Actually Ryan, as they state in the report, none of this proposal can come to pass until the 'new' equipment shows up two years or so down the road. So I presume that is the thin air that the equipment would come from.
I am not sure I want to wade into this, what appears to be a personal altercation. But leaving that aside, just purely from counting of things perspective, here goes..... and BTW, I couldhave missed the obvious, so please correct me if I am missing something.....
The equipment that will become available in two years will be additional Sleepers and Diners. There will be no additional Coaches available. Hypothetically, if say a couple of sleepers, couple of coaches and a lounge were to head south on the Star off of the single level Cap, and return on the Star to get transferred to the Cap back to Chicago. Now also assuming the Cap were retimed to use only two sets between CHI and WAS, and the WAS section were say two coaches, diner and a sleeper. An additional consideration if we do not want to reduce the effective capacity of the Cap would be the need for additional sleepers, but that possibly can be managed with the new sleepers.
So the WAS section would require 2 diners, 2 sleepers, 4 coaches, and 2 bag-dorms. The through section to Florida would require 5 sets, which works out to 10 coaches, 10 sleepers, 5 lounges. So in all we will have to find 14 single level LD coaches. I think the point is that even after the new sleepers and diners and bag-dorms and bags come in, it will be hard to find that many coaches. Again hypothetically, if the Card were converted to a Superliner train and its two consists released for use as Cap, you can mine at most 8, and more likely 6 coaches from that. So while I agree that given equipment availability it would increase equipment utilization considerably, at least I cannot see where the necessary equipment will come from. Also it will considerably increase schedule risk with a short connection between the Cap and the Star in WAS. So it may not be as simple as it might seem.
Having read some of these Amtrak PRII's before and found them full of misstatements and errors(don't they ever proof read these things) I don't believe any of it, particularly the bottom line numbers.
So as you might have guessed, after giving careful consideration to what Henry suggests, I am tending towards believing Amtrak's analysis more than Henry's. Unless some more details are given as to what is wrong with the bottom line numbers, I cannot see why they should not be believed. Yes I do have minor quibbles with a few things, but overall they are not way off base.