by OrangeGrove
F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Amtrak already has announced plans to rebuild five Cross Country Cafe cars as Parlor Car replacements (further rebuild of the existing Hi-Levels was also said to be evaluated).Backshophoss wrote:The former "El-Cap" hi-levels have parts that would require "reverse engineering" to create new parts,the car's batteries are are no longerYup. The Parlours were heavily modified in prior overhauls to take whatever off-shelf parts they could physically handle, but they still require lots of unorthodox component self-fabrication and special expertise of long-defunct Budd blueprints for Beech Grove to maintain the cars. And that's a royal P.I.T.A. for them, as well as a much more problematic outlier now that all other self-fab Heritage maintenance have been purged from the roster. Since the Superliner III order (whatever gets cobbled together for that now that Sumitromo has thoroughly screwed AMTK on the bi-level design template) is going to include programmed replacements for all of the aging S1 Sightseer lounges, a hard cutoff is coming in the next decade for future Beech Grove maintenance of the Parlours that will preclude another midlife overhaul. There's zero reason to keep them when S3 Sightseers are likely to be produced in expanded quantities over the S1 Sightseers they replace and will feature lots more interior flexibility on the livery options to dress them up in nice configurations. That'll end up being the take-it-or-leave-it offer to the Pacific states for the Starlight. Either that or substituting the Pac Coast with an offer of refurbbed S1 Sightseers with new Parlour-facsimile upper-level livery if budgets are too constrained on doing nice things with S3 lounges. If the states really want their 5 historic cars that badly, they'll have to take on 100% ownership and self-maintenance. And they don't have capability of doing that because the maint bases in CA and WA don't have the parts fabrication ability of Beech Grove.
made,not that long ago,Beech Grove adapted 1 of the "Pacific Parlors" to use the Superliner's batteries instead of the originals.
The cars have not moved in years stored out in the open at that passenger car "boneyard" near a steel mill in Granite City IL.
But what do the Pacific states have to do with any of this? The Coast Starlight is a long-distance (hence, completely federally funded) train.
The Santa Fe HiL's...yes, something doesn't smell right there for just how long they've been marketed as supposed plug-and-play acquisitions but gotten few-to-no sniffs from any potential buyers. You would think that even if they're an inherently low-odds option for any public-subsidy service on the map a premium-level private excursion carrier like the Rocky Mountaineer or Alaska RR would've taken a decently long look by now at evaluating (if not actually purchasing) a few of those units to add variety to their tourist-oriented rolling stock collections. But no...not even that much cursory interest. Something about those cars' condition or cost of operating is scaring everyone away on closer inspection, and has been doing so for many years now. That's a very big and pregnant elephant in the room.The problem with marketing the ex-Santa Fe Hi-Levels reportedly has as much (or more) to do with Corridor Capital's conditions for overhaul and service of the cars (such as retaining ownership) as it does with the equipment itself. I would have expected they could outright sell at least some of the cars, but such is apparently not the business plan. So they sit.
Interesting to note that CC also owns 