Is 2 sleepers on the 50/51 a new thing?

[JayMadison]

I noticed when i was riding there were 2 sleepers and one of the sca's said they usually run 2 sleepers as long as it's busy. Interestinly one of my fellow passengers also remarked on this, I hope it keep going and makes money

 

[Ryan]

Yes, within the last 6 weeks or so.

 

[JayMadison]

Well I dig it, we had one really cranky elderly gentleman and they were able to tag team very effectively.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Why didn't they do this before? The Card Sleeper was getting sold out daily. I thought they didn't have enough sleepers!

 

[Acela150]

Because they didn't. It's not that easy to free up 2 VL's in the maintenance pool. But they did it.

 

[JayMadison]

I really liked the viewliner, I felt like a prince of industry off to a great adventure. Anyway I hope they keep it that way

 

[JayMadison]

They were about 90% sold out I think, which seems like it could be profitable

 

[Acela150]

I have always preferred the VL's to the SL's but that's me.

 

[Thirdrail7]

Because they didn't. It's not that easy to free up 2 VL's in the maintenance pool. But they did it.

Barely. It is still a tight squeeze.

 

[trainviews]

This is a pure guess, but the extra sleepers on the Cardinal might be the first effect of the oncoming Viewliner II's. Per the monthly performance reports the VL I's are cycled through a rehab about every four years, but in anticipation of the new cars coming online soon, Amtrak may have put the regular rehabs on hold. They're planned to go through a major midlife overhaul when the new cars are allowing to take them out anyway. So this is what could have freed up the extra sleepers for the Cardinal.

 

[afigg]

This is a pure guess, but the extra sleepers on the Cardinal might be the first effect of the oncoming Viewliner II's. Per the monthly performance reports the VL I's are cycled through a rehab about every four years, but in anticipation of the new cars coming online soon, Amtrak may have put the regular rehabs on hold. They're planned to go through a major midlife overhaul when the new cars are allowing to take them out anyway. So this is what could have freed up the extra sleepers for the Cardinal.

According to the June 2014 monthly report, there are 13 Viewliner overhauls scheduled for FY2014 with 10 completed as of June. In fact, 2 overhauls were completed in June, so that may have contributed to being able to add an extra sleeper to the Cardinal in late June. But it would not make much sense to stop the overhauls of the Viewliners I now, because if CAF and Amtrak are still on the stated production sequence after the 2 Viewliner II test sets, the sequence will be diners, then baggage-dorms, then the sleepers with the baggage cars being built concurrently.

So after the first 2 new sleepers, it may be late 2015 before more new sleepers arrive. It could be some time after that before Amtrak can afford to upgrade the 50 Viewliner Is, so it would be risky to stop the overhauls. What they appear to have stopped overhauls on are the Heritage diners. They were 4 Heritage diner scheduled for overhauls in FY14, with 5 completed for the FY since the February 2014 monthly report and the note in each monthly report since then that the "Project is completed".