Are the Lava Lamps getting repainted?

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P40Power

OBS Chief
Joined
Apr 1, 2003
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Checking out Battalions new shots of Amfleets on the corridor, Ive noticed a lack of the Capstone cars painted in the Acela Regional "lava lamp" colors. Ive also noticed a lack of them recently in Albany. I saw alot of them out and about last fall. Has Amtrak gotten most of them repainted into the better phase IVb scheme, Battalion had an abundance of pictures of Amfleets painted in the scheme, and Ive been noticing more and more Amfleet Is in the scheme lately. Amtrak did quite of the Amfleet cars up in the lava lamp scheme, I think they did around 130 coaches, bout 15 or so Business class, and 10 or so cafes. Sometimes I kinda like the look of the lava lamp, the cafe car paint looks the best I think. But other times I think its horrible, I dont like the coaches in that light blueish.
 
I liked the Acela scheme on the Cafe, but I did not care for the schemes on Coach Class and Business Class. To answer your question though, by the end of September most, if not all, cars in Phase III, IV, and Acela were to be painted in Phase IVb.
 
Ohh so they are getting those cars done up pretty quick, now heres a question, when they are redoing a lava lamp or phase III into phase IVb, do they just roll almost like a giant stiping decal like on model trains over the old colors? I know that they did that for the Superliners back in 96/97 to get them all in Phase IV quickly.
 
I think with the Amfleet's a primer is put over the old scheme and then the wide blue stripe is apllied, then the red and white pin stripes. Though I'm not sure. Regarding the Superliner I, I have actually seen photos where an actually piece of stainless steel was laid across the old scheme and the Phase IV stripes put over it. It almost looked like a Superliner II, and it looked much better than the rest of the cheap Superliner I repaints. I think that is my one regret of the repaints of Superliners into Phase IVb, a sheet of metal should have covered up the 3 old schemes. I can garantee that the paint will begin peeling within 2 years.
 
The Superliners were put into Phase IV pretty crumily (is that a word, I doubt it). In 1997, alot of the cars which had the process just done had spots where the decal thing peeled a bit exposing the older Phase III colors, it looked real bad. A couple of Amfleet II cars Ive noticed had the same problem. Well hopefully they are doing it right by applying a primer of sorts, because of course the decal would stick to the primer much better then the paint or other decal of older schemes underneath.
 
I really did not like how Amtrak did the superliners with that stickerish look. I always hated how obvious it was. Even this summer you could visibly tell that it was nothing but a sticker.
 
The sticker method is obviously the cheap and easy way of doing things, so at Amtrak its the prefered method. The sticker will never be as good as a paint job, but then again paint jobs come out bad too, for example look at P42 #80, that thing is horrible.
 
I thought they put this silverish strip decal over the old paint then put the phase IV on. Thats why the cars look more silverish in the area then the rest of the car.
 
I personally think that this paint job was done right, since it was done in the Gunn era. The only thing I wish they would have done differently is the design on the Superliner VI, it looks like crap in my opinion, Amfleets look good though.
 
I liked the Superliner better as well in the Phase IV where it actually said Superliner across the car, it looked nice. Now the Superliner writing on the Phase II and III cars was a little too much, but the Phase IV looked nice and classy. The Phase IVb on Amfleets looks good I agree, but its just a little too bland on the Superliners, there isnt much to it. Also whats up with the tiny writing on all the cars that they apply the new scheme too, seems to me some people might have trouble reading what kinda car it is possibly.
 
P40Power said:
I liked the Superliner better as well in the Phase IV where it actually said Superliner across the car, it looked nice. Now the Superliner writing on the Phase II and III cars was a little too much, but the Phase IV looked nice and classy. The Phase IVb on Amfleets looks good I agree, but its just a little too bland on the Superliners, there isnt much to it. Also whats up with the tiny writing on all the cars that they apply the new scheme too, seems to me some people might have trouble reading what kinda car it is possibly.
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Personally I do not mind the Phase IVb scheme on the Superliners, but the way the old scheme was just covered up I do not car for. I don't like how you can see the old writing (ie. Superliner; Amtrak; Sleeping Car) and I think that just painting over the old stripe was not good enough. The Amfleets have never looked better in my opinion in Phase IVb. Now how about the Heritage Cars and Viewliners?
 
I think the Viewliners would look just as sharp in VI as the Amfleets do. The Heitage fleet is another story though. The proble I see right now with the Heritage fleet is that there's no consitency. Since they are from different railroad they have different styles, slabside, full fluting, half fluting etc. I think if the Heritage fleet is going to look good in it the fleet needs to be all fluted with VI as wide on them as it is on the rest of the fleet (instead of a skinny blue area like some of the Dorms and 1700 series baggage cars have).
 
battalion51 said:
I think the Viewliners would look just as sharp in VI as the Amfleets do. The Heitage fleet is another story though. The proble I see right now with the Heritage fleet is that there's no consitency. Since they are from different railroad they have different styles, slabside, full fluting, half fluting etc. I think if the Heritage fleet is going to look good in it the fleet needs to be all fluted with VI as wide on them as it is on the rest of the fleet (instead of a skinny blue area like some of the Dorms and 1700 series baggage cars have).
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I think every Heritage car needs to get a full striping across the window band, instead of the skiny stripes that are found on the Dorms and 1700s. As for the Viewliners, I would get rid of the giant words "Viewliner" to be consistant with the rest of the fleet (I know that's a stab in the heart for you Viewliner).
 
I saw a 1700 baggage come through Pittsfield last year with full width striping, I havent seen it since though. It looked good, I too agree that the skinny stripes dont look too god nor do they match the rest of the fleet, some dining cars have skinny stripes as well. I agree that the Viewliner would look good in IVb but I would also like them to retain the Viewliner lettering underneath the upper windows, but that would most likely not happen.
 
Well there are only two 1700 series baggage cars that have the full striping, they are 1762 and 1763. When the original 1700 series was renumbered for mail service 1762 and 1763 were new to the baggage fleet (new rebuilds) and therefore got a better paint job than the others.
 
See now I think Phase IVB should just really be adding the logo and red stripe to cars. Everything else is too damn small like numbers, etc. Personally I feel the numbers and car names are too small. As amfleet said it would sort of be a stab in the heart (take a look at 62091 for example).
 
I agree 100 percent with your post Viewliner. The numbers and lettering on Phase IVb are way too small, The lettering and numbering of Phase III and IV were perfect, not too big and not too small and you could actually read that the car was a coach, but I like everything else about the new paint job, even the logo is starting to grow on me. As for the Viewliners, I say add the new logo to where it says Amtrak and put a red saftey stripe across the bottom and leave everything else as it is.
 
Viewliner, I would actually expect if the Viewliners got repainted they would look much like 62091. Even with the red and white pin stripes lowered a few inches. I like the smaller markings, the old ones just stood out to much and took away from the look of the car. We all grew into the P-42 Shamus, so I'm sure we'll come to like Phase IVb in the comming years.
 
I would actually like to see what a P42 would look like in Phase VI, it may look pretty cool, if it's laid out similarly to a Phase IV engine.
 
battalion51 said:
I would actually like to see what a P42 would look like in Phase VI, it may look pretty cool, if it's laid out similarly to a Phase IV engine.
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I think it would look kind of plain. The Shamus definitely have a cool and funky look.
 
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