can occasionally injure people. Some private cars have generators, which would provide a reasonable workaround for a lack of HEP from the locomotive. And then there are probably liability / insurance issues; the freight railroads may not want to take out a policy that would cover damages to passengers.

 

[wayman]

Somewhere I came across the website for one particular private car (I don't remember which one) which claims that freight railroads won't move occupied private cars. I assume that one issue here is that a freight locomotives don't have enough power to start the whole train moving at once, so they compress the slack in the couplers; if you happen to be in a car near the back of the train (say, if you're the brakeman riding in the caboose fourty years ago) you can experience a rather large jerk, which I think can occasionally injure people. Some private cars have generators, which would provide a reasonable workaround for a lack of HEP from the locomotive. And then there are probably liability / insurance issues; the freight railroads may not want to take out a policy that would cover damages to passengers.

Phooey. Though I suppose one could always be a hobo, riding as a stowaway in one's own private car! :lol:

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I've been one of those single passengers. And I've liked it. I think if I had a choice between a Viewliner Roomette and a slumbercoach, I'd go for the roomette. Of course, offering people choices does have value.
On the other hand, if a slumbercoach effectively improves efficiency of the sleeping cars on the train by 20%, does that really matter? Some of that efficiency is going to be lost by the need for extra spare cars.

What if, instead, Amtrak modified all of the Viewliners so that three of the twelve current roomettes had separate doors into the hallway for the upper half vs the lower half, with a more solid partition between the upper half and lower half, and then took out another roomette and maybe part of the changing room space in order to make space for six coach-sized seats?

I think there ought to be full length Viewliner Lounge cars that would be accessible to the coach passengers as well as the sleeper passengers.

I've ridden in slumbercoach rooms before. Trust me, they aren't that bad to be in. One advantage of separating them is continuing their old practice with them. Amtrak, I think, stopped this sometime before they discontinued slumbercoaches, but a slumbercoach was NOT first class. You didn't get meals. You were more of a "coach plus".

So you could have an imaginary consist in 2020 something like this:

3 Viewliner shaped P50 engines, 1 Viewliner Baggage-Dorm, 3 Viewliner sleepers (current configuration), 2 all-roomette Viewliner Sleepers, 1 Viewliner Parlor lounge, 1 Viewliner diner, 1 Viewliner Sightseer lounge, 8 Viewliner Coaches, and 2 Viewliner Slumbercoaches.

If you someday in a few decades are so rich that you can afford to own a private car, are you going to buy yourself a slumbercoach car?

No, I'd buy an Amfleet and make it into a business car.

But isn't part of the point of a business car to have nice, big windows, a feature which Amfleet cars don't offer?

If I had the money to justify the cost of buying and running a private railcar, I'd rebuild the thing so much you wouldn't believe it. My primary interest in it would be that it is the last FRA-compatible shell Budd built. I'd give it GSC trucks, for one thing. I have a favourite carpenter of mine who I'd have re do the thing in the most incredible display of the art of inlaid wood working you've ever seen. If I didn't have the money to do such things, I wouldn't have the money to afford the car in the first place.