Viewliner II Part 2: Dining Car Production, Delivery, Speculation

[west point]

Dec 11th sounds better but what about the tag ?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

One alternative is to sell only 11 rooms in each Viewliner Car and if a Viewliner I shows up in the consist on a particular day, sell it as a last minute upgrade for cheap to the first comer.

Could they send the SCA to a coach seat instead of a revenue customer? Or does the VL2's SCA room feature alert panels or other antiquated single purpose concepts like the SL fleet?

We already have enough complaints about absentee SCAs, without taking away their space in the car. Would you expect them to stand in the hallway for 18 hours a day to be available to their passengers, or for the passengers to have to walk through several cars to get assistance?

I'm not suggesting we take their rooms away just for the heck of it. I'm suggesting that on those (hopefully rare) occasions when an inoperative VL1 is replaced with a VL2 at the last minute we consider having the SCA take one for the team rather than forcing a paid and ticketed passenger to give up their room involuntarily. If I was paid up and ticketed in a sleeper and there was a last minute change I'd much rather retain my room with far less frequent attention from the SCA than be sent to a coach seat with a travel credit on my account.

 

[PVD]

OBS get a room. That isn't changing. Nobody should expect an employee to work a full day without sleep time. It is a waste to even speculate on the subject.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Dec 11th sounds better but what about the tag ?

If you referring to the 3B - that's part of the picture that he copied off the Internet - a John Deere 345 model decal

 

[Steve4031]

OBS get a room. That isn't changing. Nobody should expect an employee to work a full day without sleep time. It is a waste to even speculate on the subject.

Agreed. Despite oyr complaining about many missing scas, we do need to remember that these are people too. Think about your favorite sleeping car attendant. Would you want thus person to "take one for the team"? Additionally this would be a violation of the union contract.

 

[neroden]

The railroad should not be run for the convenience of lazy staff members. In regular service, isolate the Viewliner IIs to one set of trains and the Viewliner Is to another set, sell all the rooms which are not assigned to staff, and reassign the available rooms in the database if there has to be a last-minute substitution -- something they already do if they're short on cars. This means that the operations department has to bother to actually do their jobs, but they are supposed to be paid to do that.

Speaking of which, coach attendants have a room, apparently. It is reasonable for them to also have a seat to sit in when monitoring the coach, or indeed a pair of seats. The current habit of many coach attendants of occupying *eight* seats per car for no particularly good reason, and chasing all passengers out of them, is ridiculous and should not be permitted.

Amtrak is trying to run full trains of paid passengers, not give luxury accomodations to staff.

 

[neroden]

What is the point of retrofitting V-Is with V-II interiors? The only point I see in that would be to stop having to maintain roomette toilets, but wouldn't the cost of refurbishment probably be greater than those savings, right?

One significant issue is that apparently there is at least some potential loss of customers because the new generation of customers are repelled by the WC in the room.\

Yeah, the in-room toilet is apparently pretty unpopular. And it's high-maintenance. The retrofit probably actually *would* pay for itself.

 

[neroden]

How would you like it if you were in the last roomette in a V-I and due to the car being bad ordered it was replaced with a V-II and your room # did not exist. Coach for you.

Happens to a *dozen* people at once when the existing Viewliner I is bad-ordered and replaced with nothing. :shrug: Which is a lot worse.

(Heck, I've seen people standing-room-only in the cafe car because Amtrak was short of coach seats.)

I don't think this "one room shortage" possibility is a problem.

It would literally only occur under total sellout conditions (zero other rooms to move you to), which usually have advance warning, like around Thanksgiving, and Amtrak can take some extra preventative maintenance.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

OBS get a room. That isn't changing. Nobody should expect an employee to work a full day without sleep time. It is a waste to even speculate on the subject.

Who said anything about taking away their sleep time? If sleeping in Amtrak's coach seats is so bad that no employee should ever be asked to endure it then maybe Amtrak should do something about making it more conducive to actual sleeping.

Or they could consider doing what the airlines did by locating employee rest areas in otherwise vacant or lightly used crawlspaces. With a bit of redesign a permanent non-rev roomette could be modified to sleep two employees instead of one. It's also possible that Amtrak's inefficient HVAC and electrical equipment from the 1980's could be replaced with smaller designs in rooftop locations leading to more recoverable areas to convert into additional employee rest stations and freeing up more revenue space.

Agreed. Despite oyr complaining about many missing scas, we do need to remember that these are people too. Think about your favorite sleeping car attendant. Would you want thus person to "take one for the team"? Additionally this would be a violation of the union contract.

I don't want anyone to be kicked out of a sleeper. But sometimes it may happen anyway for maintenance or operational reasons. That being said, it's true I didn't consider that the union probably does have a priority resolution clause which ensures employee needs will almost always trump those of revenue passengers.

 

[PVD]

One of the primary benefits of the bag dorrms. (eventually)

 

[AmtrakLKL]

Harrisburg has left the yard. First revenue trip to NYP today via the Meteor.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

While I would never suggest an employee be fully deprived of a room, there is no reason (other than a somewhat over generous union contract) that in emergent circumstances, an SCA or other employee could not double bunk (they are two person rooms!) with another same gender employee.

They are people, sure, at least most of them. Some are closer to demonic than people. But they are working and getting paid, and a certain level of compromise under such an emergent circumstance as the unforseen loss of a revenue room is perfectly reasonable.

 

[PVD]

Doubling up in an emergency seems reasonable.

The characterizations by some that a roomette or group of seats is a "luxury accommodation" is laughable. That being said, over occupancy by staff of seats or probably worse, table space is a longstanding failure of line management, and is an area where they could do quite a bit better.

 

[PRR 60]

I believe the attendant's right to a single-occupancy room for sleeping is written into their union contract.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

It is; but that is a hold over from the time roomettes and single slumbercoaches were single accommodations so they wouldnt have to share a berth; which is a reasonable idea. Not sharing a two berth room is a bit different.

 

[A Voice]

While I would never suggest an employee be fully deprived of a room, there is no reason (other than a somewhat over generous union contract) that in emergent circumstances, an SCA or other employee could not double bunk (they are two person rooms!) with another same gender employee.

They are people, sure, at least most of them. Some are closer to demonic than people. But they are working and getting paid, and a certain level of compromise under such an emergent circumstance as the unforseen loss of a revenue room is perfectly reasonable.

If crew persons were ever requested to "double bunk" it would ordinarily mean moving the sleeping-car attendant out of the sleeper for which they are responsible anyway, as most trains will (eventually) have either transition or baggage-dormitory cars (presumably excluding the Star, Meteor, and Crescent) where other crew will be housed. Further, all Viewliner-equipped trains have rooms turnover during the night; While no one room may be available for the entire trip, much or most of the time a room probably is temporarily vacant in one of the sleepers.

But much too big a deal is being made over the matter of one less Roomette anyway. For much of its early years, Amtrak sleepers were very far from standardized. While 10-6 sleepers (ten single-occupancy Roomettes and six double bedrooms) were common, there were also cars with sections and compartments in the fleet with varied numbers of total rooms. Coaches also variously had 44 to 62 or more seats on many long-distance routes. Amtrak, and its passengers, somehow survived.

One less Roomette (which, as Jis noted, they simply won't sell except last-minute onboard) isn't going to be nearly such a big deal.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

If crew persons were ever requested to "double bunk" it would ordinarily mean moving the sleeping-car attendant out of the sleeper for which they are responsible anyway...

In my experience the SCA isn't normally active or available during their crew rest periods so no obvious problem there. It's not like they wake up and come running just because you pressed the call button.

But much too big a deal is being made over the matter of one less Roomette anyway.

By doubling up employees in non-rev VL roomettes Amtrak could potentially free up an additional 50+ revenue rooms. If we made the similar changes to the SL fleet we could potentially double that number. I don't work for Amtrak myself but 100 extra rooms sounds like enough extra revenue to be worth consideration.

 

[jis]

One reason that staff is not doubled up is to avoid issues when there is a mix of male and female staff etc. I can almost bet that staff will never be doubled up in a room no matter how much AU people might want it.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

One reason that staff is not doubled up is to avoid issues when there is a mix of male and female staff etc. I can almost bet that staff will never be doubled up in a room no matter how much AU people might want it.

Airline staff rest above, below, and across from the opposite sex in half-open bunks with curtains. How do you suppose they handle all these tricky "issues" that Amtrak staff are uniquely incapable of avoiding?

 

[Ryan]

Off the top of my head, two major differences are that the crew rest area don't have the toilet exposed in the middle of them and the typical trip is somewhere around 2-3 times as long?

 

[me_little_me]

In defense of employees (but never having worked on a RR), I think giving them private roomette is appropriate. With bag dorms (and decent electronics) an SCA could even be moved to the bag dorm if necessary to free up space for a passenger since old-fashioned hard-wired buttons are obsolete and the call can go to the late-night "on duty" SCA to insure sleep time but still have responsiveness if a customer needs it. Also, I would not move SCAs out of their room to free up space unless, and only if, a room is needed because there is a problem with customer room and not to sell that additional room.

Coach attendants sharing the late night service time could use the bag dorm.

Staff using tables in the cafe cars or using more than one pair of seats should be on notice. Conductors and other staff should use diner tables in off hours in lieu of using cafe cars or a "break" area could be set up in the bag dorm if possible.

 

[A Voice]

One reason that staff is not doubled up is to avoid issues when there is a mix of male and female staff etc. I can almost bet that staff will never be doubled up in a room no matter how much AU people might want it.

Airline staff rest above, below, and across from the opposite sex in half-open bunks with curtains. How do you suppose they handle all these tricky "issues" that Amtrak staff are uniquely incapable of avoiding?

Air and rail travel - Trains and planes - are not the same thing; They have differing service standards, accommodations, and passenger and crew needs and desires.

Should Amtrak also seek to emulate airline standards of coach seating (size) and quality of (coach) food service offerings, or then why is it just crew rest areas - for a journey much longer than most any flight - which should be similar?

 

[jis]

One reason that staff is not doubled up is to avoid issues when there is a mix of male and female staff etc. I can almost bet that staff will never be doubled up in a room no matter how much AU people might want it.

Airline staff rest above, below, and across from the opposite sex in half-open bunks with curtains. How do you suppose they handle all these tricky "issues" that Amtrak staff are uniquely incapable of avoiding?

I have also never heard of an airline staff raping anyone in flight. But who knows?

I think they are very different environments, and I simply don;t see it happening no matter how many times you try to emphasize the similarities.

 

[west point]

Let us face it. 95% of all airline passengers travel 4-5 hours or less. Train passengers ? especially LD passengers ?LD

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Off the top of my head, two major differences are that the crew rest area don't have the toilet exposed in the middle of them and the typical trip is somewhere around 2-3 times as long?

So far as I am aware the ensuite toilets are scheduled to be removed. If an 18 hour flight still isn't long enough for mixed sex "issues" to develop then at what point do they become problematic? Is it 24 hours? 36 hours? 48 hours? It seems odd to measure privacy and protection as a factor of elapsed time but here we are.

Should Amtrak also seek to emulate airline standards of coach seating (size) and quality of (coach) food service offerings, or then why is it just crew rest areas - for a journey much longer than most any flight - which should be similar?

I see no problem with Amtrak emulating airline standards such as selectable seating at booking, armrest dividers, coach class call buttons, routine at-seat drink and snack service, and modern lie flat sleeping pods. Not everything about flying is antithetical to improving passenger rail.

I have also never heard of an airline staff raping anyone in flight. But who knows?

I think they are very different environments, and I simply don;t see it happening no matter how many times you try to emphasize the similarities.

According to the recent rape thread having a "private" room on Amtrak would appear to afford little in the way of dependable protection from a motivated rapist. I have no illusions that any of this may actually come to pass, but just because Amtrak and/or one of their union's is steadfastly against changing something doesn't mean it's a fundamentally irrational or logically unsound suggestion.