Thanks. 
Amtrak Pacific Parlor Car vs. Via Rail Park Car
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Green Maned Lion
Engineer
I'm just going to ignore NS VIA FAN's comments, since fleshing out what we already know about each others opinion on this subject would be a waste of time. My points of view stand.
VIA's main ridership on the long distance trains are tourists. On a few of them, most of them aren't even Canadians. The Canadian government is not particularly interested in funding expansion of a system that attracts tourists and the few people stupid enough to live in the middle of nowhere. I, for one, understand their position. Long live the Canadian. I want to ride it some day. But if I was a Canadian tax payer, I'd still stand here as a rail fan and ask what god forsaken reason my money is going to fund a tourist train that doesn't really have much economic benefit to Canada or her people.
When you include the economic stimulus Amtrak's routes produce, and the resultant taxes collected, Amtrak's system is most likely profitable. There is no way on god's green earth you can say the same about VIA's LD train network.
Having a full book of diagrams of every Amtrak car in service in 1976, I assure you this is simply not true. Amtrak had a fleet of about 45 round end cars. Amtrak inherited quite a solid fleet of sleeper round-ends, sleeper domes, and so on. None of them made it past head-end-power conversion. There were a total of 12 round-end domes, which could have allowed two trains to run with them. The only observation car on Amtrak's roster past '82 was Beech Grove.
If they were so invaluble, they'd have decent ridership. They'd run more than a handful of times a week. And they would cost a hell of a lot less.
Its possible, but the main reason VIA gets clouted around on funding issues is they were an inefficient system on almost every count. It didn't have the popular support to justify its existence. While Amtrak runs a hell of a popular and well patronized system, Via doesn't. Most Amtrak riders are Americans, and most Amtrak riders are business people. Even on its long-distance trains, Amtrak gets a good portion of its riders from the business sector.
VIA's main ridership on the long distance trains are tourists. On a few of them, most of them aren't even Canadians. The Canadian government is not particularly interested in funding expansion of a system that attracts tourists and the few people stupid enough to live in the middle of nowhere. I, for one, understand their position. Long live the Canadian. I want to ride it some day. But if I was a Canadian tax payer, I'd still stand here as a rail fan and ask what god forsaken reason my money is going to fund a tourist train that doesn't really have much economic benefit to Canada or her people.
When you include the economic stimulus Amtrak's routes produce, and the resultant taxes collected, Amtrak's system is most likely profitable. There is no way on god's green earth you can say the same about VIA's LD train network.
Of course they do, they are points of view.... If they have any grip on reality or fact is another matter.
I find that hard to believe. Very hard to believe. My observations of the passengers on LD trains is young people, students probably, older people with loads of time on their hands visiting family or taking a vacation, people with no airports nearby who can't be bothered to drive, tourists, geeky railfans and oddballs that live in caves and think flying steals your soul.... There might be the odd one or two widget salesmen from Ohio about, but I would think most of the passengers on LD train would fall into the 'leisure' bracket rather than the 'business' one.
Not convinced.
N
NS VIA FAN
Guest
Again....you really don't know what you are talking about!
The Canadian is the only VIA train I would consider catering specifically to a tourist market and only during the peak season. And you still didn’t get my point that the touring class on the Ocean is a seasonal add-on to what otherwise is a train heavy with coaches and sleeper catering to individuals, student and even business people looking for a quick overnight journey into Montreal. If VIA can provide a “touring class” on a train they’re running anyway with amenities and an upscale service people are willing to pay big-bucks for…..more power to them. They must be doing something right by filling 20 to 30 car trains. And no economic benefit to Canada?? Take one town for instance….Jasper, Alberta in the National Park. Lots of turnover here with passengers staying a couple of days before continuing on the next Canadian. Think of the money dropped for hotels and meals by the passengers on these 20 to 30 car trains.
VIA carried 4.2 million passengers in 2007 (the last year figures are available for) and like Amtrak these would be mostly Canadians: individuals, students and business people actually using the trains for basic transportation. VIA is actually benifitting more Canadians than Amtrak does Americans......On a per capita basis (the US has about 10 times the population of Canada) Amtrak would have had to carry over 40 million passengers……they carried 25.8 million. (and 28.7 million in 2008……VIA would have had a similar % increase last year prior to the economic slowdown)
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cpamtfan
OBS Chief
Why do you think that? Amtrak made more pax because it was cheap when it needed to be cheap, VIA was still expensive with little to no lower fares (And they had that horrible site that was very hard to understand, it took me a while how to figure it out).
wayman
Engineer
The train doesn't have to have decent ridership to be invaluable. Those are totally different. The Hudson Bay (excuse me, the "Winnipeg-Churchill") is invaluable to the residents of Tidal, Digges, Bylot, Lamprey, Chesnaye, Cromarty, Belcher, M'Clintock, Back, Oday, Kellett, ... you get the idea. 81 communities! A few, like Churchill, have other transportation options (Churchill has a local airport with flights only to Winnipeg... or further north to Nunavut). Most have nothing else. Most of the 81 communities appear to be flag stops on the schedule. For those people, having a connection to the outside world, a way to travel when they need it, is invaluable.
I'll give you that Amtrak has more business riders than non-business riders on Corridor trains (not just the NEC, but also the other seven or eight corridors). And I'll give you that Amtrak has more non-tourist riders than tourist riders on LD trains. But I'd even dispute that "a good portion" of LD riders are business, unless you think 20% is a good portion. In my experience, business ridership on LD trains doesn't pass that. But tourist ridership also doesn't pass 20%. I'd say fully 60% of the ridership is American families visiting each other, students going to and from school, and in general travelers who prefer the train over the car or plane for any reason. They're not heading to business meetings. They're traveling for other reasons.
G
guest
Guest
I’ve been following the ongoing debate between NS Via Fan and Green Maned Lion with some interest , but mostly amusement at the lack of basic knowledge about geography, operating environments and the economics of passenger trains. NS Via Fan is about 99% right in his analysis of the situation in Canada. But still a head-to-head comparison of the two systems doesn’t make much sense, because the contexts are some different. As Green Maned lion suggest Via and Amtrak have made different strategic choices because they operate in different environments.
Here are some facts:
Via's passenger count increased by 10% in 2008. On an equivalent basis Amtrak would have to carry 46 million passengers per year, or more than a third more than it does to equal the density of passenger train usage in Canada. That is despite the fact that Canada is a much less densely populated country, and therefore is inherently a more challenging place to operate passenger trains. Passenger rail thrives where there are lots of people in a small area, e.g., Japan. It is very expensive to operate over large distances in small markets. Remember Amtrak’s “Hilltopper?” Or consider today’s Cardinal
Various people asked why passenger trains lose more money per passenger in Canada than in the US. Thus the answer lies in the geography, and specifically the lack of population density over much of the Canadian landmass. The Canadian government supports intercity passenger rail at a level that would be equivalent to Amtrak having an annual subsidy of about $2 billion, again roughly a third higher than the actual levels.
The Canadian intercity passenger train network works out to about 75-80 trains per day, the latter including some non-Via services like Ontario Northland and Algoma Central, which also receive federal government support., That is proportionately higher than in the US, but also much lower than it was before the 1990 cutbacks. The count includes several remote services, for which there is no US equivalent in the lower 48 states. Yet these are clearly socially-necessary services, as there are not other transport options.
Green Maned Lion asked why ridership is low on these remote services. It is low because they are remote services, serving rural areas where few people live.
But where there is a population density in urban areas, specifically the Quebec City to Windsor Corridor, the trains are also used proportionately more in Canada than in equivalent US situations. The corridor supports a daily train service equivalent to the three California corridors, but with population base of about 12 million versus 30million plus in California.
While it is inherently more costly to operate passenger rail in Canada than in the US because of distance a thin population base, focus on efficiency has paid off. Specifically, according to its 2008 annual report
“Since 1990, VIA has:
• Reduced reliance on government operating funding by 48%
• Increased revenues by 110%
• Increased passengers by 33%
• Increased cost recovery by 100%”
This improvement in financial performance has no doubt occurred because the Canadian federal government keeps Via under the financial gun, investing in capital but keeping the annual operating subsidy flat. Even so, the latter is relatively more generous in its funding than is the US government for Amtrak. That said, high margin tourism markets on the he Canadian (and the Ocean) have helped keep subsidies down and service up. And the dependency on government is much less than it was in the pre 1990 days, when Canada was supporting a passenger train network that was close to 50% of the size of the network of the US with only a tenth of the population. Clearly that was not sustainable; hence the draconian cuts at that time.
Here are some facts:
Via's passenger count increased by 10% in 2008. On an equivalent basis Amtrak would have to carry 46 million passengers per year, or more than a third more than it does to equal the density of passenger train usage in Canada. That is despite the fact that Canada is a much less densely populated country, and therefore is inherently a more challenging place to operate passenger trains. Passenger rail thrives where there are lots of people in a small area, e.g., Japan. It is very expensive to operate over large distances in small markets. Remember Amtrak’s “Hilltopper?” Or consider today’s Cardinal
Various people asked why passenger trains lose more money per passenger in Canada than in the US. Thus the answer lies in the geography, and specifically the lack of population density over much of the Canadian landmass. The Canadian government supports intercity passenger rail at a level that would be equivalent to Amtrak having an annual subsidy of about $2 billion, again roughly a third higher than the actual levels.
The Canadian intercity passenger train network works out to about 75-80 trains per day, the latter including some non-Via services like Ontario Northland and Algoma Central, which also receive federal government support., That is proportionately higher than in the US, but also much lower than it was before the 1990 cutbacks. The count includes several remote services, for which there is no US equivalent in the lower 48 states. Yet these are clearly socially-necessary services, as there are not other transport options.
Green Maned Lion asked why ridership is low on these remote services. It is low because they are remote services, serving rural areas where few people live.
But where there is a population density in urban areas, specifically the Quebec City to Windsor Corridor, the trains are also used proportionately more in Canada than in equivalent US situations. The corridor supports a daily train service equivalent to the three California corridors, but with population base of about 12 million versus 30million plus in California.
While it is inherently more costly to operate passenger rail in Canada than in the US because of distance a thin population base, focus on efficiency has paid off. Specifically, according to its 2008 annual report
“Since 1990, VIA has:
• Reduced reliance on government operating funding by 48%
• Increased revenues by 110%
• Increased passengers by 33%
• Increased cost recovery by 100%”
This improvement in financial performance has no doubt occurred because the Canadian federal government keeps Via under the financial gun, investing in capital but keeping the annual operating subsidy flat. Even so, the latter is relatively more generous in its funding than is the US government for Amtrak. That said, high margin tourism markets on the he Canadian (and the Ocean) have helped keep subsidies down and service up. And the dependency on government is much less than it was in the pre 1990 days, when Canada was supporting a passenger train network that was close to 50% of the size of the network of the US with only a tenth of the population. Clearly that was not sustainable; hence the draconian cuts at that time.
goodnightjohnwayne
Train Attendant
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2009
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- 75
What you fail to grasp is that Amtrak didn't have a uniformly well maintained, homogenous fleet of cars like the former CP Park cars. Those ex-CP cars were some of the last of their type ever ordered, so they not only newer than the cars Amtrak had on hand, but were in very good condition.
Of course, VIA Rail didn't have the height restrictions that Amtrak had to deal with, and the original Superliner order made all of the dome cars, whether coach sleeper or observation, largely incompatible with the future western trains. Dome cars could never run out of Penn Station, or Grand Central, and they wouldn't run on the Superliner trains.
The original concept of the observation car had disappeared by Amtrak's time, along with overnight business travel on limited trains. The entire purpose of these cars had been the sale of alcoholic beverages to Pullman passengers, and the heaviest drinkers were affluent businessmen traveling alone. When business travel shifted to the airlines, these cars lost their purpose, and that's why they disappeared from most American name trains before Amtrak.
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wayman
Engineer
I'm not sure dome cars could run out of Penn Station either, in either direction--tunnel clearances. They put the dome on the Adirondack at Albany for that reason, and I believe the reason the Seaboard made those single-level solarium cars for the Silver Meteor was because domes wouldn't fit on the NEC and this allowed a "sightseeing" solution that didn't require an extra switching move. Southern at one point ran actual dome cars on the Crescent and other trains on that route, but those were added at or south of Washington.
A dome on the Silvers or Crescent would have to be added south of Baltimore (and maybe even south of Washington--I don't know what the clearance of that tunnel between WAS and ALX is). At WAS there are facilities to do it fairly easily, and a bit of time in the schedule, but if you can't run a dome south out of WAS you'd have to do it at, say, CVS (on the Cardinal/Crescent) or RVR (on a Silver). Then you'd need an engine crew for the switching operation and a cleaning crew to prepare the car for its next trip. And if it's a dome-observation, you have to turn it around too!
The one other place on the system where it would be easy to add a dome car is the Pennsylvanian--you have to change power at Philadelphia (or Harrisburg), so you could do the same thing you do at Albany. If Amtrak had more non-observation dome cars, they could consider this. But they don't.
Oh, and Boston to Chicago. But from Albany to Chicago is basically a night train, so there's not much point in a dome car....
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sunchaser
Conductor
I'm trying not to go too far off thread, but where are all these old cars?
Are the sleeper domes single level, hi-level/bilevel, or both?
Please explain the Head End Power Conversion issue. (I am assuming they would they have to be rewired?)
Do you think these will ever be refurbished and put back into use? (assuming they would need baggage cars of cash to do it?)
Does Amtrak seem to have any plans to order any LD cars?
Sorry for all the questions-I appreciate the info.
IMHO, the 'Parlor' Car involks a feeling of a real parlor from the turn of the Century. The house we live in has a Parlor, no livingroom. I felt very comfortable in it, so did hubby.
goodnightjohnwayne
Train Attendant
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2009
- Messages
- 75
Unsurprisingly, people who live in areas without any road access are willing to wait for a train that only runs 3 days a week in each direction.
In some parts of Canada, the decision was made to subsidize a subsistence level of passenger train service instead of building highways. In other areas, passenger train service was abandoned as soon as highways, and publicly subsidized buses, were available to take their place.
From what I've seen, VIA's corridor trains are well patronized, keep to schedule and are broadly similar to those run by Amtrak on similar corridors. There are some striking differences, especially in terms of boarding procedures in major stations and in terms of food service. However, I don't really think that the idiosyncrasies make VIA any more "inefficient" than Amtrak. From what I've seen, I like Amtrak's approach a little better, but I can also understand VIA's approach, and I could point to one area where VIA is far more efficient - and others where they seem to be less so.
VIA's long distance services are far more varied than Amtrak's. The Skeena was saved about 10 years ago by a shift to daylight sightseeing from a conventional night train. Right or wrong, VIA emulated the Rocky Mountaineer and preserved train service on this route. Other routes, such as Sudbury to White River, are entirely focused on local tranportation needs, often in areas without road access. Then you have the eastern services, where there is peak season tourism, and sustained local transportation needs during the winter.
Overall, VIA is just as vital as Amtrak. I can point to areas where Amtrak is more efficient and to areas where VIA is more efficient and deficiencies that are shared by both.
I find this last series of statements to be entirely inaccurate, and one statement in particular to be offensive.
For a person who likes to sleep with the homeless on the floor at Penn Station, I'm surprised you would make such a derogatory statement.
I can assure you that the people who "live in the middle of nowhere" have many admirable qualities.
I can also assure you that anyone who can survive in the wilderness, beyond any roads, paved or otherwise, is most likely very clever, ambitious and resourceful.
Up until now Ive abstained on this thread, I love Amtrak and VIA, I think both of you have valid points, however GML I must say that since we are Americans we dont have the same feelings about governments role via (no pun intneded) taxes and subsidies! The Canadian and Ocean are tourist trains, just like our Western tains and the Adirondack and other NE corridor trains (@ least some of the states help pay the freight!),we are, as rail fans all the better for this!
The OP is correct about the need for transportation out in the boondocks of Canada, its a huge country, sparesly populated and I, for one, have always enjoyed my trips on VIA! I just wish it didnt cost so much but if I choose to ride the tourist trains I have to pay what the fare is, and all things considered its worth it, just like we think the EB/CZ/CS are!
I think we should move on to the joy of both systems and leave the politics to the politicians, as for me, Ill take the politicians stand:
I feel strongly both ways! LOL
The OP is correct about the need for transportation out in the boondocks of Canada, its a huge country, sparesly populated and I, for one, have always enjoyed my trips on VIA! I just wish it didnt cost so much but if I choose to ride the tourist trains I have to pay what the fare is, and all things considered its worth it, just like we think the EB/CZ/CS are!
I think we should move on to the joy of both systems and leave the politics to the politicians, as for me, Ill take the politicians stand:
I feel strongly both ways! LOL
wayman
Engineer
Some dome cars never went to Amtrak to begin with. Some were retained for use as business cars, others were sold or given to museums. Others Amtrak acquired and subsequently got rid of. I suspect far more dome cars were sold off than scrapped, and I imagine the percentage of dome-observation cars that escaped the scrapyards is even higher. (And there weren't that many of them to begin with.) The California Zephyr had six dome-observation cars, all of which still exist somewhere:
Silver Penthouse: acquired by Amtrak, later sold off. Now owned by BNSF and used as a business car.
Silver Solarium: acquired by Amtrak, later sold off. Now owned privately and available for charter.
Silver Lookout: acquired by Amtrak, later sold off. Now owned privately and not available for charter (so far as I know).
Silver Sky: remained with the D&RGW (which didn't join Amtrak in 1971), and after a few sales is now owned by VIA Rail. May enter service for VIA as a Park Car.
Silver Crescent: went straight to the Gold Coast Railroad Museum.
Silver Planet: wound up on the Mexican national railway for a while, now privately owned and not available for charter.
Well, single-level in that they would be compatible with single-level coaches and not with Superliners, but the part of the car that has a dome has two levels.
Outside, they looked like this:
Basically, yes. Cars used to have independent generators for power. It was deemed much more efficient to have the locomotive provide power and send it back through the whole train in a conduit that passes from car to car, and let each car draw power from that. But with that system, every car has to be converted--a non-converted car won't have a conduit to pass power on to cars behind it. And the conversion isn't cheap. So Amtrak decided to convert many cars, but not others, as best suited their needs and their budget, and they sold or scrapped the cars they would never be able to use again.
Many of the ones that were sold off to private owners are in use--most private owners paid to convert their own cars to head-end power once they'd bought them. After all, half the fun of owning a private car is being able to ask Amtrak to put it on a train! And that's how many private car owners cover the costs of purchasing and refurbishing their car--they rent it out.
Amtrak has a large order of single-level long-distance cars prepared, and many of the hurdles necessary to give Amtrak the money and go-ahead have been cleared. Just a few remain, and the order may well be placed by sometime in 2010. Then it will take another few years for the cars to be built and enter service. But none of these will be domes or parlor cars or anything of that sort.
It's unlikely Amtrak will ever place an order for new dome cars in the old model, since there are so few places they could use such a car. These dome cars were primarily a western thing, where tunnels are taller and sights are grander, and they came about because two, three, sometimes even four railroads competed on each of the major western transcontinental routes, and dome cars were a strong selling point back when competition was fierce. Dome cars were pretty rare in the East and Southeast.
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Great post! Thanks for the info, my best old train mem ory was riding in a dome/sleeper on the MOPAC from Texas to STL on the way to Bootcamp! Sure wish these private cars werent so expensive to ride, perhaps one of the secret billionaires on this forum will charter on of the luxury trains and let the traveler cash in a few million points to give us all a trip of a lifetime! LOL (this is play on the commercial running where the office mates of the guy trying to win a golfing trip to exotic places try to be on his leaderboard! Put me on traveler! :lol: :lol: :lol:
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I have always read that dome cars cannot run in Penn Station. And I never remember any doing so.
Southern at one time ran a dome on the Southern Crescent from ATL to NOL and from Salisbury to Asheville on the Asheville Special and also from Savannah to ATL on the Nancy Hanks (former Central of Georgia, taken over by Southern RR in it's latter years).
Atlantic Coast Line sometimes ran a dome from Richmond to Miami on the Florida Special during the winter I think Amtrak continued that practice for one or two winters.
cpamtfan
OBS Chief
The tallest cars that go into Penn NY now are the LIRR bi-levels. But they can only go through the East River Tunnels. The other bi-levels that go into Penn (for NJT) can fit both tunnels. i believe that car is about 14'6, but I'm not certain. Nothing taller can go into NYP, simple fact.
There were domes (of a sort) running out of NYP for a while....the power dome coaches on the United Aircraft Turbo Train which ran to Boston. These domes had true 'look up, look down, look all around' visibility. And you could sit behind the engineer in the front row and watch him operate. A railfans delight, to be sure.
The next best thing to dome cars today are the glass topped cars on the Alaska RR, which do have front and rear windows, however since they are all full-legnth, unless you are behind a single level car, your forward visibilty is restricted a lot.
wayman
Engineer
Good catch, thanks! And ... you'll never believe where it is--apparently Amtrak still used it until 2005! Just not how you'd expect.
From the Amtrak Route Guide for the Sunset Limited... "Maricopa: This is the stop for those who are traveling to Phoenix/Tempe/Scottsdale. The Maricopa Station is actually a classic dome-observation passenger car, named Silver Horizon, which operated on the pre-Amtrak California Zephyr between Chicago and Oakland/San Francisco."
Silver Horizon ran in revenue service until 1985, when it was retired from Amtrak. Then, according to the Texas Eagle official website, the car was sold by Amtrak to private owners who mismanaged a restoration job. In 1999, the car was moved to Maricopa where it became the station. It's not clear whether as station it was owned by Amtrak, by the town of Maricopa, or by a private owner, but Amtrak was using it as the actual station office until 2005, when a new station was "built"... insofar as a permanent-temporary trailer structure can be built. The current station is "the former Tucson, Arizona station building... a double-wide modular trailer coach that was rolled on to the site after the original historic Tucson Union Station structure restoration was completed in 2005." (Wikipedia) Silver Horizon is still on display at the Maricopa station, but not being used for anything.
Here's a 1978 photo of Silver Horizon from a railpixs page which has dozens of great old Amtrak photos. There are also great photos of Silver Penthouse and Silver Lookout in Amtrak livery in the late 1970s on this page; I didn't spot one of Silver Solarium, though I haven't gone through the other pages of photos at this site so there's probably one somewhere.
And here are plenty of photos, in 2002 (as station) and 2008 (on display) of Silver Horizon in Maricopa. I assume one of its private owners repainted the car into California Zephyr original livery, but it's possible Hollywood did that--apparently the car made a cameo in the movie Pearl Harbor in 2001. Great idea, guys, but no marks for historical authenticity: the California Zephyr wasn't built until 1948, so it doesn't really belong in 1941!
This has to be the one and only time I've ever come across an actual reason to step off the train in Maricopa :lol: :lol: :lol:
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G
Guest
Guest
Wonderful pics and info of the old days of Amtrak in Texas, thanks!!
The Southern Pacific ran real Parlor Observation Cars on the Coast Daylight between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I last rode the Parlor Car in the summer of 1970 and had a compfy swival chair "oceanside" near the observation end so I could look behind. The Parlor Car attendant would get food from the automat car or cocktails from the lounge car and bring them to passengers. Espee also ran a Parlor Observation Car on the Shasta Daylight from Portland to Oakland until it was discontinued a couple years prior to Amtrak. The Santa Fe High Level Lounge built for a coach train which is what the PPC is would have been considered a downgrade by regular patrons of Espee's Parlor Observation Cars.
That is right,in fact I rode it once. I did not realize until getting into it that there was seating space upstairs.I do not recall it being advertised or promoted as a dome, though it really was a "low" dome,but you did get to look all around.
sunchaser
Conductor
Here are some photos of the Solarium then and now (The first link has lots of pics of the dome cars, you have to scroll down to find the Solarium).
I misunderstood the answer about the dome cars.
I understood it as maybe Amtrak still had more of them stashed somewhere. It's too bad they didn't hang on to some of them to upgrade them at some point. They could have been used on the Western Routes/wherever they can go & draw more passengers in that way.
Does anyone know if Amtrak has any plans to have built any Superliner LD cars?
If they plan on adding the Pioneer Route back on, or expanding existing service won't they need more rolling stock?
I misunderstood the answer about the dome cars.
I understood it as maybe Amtrak still had more of them stashed somewhere. It's too bad they didn't hang on to some of them to upgrade them at some point. They could have been used on the Western Routes/wherever they can go & draw more passengers in that way.
Does anyone know if Amtrak has any plans to have built any Superliner LD cars?
If they plan on adding the Pioneer Route back on, or expanding existing service won't they need more rolling stock?
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