by electricron
gokeefe wrote:The new order consists of 130 cars; 25 sleepers, 25 diners, 25 dorm/baggage, and 55 baggage cars. Considering they already have 50 sleeper cars with most existing trains in the single level fleet using 2 sleepers, an additional 25 sleepers will generally give every train one more additional sleeper than they have now. That's one replacement diner and baggage car, and one additional dorm car per existing train. Giving the Cardinal an additional train set or two for daily service could probably be done because of efficiencies arising from a larger fleet. I'm not so sure there would be sufficient new cars to start a new train service requiring more than two new train sets, like re-establishing the Broadway Limited, the Century, or the Sunset Limited east.Woody wrote:Not to mention that Amtrak would need more locomotives and rolling stock. Maybe it will get more fleet renewal equipment soon. Sigh.The potential for the changes you mention really isn't that far off. Amtrak is going to be getting this new equipment and deploying it around their single level routes. The number of cars, matched against the number of routes and the fact that they are only removing 25 cars from service (the Heritage Diners) implies a substantial expansion of both capacity in existing service and most likely some new additional service as well, even when counting only the initial order. There's an option for more after that and of course if things go really well Amtrak could simply execute another order after that as well. We will know rather quickly if this will all happen.
As mentioned elsewhere the Silver Service trains were profitable until literally "the last hour" pre-Amtrak. I think there is a very good chance that could happen again if Amtrak has enough sleeper and diner cars to accommodate the demand for travel to Florida.