It is a combination wash/toilet room and shower room next to it. So, a much bigger room than the normal showers in the regular sleeper cars. The sink/toilet area is divided from the shower so it isn't like the bedroom shower in the other cars.
It's actually the same size as the regular public shower; you're just exchanging what it the normal changing area with the bathroom instead. Put another way, you're changing in the bathroom, instead of a room dedicated to changing. This can be nice as one can take a shower and also perform other chores for getting ready to face the day. On the other hand it somewhat limits the floor space to stand on while getting undressed.
We stayed in roomette #18 on the way to Maricopa last December. The roomettes in the trans dorm are the same layout as the regular sleeper. It is quieter there, since there are only 4 revenue roomettes on the upper level, and they may or may not all be full.
The number of rooms sold in the Trans/Dorm depends on the route and the size of the crew for that route. The Empire Builder for example typically only sells 4 rooms. The City of New Orleans I believe can sell 8 rooms, definitely 6. The Auto Train sells zero and in fact I believe even loses a few regular sleeper rooms to the crew.
The one time I was in the transdorm (CONO last year), there was a ladies lounge on the lower level, running the width of the train. That shower was more spacious than the usual. It was a nice little perk.
Yes, there are a few odd ball Trans/Dorms running around that do not have the shower on the upper level. You hit one of those cars. The ladies lounge is much roomier than the norm; however the men’s shower right next door to the powder room is as described above, the smaller combo unit.
Does the transdorm have its own Attendant or does the one from the next sleeper do double duty?
Amtrak seems to keep experimenting with that. They've gone from having a sleeper attendant to coach attendant and now back to the sleeping car attendant.
The problem is that it's really too many rooms for one sleeping car attendant to handle. The best ones manage reasonably well, but if you don't have your routine down solidly then things get out of hand even for what would otherwise normally be at least a good attendant. Hit a bad attendant and you can pretty much forget about it.
Coach attendants have the time to handle a few rooms; the problem there is that they wear out their shoes walking back and forth from the coaches to the sleeper. They're basically walking the entire length of the train multiple times a day and it's very hard to open two doors at opposite ends of the train at the same time. Amtrak tried flipping the consist around, putting the coaches next to the Trans/Dorm to solve that problem.
That however led to another problem; namely no coffee/tea/ice/juice etc available to those passengers. At least not without walking a mile to get it, and having to prove to the sleeping car attendant that you're not a coach passenger stealing from the sleeper. The alternative was making the attendant do the walk, again. You also get more foot traffic in the Trans/Dorm from wandering coach passengers, yet another problem.
So at least for the minute, we seem to be back to the closest sleeping car attendant having to work both the Trans/Dorm & their regular sleeper.
