Green Maned Lion
Engineer
Good evening, Dlagrua, and welcome to the real world. Amtrak has been begging, pleading, down on its knees before Congress for 15 years now begging for more Viewliners to replace the rolling museum pieces they are using for baggage and dining cars. And now, they have finally gotten far enough along in that process to actually submit an RFP. Which is not a promise cars will come.This years train trip next month will take us to Chicago on the Capitol Limited. It is a Superliner train and has over a dozen bedrooms available . We booked one going both ways for this trip and it was around $300 each way. As is our tradition we will soon start planning for our next trip. Among the cities we are considering visiting are New Orleans and Indianapolis, served by the Crecent and Cardinal that originate in NYC. Both are Viewliner trains and like the LSL the sleeper cars on both contain mainly Roomettes. We find that only two bedrooms per sleeper car are available and even if you book 9 months out the prices are over $500 per night while the roomettes are about $166. We have nothing against roomettes but my wife is 6' tall and I'm 5 11" which makes it a bit tight in a roomette.
My point is that Amtrak makes it very expensive to book a bedroom on these LD Viewliner trains as they keep the supply limited. I am just hoping that the next generation of Viewliners are designed with more bedrooms so that taller travelers like ourselves can book a somewhat affordable bedroom. We understand that overnight bedroom accomodations will never be cheap and we don't mind spending $300 or so extra for a room but on those Viewliner trains we've seen rooms priced at over $800. That IMO is an insane pricing level. For that little cubby hole of a room you pay more than for a suite at the Ritz Carlton.
We are just hoping that on the next generation of Viewliners, Amtrak will add a sleeper car with all bedroom so that taller passengers will be able to have a bedroom at the same price as on the Capitol, Autotrain, EB or CZ . With Amtrak there is no uniformity of price. Low bucket for one train sometimes equal high bucket for the next. Point is that Amtrak needs to make some changes if they want to continue to keep growing,
We do not know if Viewliners will be ordered within the next year. The current Viewliners are junk. I'm not sitting here wondering if they are going to get first class lounges, or all bedroom sleepers, or domes. I'm wondering if 5 or 10 years from now, Amtrak will have the equipment to offer checked baggage or full service dining on single level trains. I'm wondering if 15 years from now, when these POS Viewliners have reached the end of their life cycle (point to keep in mind: THE VIEWLINERS WERE NOT BUILT BY BUDD OR PULLMAN!) if Amtrak will have sleeper accomodations on their single level trains.
Go back and read the story on the first generation of Viewliners. They were designed to be 12-2-1 cars from the start. Why? Because careful calculations determined that this was the best revenue configuration for the cars. Now they are asking for 25 more cars. They, too, are going to be 12-2-1 cars. You want all Bedroom cars? Go ask Congress for them.
Amtrak is asking for three kinds of cars right now, all of which make no sense to politicos living in Washington, where trains are Regionals and Acelas, most of whom have never been on an overnight train! Why, they ask, do we, the people of the United States, need to subsidize the purchase of these rolling bordellos for the wealthy to frolic on the rails? Fresh cooked waited table service cars? Hot damn, they don't do fresh cooking in restaurants anymore, why do they need it on trains?
If it wasn't for some nut jobs plowing planes into the World Trade Center 10 years ago, THERE WOULD LIKELY BE NO LONG DISTANCE TRAINS. Possibly even no Amtrak at all.
First class lounge cars? Get real. Amtrak needs to go to Congress and explain cars that will pay for themselves. All bedroom cars will not do that. They are more trouble than they are worth. Amtrak wants to preserve the long distance train network. They know that if they ask for frivolities they are going to look ridiculous. And they can't do that.
Furthermore, just in case you were wondering, the beds in roomettes are, in fact, longer than the beds in the Bedrooms. So a tall person would be better off in a roomette actually. And at 5'11, 300 lbs, travelling with my 6'1" tall father who is not a light weight, I have no idea what you are talking about with this "not enough space" balderdash.