Sunchaser,
I believe that all bi-level cars eventually make their way to Beech Grove for their annual inspections that require 2 weeks of downtime. The 92 day inspections are performed in Chicago, LA, possibly Seattle, NY, DC, and Hialeah & Sanford Fl. At one time they could also be done in New Orleans, but I think that's been stopped. I'm not sure if the single level cars go to Beech Grove for their annual inspections, or if they are done in Bear, Delaware with the exception of the Viewliners which if they don't go to BG, would be done in Hialeah.
During the annual inspections, brakes are changed, seat cushions are replaced, as well as other safety work being done. A broken toilet could be replaced, but they would not do a major thing like upgrading the toilet system during an annual. On the other hand, a car that has been selected for a heavy overhaul might well get its annual inspection while it was in the shop.
The rebuilding of most of the Superliner I sleepers took about 3 months per car from start to finish. That program was stopped before all of the Superliner I's were done and has not been restarted to date; but thankfully they got all but a handful through the rebuilding program before it got cancelled.
It's my understanding that all the wrecked Superliners that are being restored to service thanks to the Stimulus are not only having all the damage fixed to the frame of the car, but are also getting rebuilt inside to the new standards. That includes all cars, not just the sleepers, which would mean that there will be a few coaches running around with the new style bathrooms.
AC work & replacement should occur at an endpoint station whenever a problem has been reported. The problem is that all too often there are no spare cars available and the repairs will take longer than the crews have time to do the work. So this often results in slapping a Band-Aid on and hoping that the car makes it to the next yard before failing. An example is on the Empire Builder, the cars arriving into Seattle & Portland in the morning go right back out in the afternoon. So if they don't have either the time or the parts, a failed compressor could go right back out to Chicago.
Chicago typically has more time, and more replacement cars, but there have been some issues with the quality of their work there. They are however also understaffed for the amount of work that they have; so that doesn't help either. LA however seems to do very good work and at least in my experience, there seems to be far less failures of equipment out of LA.
But also consider that there are 432 active Superliner cars in the fleet right now. That's a lot of cars needing a lot of work in a limited number of shops with a limited amount of time to work on them, as most are needed for daily operations. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that maybe Amtrak during the summer months can have at most 40 Superliners out of service for inspections, standby spares, repairs, and rebuilds and still meet demand.
So if Chicago has 3 trains arrive on any given day each with 1 car where one of the AC compressors has failed, it's a pretty safe bet that they aren't going to be able to get all 3 cars fixed in time for their next run. That means pulling a spare to send out. And there isn't an unlimited amount of spares, so if they sent out 3 or 4 in the days immediately preceding, there is a chance that one train may well go out without a fully functional AC system.
Please understand that I'm not condoning this practice; just stating what can happen. If the bean counters would let Amtrak hire a few more people, if parts were easier to come by, if a few of the lazy workers were gone, and so on; then things would be different. And there is enough blame here to go around IMHO, it's not all one area or aspect of things although money does enter into many of the aspects.
But frankly I think that the biggest issue here remains the fact that Amtrak needs more equipment. They are running what they have into the ground to meet the demand. People have compared things to VIA around here more than once. And yes, I do give full credit to VIA for running those 60, 70, & 80 year old cars. But those cars also get major TLC from VIA. They don't come into the yard in the morning and go back out in the evening day after day. They get well rested and lots of work in between runs, and even then VIA still has equipment failures. They don't have as many as Amtrak, but then they also don't have as many runs or cars either.
If Amtrak were told tomorrow that they could order 100 new Superliner's, personally were I running the show, I'd take 25 Superliners of various types and assign them permanently to spare duties. Then I'd look to see what routes should get extra cars and what new routes could be started thanks to the other 75 cars increasing the size of the fleet.
