electricron wrote: ↑Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:41 amThat case study should start with the V-I procurement. All Viewliners have been built to a design Amtrak owns from initial design to manufacturing floor changes. Every single one is therefore a custom build. Custom build is never cheaper than off the shelf.
It’s a procurement model that worked well for the N&W and the Milwaukee, which had their own manufacturing facilities. It would also have worked well if Amtrak had kept manufacturing in-house at Beech Grove, as they were forced to do with the V-I order (knowing that Amtrak would just be the general contractor and that subcontractors would do the lion’s share of the work, unlike the days of yore when the railroad got steel, bronze, glass and oil in one door and finished railcars out the other.)
Back then, Amtrak would have done much better to adapt a Budd or P-S heritage design as a sleeper. Amtrak could have even ordered a hybrid from Pullman, with a standard Comet frame, a pair of outside-equalizer GSC-70 trucks, a full complement of Comet-spec parts like windows, and a ballooned-out Viewliner-size body and it would have been a far simpler procurement. Coaches could simply have come straight off the Comet line as a large order of Horizons. Would have helped keep an American firm in business too.