OBS Crew Layovers?

[AlanB]

Okay--so open dorm cars for crews are a thing of the past, right? Each crewmember is entitled to a private room, right? And current Viewliner Roomette design has two bunks, one of which would have to go unused, right? And the new Viewliner Baggage-Dorm cars may not have sufficient Roomettes for larger crews, right?

A very large crew, meaning more than 9 people. Most trains don't get close. And if they do pass it, then losing one revenue room isn't worth the effort of doing other things to fix the problem.

The solution: Design the baggage-dorm roomettes in the classic "duplex" design, with interlocking lower and upper roomettes, like the old Slumbercoaches had. The Viewliner certainly has more than sufficient height to permit such a design, that would result in several more roomettes in the same space.

Not going to happen, as Amtrak doesn't want different types of rooms like that, and I'm not even sure if it would be possible with the modular construction of the Viewliners. Each room is one module and it's just slid into the car, bolted down, hooked up to power & water and off you go.

 

[railiner]

Okay--so open dorm cars for crews are a thing of the past, right? Each crewmember is entitled to a private room, right? And current Viewliner Roomette design has two bunks, one of which would have to go unused, right? And the new Viewliner Baggage-Dorm cars may not have sufficient Roomettes for larger crews, right?

A very large crew, meaning more than 9 people. Most trains don't get close. And if they do pass it, then losing one revenue room isn't worth the effort of doing other things to fix the problem.

The solution: Design the baggage-dorm roomettes in the classic "duplex" design, with interlocking lower and upper roomettes, like the old Slumbercoaches had. The Viewliner certainly has more than sufficient height to permit such a design, that would result in several more roomettes in the same space.

Not going to happen, as Amtrak doesn't want different types of rooms like that, and I'm not even sure if it would be possible with the modular construction of the Viewliners. Each room is one module and it's just slid into the car, bolted down, hooked up to power & water and off you go.

Before you dismiss my suggestion entirely, think about the possibility of designing duplex roomettes as "modules" as well. Perhaps such a design could also be employed in regular sleeping cars as well, increasing room count on routes where rooms are predominantly booked as 'singles'.

IIRC, the original Slumbercoach rooms were sort of like modular, with their curved fiberglas interior's.....

 

[AlanB]

Before you dismiss my suggestion entirely, think about the possibility of designing duplex roomettes as "modules" as well. Perhaps such a design could also be employed in regular sleeping cars as well, increasing room count on routes where rooms are predominantly booked as 'singles'.

IIRC, the original Slumbercoach rooms were sort of like modular, with their curved fiberglas interior's.....

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to dismiss your idea. I'm simply saying that I'm pretty sure that Amtrak will want no part of it.

Even if they can come up with some sort of interlocking modules that would link up in such a way as to permit that layout, they're not going to want to do it. They don't want to have too many varied designs on sleepers. They want to keep two, maybe three layouts, maximum. Different types of sleepers mean having more cars sitting around in the yard to cover a bad ordered car. If you only have one Viewliner layout, then each yard really only needs one, maybe two spare cars depending on just how many trains that yard sees.

If you increase the type of layouts that you have, you need more spares sitting around now. For example, right now Chicago is supposed to have 1 spare. It rarely does, but again the plan calls for that. If you have two layouts, now CHI needs two spares sitting around, 1 of each type.

And in a Viewliner, that type of layout would defeat the window layout too.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Will they give Roomettes in the dorm cars to each crewmember or will it be community bunk beds?

Every OBS employee on any overnight train is provided a roomette of their own. Why anyone thinks it would be fair and ethical treatment to force someone to share a room and/or even share a bed with another employee just blows me away. This isn't the military. Heck, as far as I know, even in the military only submariners had to share a rack. Is that even still the case?

Hey, I don't think it's fair, that's why I asked the question in the first place, I was afraid it would be "not fair".

Okay--so open dorm cars for crews are a thing of the past, right? Each crewmember is entitled to a private room, right? And current Viewliner Roomette design has two bunks, one of which would have to go unused, right? And the new Viewliner Baggage-Dorm cars may not have sufficient Roomettes for larger crews, right?

The solution: Design the baggage-dorm roomettes in the classic "duplex" design, with interlocking lower and upper roomettes, like the old Slumbercoaches had. The Viewliner certainly has more than sufficient height to permit such a design, that would result in several more roomettes in the same space.

Too complex for Amtrak, and very hard with modules. Your last "And the new Viewliner Baggage-Dorm cars may not have sufficient Roomettes for larger crews, right?" would only be right if the crews were much larger, trains much longer, not gonna happen without additional railcar orders, which could account for your new design but the whole fleet would be messed up.

 

[railiner]

Too many variations? So for ultimate 'effiency', Amtrak should run their entire system on Amcoaches, and Amdinettes. And Ampad sleepers.... hboy:

 

[AlanB]

Too many variations? So for ultimate 'effiency', Amtrak should run their entire system on Amcoaches, and Amdinettes. And Ampad sleepers.... hboy:

I'm not advocating for things one way or the other, simply telling you how Amtrak is thinking. They don't want a bunch of different types of cars and issues that causes.

Case in point, back in 2003 Amtrak had 11 different types/layouts for their Amfleet I cafe cars. Today there are 2 types of cafe cars; club-dinettes and full dinettes. Back in 2003, there were 6 different layouts for business class cars within the Amfleet I's, today only 2.

Perhaps if Congress were to ever provide a stable and guaranteed level of funding, a decent level, then maybe Amtrak might consider something else. But right now they don't have the money to keep two types of sleeper cars as spares in every yard used by those trains. That's a lot of very expensive hardware just sitting around earning no revenue for a financially strapped company.

According to the "game plan" Hialeah should always have 2 spare Viewliner's sitting around, NYP 1, and Chicago 1. In practice Chicago almost never has one however because of the shortage of cars. In reality, there should be 2 spares in Sunnyside, 1 in Boston, 1 in New Orleans, in addition to the cars in Hialeah & Chicago; for a total of 7 cars. Now if we add a second type of sleeper, we need 14 very expensive cars just sitting around in case of a failure earning no revenue to help pay the bills. This is why Amtrak wants one type of sleeping car within the Viewliner & Superliner lines.

 

[railiner]

What you say does make sense. There are alternative solutions, however. Instead of having to keep a spare of every type of car in the various yards, a little creative improvising could solve the occasional shortage... For example, if bag-dorm was shopped, then the regular spare sleeper along with a standard baggage car could serve as a substitute for a trip, until the shopped car is back in service, or another is supplied at another point...