EmpireBuilderFan
Lead Service Attendant
There was a question about the Viewliner prototypes on a Yahoo! group that I subscribe to. I sent the following email to the list thanks to information from this bulletin board (accompanied with links to various discussions on the Viewliners):
Now, for my questions: does this email reflect current status of the Viewliners, or did I miss something along the way? Also, did I totally misread some of the information, or is it correct?I looked around an Amtrak-related bulletin board that I frequent forinformation on the Viewliner prototypes. I'll provide links to all the
information I found at the bottom of the email. There were three
prototypes, two were sleepers (2300 and 2301) and one diner (8400).
According to a source within Amtrak, 2300 and 2301 were renumbered 62090 and
62091 within Amtrak's computer system, although 2301 may have been the only
one to receive the number change on the car itself.
2300 was the first Viewliner prototype, and was torn apart and used as a
template to build the Viewliner fleet. However, it must have been
reassembled and returned to Amtrak, as the last known location of 2300 was
the Bear, DE, shops in 1997. Apparently, it may have been refurbished in
the early '90s and may have seen some time as a crew dorm before being
parked at Bear. One of the links below has a picture of 2300 parked at
Bear.
2301 was active as a crew dorm until September of this year, when it was
parked due to suspension and truck problems. There was talk of using a
Superliner I truck, which I guess is similar to 2301's trucks, but I wasn't
able to find any more information as to the current status of 2301.
8400 was used as an active diner until 2001 or early 2002, when it was
parked at the Beech Grove, IN, shops as dead storage.