Do you know if there are still plans to add a permanent fourth sleeper and permanent third sleeper to the Meteor and Star respectively in the future? Obviously with ~15 VL1's out of service they wouldn't do that for a while, but I heard that was the original plan with the VL2 order.
Does anyone know when the Silvers are going to get their 4th coach and (in the case of the Meteor) 3rd sleeper back? Surely restoring them to their pre-Covid consists would boost ridership.
Well, however they choose to apply Phase VII to the older equipment, it’s sure to be a radical departure from the status quo, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I still think it’s an absolute shame that the VL1 refurbishment program to bring them pretty much completely in line with the VL2 design was canceled, as the above photo is evidence of how nice it would have been.
Of note I think is the proposal on page 157 to establish a “Long Distance Public Committee” and analysis of the network every 5 years for improvement. These would do wonders for even the current network without expansion.
No one has mentioned it (though it may not even be a problem), but what about the different power systems? North of New Haven is newer ~25 year old catenary built to 60hz standards, but south of NH is much older (~90 year old) catenary built to 25hz standards. Does the older catenary/power...
I’ve noticed that as of late, it’s really a gamble whether the Meteor will have a VL2 or not… I wonder why? (ignoring the obvious answer of equipment availability)
Furthermore, at some point it went back down again from 4 coaches to 3, and still hasn’t regained its 3rd sleeper. I guess Hialeah...
Well, seeing how the "infrastructure" that was removed was literally just a car wash, I don't think it would be exuberantly expensive to put one back. Furthermore, there's a small 7 track yard just to the south of TUS that CSX uses to serve only one customer. I don't think it would be impossible...
Go to This Link and scroll down to the bottom. You will see "Contact Us" with text boxes to input your name, email, and the comment. I'd recommend writing your comment in Google Docs/Word and copy-pasting it into the comment box, but that's just me. Glad to see someone else that shares my view...
Does anyone know if Amtrak is ever going to complete the renaming of the VL1 sleepers to the River series? Only two out of the 49 still in service have been done...