Reconfigure Transition Cars?

[Palmland]

Amtrak seems to have a shortage of Superliners, especially during high demand summer season. All trains with Superliners have a transition car that allows the crew to access the baggage car and provide rooms for the OBS crew - other than SCA who stay in their sleeper. When the cars were built this made sense as the crew staffing was much greater than today. Today, there are maybe 4 in the diner and the cafe attendant.

Why not reconfigure the cars to replace the crew roomettes with the bedrooms so the cars upstairs are like all other sleepers. Downstairs, put in the 4 roomettes for crew (as configured in all other sleepers) and add a fifth in the family room (perhaps with different layout). If there were ever more than 4, than block out one of the regular roomettes. Use the handicap room for a small area for conductors or crew to sit. Although were I a OBS crew member, I think I would just collapse in my room during a break. As we all know on other trains, like the Palmetto, the crew, especially T&E, often use the lounge space for work or break.

The cost for the changes would be quickly covered by the additional revenue - figure $1000 for 5 bedrooms on a trip, adds up real fast. Annually it would be $1.8M. Even if sold only half the time, that's still close to $1M. And how many superliners are assigned on a daily basis, 10, 12?

 

[CCC1007]

Amtrak seems to have a shortage of Superliners, especially during high demand summer season. All trains with Superliners have a transition car that allows the crew to access the baggage car and provide rooms for the OBS crew - other than SCA who stay in their sleeper. When the cars were built this made sense as the crew staffing was much greater than today. Today, there are maybe 4 in the diner and the cafe attendant.

Why not reconfigure the cars to replace the crew roomettes with the bedrooms so the cars upstairs are like all other sleepers. Downstairs, put in the 4 roomettes for crew (as configured in all other sleepers) and add a fifth in the family room (perhaps with different layout). If there were ever more than 4, than block out one of the regular roomettes. Use the handicap room for a small area for conductors or crew to sit. Although were I a OBS crew member, I think I would just collapse in my room during a break. As we all know on other trains, like the Palmetto, the crew, especially T&E, often use the lounge space for work or break.

The cost for the changes would be quickly covered by the additional revenue - figure $1000 for 5 bedrooms on a trip, adds up real fast. Annually it would be $1.8M. Even if sold only half the time, that's still close to $1M. And how many superliners are assigned on a daily basis, 10, 12?

10? That's much lower than the actual number...The builder has five sets with three standard sleepers and a dorm in each set, the starlight has four with the same number of cars each, the zephyr has six sets with 2-3 standard and a dorm, the chief has four sets of two and a dorm, the eagle has four sets of one and a dorm, along with the cutoff cars for Los Angeles, the cono has two or three sets of one and a dorm, and the sunset has four sets of one and a dorm. That comes out to 29-30 crew dorms and 63-66 regular sleepers needed for the western trains, and that's not counting the AT, the CL, or spare cars.

 

[grahamru]

Amtrak seems to have a shortage of Superliners, especially during high demand summer season. All trains with Superliners have a transition car that allows the crew to access the baggage car and provide rooms for the OBS crew - other than SCA who stay in their sleeper. When the cars were built this made sense as the crew staffing was much greater than today. Today, there are maybe 4 in the diner and the cafe attendant.

Why not reconfigure the cars to replace the crew roomettes with the bedrooms so the cars upstairs are like all other sleepers. Downstairs, put in the 4 roomettes for crew (as configured in all other sleepers) and add a fifth in the family room (perhaps with different layout). If there were ever more than 4, than block out one of the regular roomettes. Use the handicap room for a small area for conductors or crew to sit. Although were I a OBS crew member, I think I would just collapse in my room during a break. As we all know on other trains, like the Palmetto, the crew, especially T&E, often use the lounge space for work or break.

The cost for the changes would be quickly covered by the additional revenue - figure $1000 for 5 bedrooms on a trip, adds up real fast. Annually it would be $1.8M. Even if sold only half the time, that's still close to $1M. And how many superliners are assigned on a daily basis, 10, 12?

Roomettes on the "A" end--usually classified as B/T rooms--can and are periodically used as revenue space. Placing roomettes on the lower level would take away the conductor's space, not to mention make it more difficult for OBS to function. Space is a premium in these cars.
Don't forget, coach attendants are OBS and also use the crew rooms, in addition to chefs, food specialists, and LSA's. Its possible on some trains to have 10 to 12 OBS crew members occupy the crew rooms.

 

[FormerOBS]

Your plan adds roomettes, handicapped room, and family room downstairs. By implication, it eliminates the crew lounge, which is the only place OBS crews can get a respite from near-constant contact with the public. I realize this was not provided before Superliners came along, and I suppose some will think of it as an unnecessary frill or perk for OBS staff. In fact, it's a very valuable asset that helps to make working conditions more tolerable for OBS. It also eliminates multiple shower facilities for crew members. Do you want to be served by people who didn't shower because they couldn't all get in there before time to open the diner? Furthermore, I wonder what SCA is going to be serving all these extra passengers. Currently, paying passengers in the crew dorm are served by the SCA in the nearest sleeper. That means adding a few more beds to the SCA's work load of 42 revenue beds. Your plan would nearly double that SCA's work load to over 60 beds.

COME ON! GIVE IT A REST!

Tom

 

[zepherdude]

Providing crew quarters might be a union issue too.

 

[Palmland]

Tom, sorry if I offended you. My point was that this seems like a reasonable way to increase revenue rather than just cut costs which seems to be Amtrak's main focus.

I agree the additional passengers would require an SCA in the car, a cost that would be easily offset by the revenue gained and would improve service over the current arrangements a transition car attendant. As I said the H room would be for crew use and adding the roomettes did not require any changes to the existing showers/toilets. Of course this would not work on A-T as it has far more cars than other Superliner trains. I am surprised though that crew lounge space is such an issue. It seems to me that most SCA are off only 6 hours or so at night and I would think head straight for bed while the dinning car crews seem to hang out in the diner in the short time between meals.

 

[grahamru]

Simply said, the 10/40 cars (transition cars) don't have much space space, and any such changes require union approval as much as rolling stock, public health and regulatory approvals. Engineering and various approvals takes time and money.

 

[PVD]

Since the Superliner sleepers are not modular in the fashion of the Viewliners, reconfiguration might be more costly and time consuming than one first imagines. Revenue increases might not overcome cost by as much as it appears. All we are really saying is that there is a shortage of SL cars, and the only true fix is not likely to happen any time soon - get more cars. If/when the NS bilevels show up, we will probably gain a few SL coaches, and a group of Horizon cars, as I and others have mentioned previously, the arrival of the new VL sleepers, Bag Dorms and Diners might allow for the conversion to single level of CONO or CL, this would put a few more SL sleepers into the pool, but not enough.

 

[afigg]

The cost for the changes would be quickly covered by the additional revenue - figure $1000 for 5 bedrooms on a trip, adds up real fast. Annually it would be $1.8M. Even if sold only half the time, that's still close to $1M. And how many superliners are assigned on a daily basis, 10, 12?

I think you seriously underestimate the cost of the reconfiguration for the Superliner fleet with 41 remaining transition dorm cars. This is not a new idea. How quickly people forget. The team that wrote the PIP reports for the LD trains proposed modifying the Superliner transition cars in the FY2012 PIP report on the AT, CONO, CS, EB. SWC.

The proposal was discussed twice in two parts of the 2012 PIP report (which is still on the website):

(page 12) Modify the current Superliner Transition Sleeping Car interior to increase the number of sleeping car rooms available for sale by 10. The current design of these cars includes 15 roomettes on the upper level, with a lounge area and restrooms on the lower level. On all trains which feature this car, 8-11 rooms are reserved for onboard crew use, and up to 4 rooms are offered for sale to the public. Other rooms can be reserved for employee business travel or Conductor/Chief use. This retrofit would re-locate the Conductor’s space to the former Chief’s Room upstairs, and convert the downstairs, largely unused area, into a fully functional sleeping area with an additional four roomettes, Family Bedroom, and Accessible Bedroom. The re-design, which would require major capital expenditures, would greatly improve both the customer service quality and revenue performance.

The proposal is elaborated on starting on page 78:

Superliner Transition Sleeper/Dorm Modifications to Increase Capacity

The PRIIA 210 team proposes converting the lower level of the Transition Sleeper/Dorm cars (currently crew/storage space) to a bedroom configuration, increasing the number of rooms for sale in these cars from 4 to 15. All Superliner trains operate with one of these cars, which have a unique design that allows passage between Superliner cars at one end, which also allowing access to single level cars at the other end (usually a baggage car). They also have a unique room configuration, with 15 roomettes, a room upstairs known as the Conductor’s room, a room known as the Chief’s room, and on the lower level, a large open lounge area with two tables, and 4-5 restrooms. On most trains, the current practice is to reserve 6-10 rooms for the on-board crew, up to four rooms for sale to the public, and also up to four rooms in Business Travel status (BT rooms can be booked 24 hours in advance by all pass riders).

The equipment modification being proposed would add 10 additional rooms for sale, mostly on the lower level (4 roomettes, one Family Room, and one Accessible room), while also adding 5 additional rooms for sale on the upper level (4 from the BT group, and 1 from the conversion of the Conductor room). Further changes include the re-location of the Conductor’s Office to the former Chief’s Room, thereby maintaining a crew work area. A majority of the cars already have an unused ADA Accessible room on the lower level, and this change would ensure that 100% of the Transition Sleeper have the ADA Accessible room. These changes would apply to 38 of the current 41 active Transition Sleeper/Dorm fleet (with the exception of the cars assigned to Auto Train).

The service currently provided to the public in the four rooms mentioned above is very difficult to accomplish, in part because there is no employee assigned to this car and all services must either be provided by the sleeping car attendant in the adjacent car, or a coach attendant, who could be located as much as 6 cars away. It is the educated opinion of almost all of the on-board employees as well as management that the quality of service provided to customers in these cars is sub-standard at best.

The PRIIA 210 team recommends a re-design these cars, to achieve three objectives:

• Increase sellable capacity in the Transition Cars through a series of changes to the car that will increase capacity from 4 rooms for sale up to 14.
• Dramatically improve service to customers in these cars, in large part because the new service plan for these cars includes an attendant based in the car when demand warrants (and whose costs are recovered by the increased revenue provided by the 10 additional rooms for sale.)
• Reduce costs during off-peak periods on certain trains by allowing for the operation of one Transition Sleeper and one Superliner sleeping car (most Superliner trains operate two traditional sleeping cars, plus the Transition Sleeper, year round, even with low occupancy percentages) a reduction in consist of one car and a better match of demand and consist levels.

There are significant capital costs associated with these changes, and Amtrak plans to do further analysis before moving forward with them. Given the limited fleet size, this change represents one of the very best opportunities for revenue and ridership growth on certain long distance trains, without actually adding equipment to the existing Superliner fleet.

IIRC, the proposal was briefly mentioned in one of the annual financial or budget documents, but as one that there was insufficient capital funding to pursue at that time. There may have been a pushback to the proposal from the crews as well. So the proposal has gone nowhere AFAIK.

 

[FormerOBS]

I wasn't particularly offended. I'm sure your suggestions were offered with good intentions. I guess I've just heard too many ideas that I consider extreme attempts to create greater efficiencies. It's true that there are several different versions of crew dorm. The ones that I'm used to have 18 roomettes upstairs, plus one unisex restroom and one "Chief's room" that was intended to be an office, but is virtually unusable and is usually used for storage. Downstairs, there is a crew women's lounge/restroom, women's shower, men's shower/restroom, and unisex restroom at the A end of the car. A crew lounge is at the B end. It's true that rest time is minimal. On short turnarounds, it is often impractical to leave the train. There were nights when I ended a shift, too tired to sleep. The crew lounge was a refuge in such times. I've played board games with other crew members in the wee hours because we were both too keyed up to sleep. That's not healthy, but it's what happens in the real world. I guess the Company could take that away, but I doubt that it would add enough to the bottom line to make much, if any, difference.

Afigg: I was not aware of the proposal you cite. Maybe OBS personnel on other trains were made aware of it because it would affect their service, but I don't think it was ever brought to the attention of crews on my train. If they were informed, they may have expressed some objections, but I don't know Adding the accessible room would have eliminated the crew women's lounge/toilet. the crew women's shower, and the crew men's shower/toilet. It might have added a small broom closet. This would leave one standard small restroom upstairs and one --- maybe two --- downstairs. The cars I'm familiar with have no H restroom because that area is set aside for storage lockers for backup supplies (cleaning supplies, extra linen storage as a backup for the entire train, etc.). This would leave no showers on that car for crew or passengers. Do you want your dining car crew to go without a shower for three days? I didn't think so. These ideas may come from Amtrak employees, but they are probably office dwellers who don't have any practical experience working on the train.

Tom

 

[neroden]

The PIP proposal is pretty reasonable, but because the Superliners aren't modular, it was expected to require lots of money.

I say it's reasonable because the crew would still have better conditions than a Viewliner crew. The transition sleeper is effectively wasting a lot of space. But again, the Superliners aren't modular, and would be slow and expensive to reconfigure. They're 20-year-old cars already. When money for rolling stock arrives, there are better things to spend it on. If Beech Grove at some point finds itself with idled workers who don't have anything else to do but have to be paid anyway, well, then maybe consider reconfiguring the trans-dorms.