# The New Pullman Sleeper prices are now posted



## dlagrua (Apr 27, 2012)

The New Pullman company has now posted loads of new info on the service including accommodation prices. The cost of the Pullamn rail journeys are not inexpensive but it appears that they are providing a true first class experience.

I believe that the prices are only for sleepers. The cost of dining in probably additional.

Here it is:

Travel by Pullman

and here is the Pullman equipment roster

Pullman Roster


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## kal-tex (Apr 27, 2012)

Wow! I'd love to take one of these trips! Do you suppose the accept AGR points?


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## Anderson (Apr 28, 2012)

1) Interesting...they seem to be using the Cap-Pennsylvanian to go CHI-NYP.

2) I'm going to need to check...when is The Gathering again? This may not be workable for me at Christmas, but I'm jumping up and down to try this ASAP.


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## AlanB (Apr 28, 2012)

Anderson said:


> 1) Interesting...they seem to be using the Cap-Pennsylvanian to go CHI-NYP.


They're using the Lake Shore Limited; not the Cap-Pennsy.



Anderson said:


> 2) I'm going to need to check...when is The Gathering again? This may not be workable for me at Christmas, but I'm jumping up and down to try this ASAP.


October 5th - 7th.


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## Anderson (Apr 28, 2012)

AlanB said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > 1) Interesting...they seem to be using the Cap-Pennsylvanian to go CHI-NYP.
> ...


I thought the arrival time on the LSL into NYP was late than that?

Edit: Ok, I've got my guide from this summer in. The times I have for EB arrivals are:

6:45 PM - Lake Shore Limited

4:58 PM - Pennsylvanian

4:58 PM - Pullman Sleepers

So, either Pullman pulled a _real_ rabbit out of their hat and got the Lake Shore's time changed, or they're running west on the Lake Shore and east on the Cap-Penny.


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## Trogdor (Apr 28, 2012)

Their CHI-NYP schedule does match up with the departure of 30 and the arrival of 42. Not sure why they would put that schedule if they were advertising the Lake Shore.

That said, I looked on their website and I don't see anything that specifically states what routing they're going to take.


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## Anderson (Apr 28, 2012)

Trogdor said:


> Their CHI-NYP schedule does match up with the departure of 30 and the arrival of 42. Not sure why they would put that schedule if they were advertising the Lake Shore.
> 
> That said, I looked on their website and I don't see anything that specifically states what routing they're going to take.


Blame marketing, who likely went with the more familiar train option. The fact that the PGH layover is in the middle of the night and that they're going to be doing strict endpoint business (as far as I can tell, at least) doesn't hurt it...and it's probably the better of the two timings, to be honest. Basically, marketing put the easy explanation on the screen for folks and decided to skip the nuances...and quite honestly might have gotten themselves confused by accident.


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## AlanB (Apr 28, 2012)

Anderson said:


> So, either Pullman pulled a _real_ rabbit out of their hat and got the Lake Shore's time changed, or they're running west on the Lake Shore and east on the Cap-Penny.


Well the westbound times are definitely the LSL's times; not the Cap's. I had thought that perhaps they were boarding early coming east, so as to provide dinner to their passengers, unlike the LSL. But perhaps it is possible that they've worked out a deal with Amtrak to do the switching required in Pittsburgh, although I have to say that I'm a bit surprised that Amtrak would agree to all that extra work in PGH.

Unless of course Amtrak plans to start up the through cars on the Pennsy by November when they also start running this luxury service.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Apr 28, 2012)

The cheapest prices are $1800 round-trip. Wish they could lower that some bit.


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## Anderson (Apr 28, 2012)

Swadian Hardcore said:


> The cheapest prices are $1800 round-trip. Wish they could lower that some bit.


True, but that's not insanely above the top-bucket roomettes on a bad day (which can run $564 one-way or $1128 round-trip). Expensive, yes, but not insane...and definitely featuring some nice amenities. Actually, strictly by the numbers, a B/C accommodation for one ($1050) is almost spot on with a high-bucket bedroom for one on Amtrak. Of course, adding a second person adds $600 to that...but it's definitely not so far out of the range of costs for Amtrak to be dizzying.

Ideally, of course, I would have liked to see the numbers come in about 10-15% lower...but it's not as crazy as it could be...and considering how much the LSL sells out, I'll almost be surprised if this doesn't occasionally turn into a "sixth bucket" of sorts like I mentioned earlier (particularly if Amtrak opts to cycle the trains carrying the Pullmans without a spare sleeper for a while...Amtrak could _easily _work out an agreement to synch their sleeper patterns with Pullman's to stabilize the amount of room available).


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## Trogdor (Apr 28, 2012)

Anderson said:


> I'll almost be surprised if this doesn't occasionally turn into a "sixth bucket" of sorts like I mentioned earlier (particularly if Amtrak opts to cycle the trains carrying the Pullmans without a spare sleeper for a while...Amtrak could _easily _work out an agreement to synch their sleeper patterns with Pullman's to stabilize the amount of room available).


I like how you presume that Amtrak could _easily_ work out an agreement with this company (which we don't even know if it will stay in business that log) which involves changing its consist and capacity allocation (I'm not sure what you mean by "trains...without a spare sleeper," since no trains carry a spare sleeper), equipment rotations, crew staffing levels, etc. to solve a problem that doesn't even exist (you seem to imply that there's a regular rotation of equipment that runs short of sleeper space on the Lake Shore; and that only happens when there's an unplanned bad-order).


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## Anderson (Apr 28, 2012)

Trogdor said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > I'll almost be surprised if this doesn't occasionally turn into a "sixth bucket" of sorts like I mentioned earlier (particularly if Amtrak opts to cycle the trains carrying the Pullmans without a spare sleeper for a while...Amtrak could _easily _work out an agreement to synch their sleeper patterns with Pullman's to stabilize the amount of room available).
> ...


Ok, let me explain what I was gunning for: Amtrak is trying to add sleepers to its eastern LD trains. In the longer run (i.e. presuming that this operation lasts more than a year or so), that equipment will be distributed among trains for a given set of regular lengths.

So, let's take the Lake Shore Limited, since it is the one at issue here. In general, you get three sets...call them LSL-1, LSL-2, and LSL-3. Now, if Pullman wants to effectively run a sleeper service on one of those, twice-weekly on a regular basis Amtrak could work out a deal whereby they move one of those sleepers to another train (be it the Cardinal, the Twilight Shoreliner, the Crescent, etc.). As long as the agreement is regular and continuing, Amtrak can move equipment around on its schedule to its heart's content, and that if Pullman pulls out, then they can adjust accordingly. Also let me point out that Amtrak should have little trouble sending a sleeper out on the LSL and back on the Cap-Penny. Bill can, I'm sure, offer some examples of this sort of equipment allocation being done in the past.

As to it being "easily" done, the fact that Amtrak apparently agreed to run the cars on 30/42 says something right there about them being able to work with these guys pretty amiably.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Apr 28, 2012)

Wait a minute! If the private companies can afford to restore slee[pers, Amtrak should get more sleepers just like that!


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## Anderson (Apr 28, 2012)

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Wait a minute! If the private companies can afford to restore slee[pers, Amtrak should get more sleepers just like that!


A new single-level sleeper costs $2.5 million or so. My guess is that IP (the company behind Pullman) got these for about $500,000 apiece and put a similar amount into them...but will face somewhat higher maintenance costs given the old age of the equipmen. For Amtrak, this is more of a pain in the rear because the equipment sometimes needs a _lot_ of TLC and Amtrak is sick of having to deal with oddball equipment pieces that don't match up with anything else in the fleet. Amtrak wants economies of scale when it comes to maintenance, not this.


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## jphjaxfl (Apr 28, 2012)

Anderson said:


> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> > Wait a minute! If the private companies can afford to restore slee[pers, Amtrak should get more sleepers just like that!
> ...


I am sure Pullman had to modify the toilets to allow for retention to comply with the Congressional mandate. This was Amtrak's excuse for not modifying the Heritage Sleeping Cars.


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## Steve4031 (Apr 28, 2012)

Im on this!!!!!! Horse shoe curve from this thing!???? Made my dang week and now the rest of the school year will be tolerable.


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Apr 28, 2012)

Anderson said:


> A new single-level sleeper costs $2.5 million or so..


A bit low on the price of a new sleeper? Did the order for Viewliners work out to 3.5 million for each car? Bagged cars cheaper than sleeping cars. So sleeping cars are north of 3.5 million.

Or did I miss read something. Never did see a break down on cost, design, tooling, mock-up, spare parts, etc.


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## abcnews (Apr 28, 2012)

Wow - just imagine, Horse Shoe Curve and rural Pennsylvania. Not to mention, departing NYC and following the Hudson up to Albany. What a ride.

The fact that they layover a few hours in Pittsburgh is also a bonus - after all, if I paid this much to travel on a first class rail journey, I would prefer to sit in a station as much as possible, while we were sleeping.


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## Steve4031 (Apr 28, 2012)

Im in no hurry to get off of this thing. If there is a 6 hour delay, I'm sure that diner would do something. And a dove tailed observation car!!! I don't have to die to go to heaven.


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## jis (Apr 28, 2012)

It's $298 million for 130 cars. Do the 'rithmatic. Around $2.2 million per car or so, not $3.5 million.


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Apr 28, 2012)

jis said:


> It's $298 million for 130 cars. Do the 'rithmatic. Around $2.2 million per car or so, not $3.5 million.


Me bad


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## Shanghai (Apr 28, 2012)

We should have a *Gathering* aboard this train!!

We could go from New York to Chicago, then go

from Chicago to New Orleans. Make it a Double Gathering!!


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## CHamilton (Apr 28, 2012)

Shanghai said:


> We should have a *Gathering* aboard this train!!
> 
> We could go from New York to Chicago, then go
> 
> from Chicago to New Orleans. Make it a Double Gathering!!


Some of us westerners might have to join up with you in Chicago, but yes, that's a great idea.


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## AmtrakBlue (Apr 28, 2012)

Shanghai said:


> We should have a *Gathering* aboard this train!!
> 
> We could go from New York to Chicago, then go
> 
> from Chicago to New Orleans. Make it a Double Gathering!!


Weren't the dates Oct for CHi - NOL and Nov for CHI - NYC? So we'd have to do NOL to CHI the end of Oct then CHI to NYC early Nov.


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## Blackwolf (Apr 28, 2012)

A Gathering idea aboard the Pullman might actually have some potential, if willing to bear the cost. I would not at all doubt that there are entire groups who will reserve the whole train (Pullman section, not the Amtrak consist ahead of it) at points in the future. Contact Iowa Pacific and ask, I imagine you'll find a reservation desk ready to draft up the agreement and take payment.

On a related note, once the travel agencies get involved, I imagine reserving whole blocks for travel packages (I'm thinking of Uncommon Journeys and Train Holidays here) aboard the Pullman will be a regular occurrence.


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## afigg (Apr 28, 2012)

abcnews said:


> Wow - just imagine, Horse Shoe Curve and rural Pennsylvania. Not to mention, departing NYC and following the Hudson up to Albany. What a ride.


The different route through PA may well be the reason for taking the #30/#42 route. Allows for a round trip between CHI and NYP with much of the daytime portion over different scenery in PA vs NY. They are probably experimenting with it as the longer trip time through PA with the layover in Pittsburgh may not attract as much business as the LSL route.

However, it should be noted that they are not saying anything about the route to be taken in either direction. The CHI-NYP service starts November 1. There is a possibility that Amtrak plans to flip the CL and LSL departures from CHI in the fall schedules, but that because it is not official yet and can't be published, Pullman is using the #30/#42 times as placeholders.

On the cost of the restored cars, checking the one page equipment description, they probably spent a fair amount on upgrading the cars with installation of showers, update to modern safety standards, modern amenities including WiFi, power outlets. With a 2 day a week schedule, they will have time to service the equipment; in Chicago it looks like from the schedule.

As for using this to substitute for an Amtrak sleeper car on the LSL, Pullman is providing a high end niche service. They may well attract clients who would not normally consider taking Amtrak overnight between Chicago & NYC. Different market strategies and segments. A big difference is that Pullman is taking passengers on board only in CHI and NYP. Can't get on Pullman in Albany, Buffalo, or Philly and Pittsburgh. That may be a market mistake on their part to not take on passengers on at least a couple of larger market stops in-between. This is such a different type of sleeper service from Amtrak offers is that it makes no sense for Amtrak to adjust their Viewliner sleeper assignments based on a 2 day week premium service schedule.


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## MikefromCrete (Apr 28, 2012)

afigg said:


> abcnews said:
> 
> 
> > Wow - just imagine, Horse Shoe Curve and rural Pennsylvania. Not to mention, departing NYC and following the Hudson up to Albany. What a ride.
> ...


It could be that Amtrak is restricting them from picking up or leaving off passengers along the way, treating the enterprise as a private car move.


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## Ispolkom (Apr 28, 2012)

MikefromCrete said:


> It could be that Amtrak is restricting them from picking up or leaving off passengers along the way, treating the enterprise as a private car move.


In my very limited experience with private varnish, there's never been a problem if passengers in the private car had to leave the train at an intermediate destination.


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## Anderson (Apr 28, 2012)

Ispolkom said:


> MikefromCrete said:
> 
> 
> > It could be that Amtrak is restricting them from picking up or leaving off passengers along the way, treating the enterprise as a private car move.
> ...


I think Pullman may be trying to avoid some headaches with their staff to begin with, as well as some technical issues. Remember, there are plenty of stations that a 10-car LSL tests the limits of the platform on, and a 15-car LSL+Pullman would hang off the end of all but the longest platforms regularly maintained anymore (witness the degraded platform ends in parts of Florida and the Carolinas, for example). It's quite possible that Amtrak is willing to be flexible but that they also put their foot down on making any extra spots.

And finally, I think it is fair to say that if the train _is _following two different routes (by ALB one way and by PHL the other), offering intermediate destinations seems like a headache. WB, the only pickups/EB dropoffs I could see them wanting to fiddle with would be ALB (to pick up BOS and ALB traffic) on the Water Level Route or PHL (and _maybe_ HAR) on the Pennsy Main Line. Even PGH seems to be rather lacking given the times involved and all. And if they're following two different routes (honestly, _they_ may not even know...but let's not forget how dubious all of the EB times are out of CHI because of the forced late arrivals), then intermediate destinations would be just asking for trouble.

I'd point out that the CONO doesn't have any major intermediate stops other than Memphis (at least outside of IL), and I can see them simply deciding (at this stage, at least) that Memphis isn't worth the hassle.

Edit: I'm sure that there is _some_ sort of change coming to the Cap's schedule, be it the addition of the through cars or a time switch, with the fall schedule. Just what that switch is remains a mystery, however.


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## dlagrua (Apr 28, 2012)

I have spoken to Pullman and they are marketing their service as a "rail experience" rather than trying to market it as rail transportation. For instance their dining car will have three chefs and the interior appointments will be more lavish than what we have on Amtrak. They do not see this as "head to head" competition but for a $1600 to $2000 one way trip for two I'd have trouble justifying the expenditure. If you've ever seen the trains of old the bedrooms were really not that much different than what we have on Amtrak today ( and showers were almost never in the bedrooms). What you get for a $2000 overnight trip is essentially a 3 unit train with a nicer interior, more porters and better food. We are considering the service but for an overnight trip that's only "point to point" it sounds very inconvenient.


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## Anderson (Apr 28, 2012)

dlagrua said:


> I have spoken to Pullman and they are marketing their service as a "rail experience" rather than trying to market it as rail transportation. For instance their dining car will have three chefs and the interior appointments will be more lavish than what we have on Amtrak. They do not see this as "head to head" competition but for a $1600 to $2000 one way trip for two I'd have trouble justifying the expenditure. If you've ever seen the trains of old the bedrooms were really not that much different than what we have on Amtrak today ( and showers were almost never in the bedrooms). What you get for a $2000 overnight trip is essentially a 3 unit train with a nicer interior, more porters and better food. We are considering the service but for an overnight trip that's only "point to point" it sounds very inconvenient.


Here's the thing: What they're doing is an interesting, functional hybrid of the two. It's not one of those seven-day rail trips from Washington to New Orleans that AOE did...but it's certainly more than just "transportation". I would categorize it as "luxury transportation" in the vein of FC on an airline (well, at one time at least) or...well, the old 20th Century/Broadway-type markets...cost-wise it isn't practical for day-to-day travel, but it can work for something in that vein. It's not something that I could afford to do on a frequent basis. Once a year, though, it might fit into the budget (especially if Amtrak is either sold out or running in the top bucket that day/week).

This is just a random aside, but all of the old fare charts I've seen tend to focus on UP or ATSF...what would a one-way on the Broadway or 20th Century have been in the late 50s/early 60s, assuming New York-Chicago?


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## Railroad Bill (Apr 28, 2012)

Anderson said:


> Ispolkom said:
> 
> 
> > MikefromCrete said:
> ...


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## Ispolkom (Apr 28, 2012)

Anderson said:


> This is just a random aside, but all of the old fare charts I've seen tend to focus on UP or ATSF...what would a one-way on the Broadway or 20th Century have been in the late 50s/early 60s, assuming New York-Chicago?


Streamliner Schedules has some fare charts.


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## Lawdude (Apr 28, 2012)

The fares charged for this service (which seem fair to me given what is being offered) should give some indication of the actual subsidy received by sleeping car passengers on Amtrak (just estimate what you think the additional amenities cost, subtract that, and compare the result to the average cost of a sleeper on Amtrak on a comparable routing).


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## dlagrua (Apr 28, 2012)

Lawdude said:


> The fares charged for this service (which seem fair to me given what is being offered) should give some indication of the actual subsidy received by sleeping car passengers on Amtrak (just estimate what you think the additional amenities cost, subtract that, and compare the result to the average cost of a sleeper on Amtrak on a comparable routing).


The only reason for the subsidy is because Amtrak has decided to spend more money than it takes in, a common problem throughout government.


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## Anderson (Apr 28, 2012)

lspolkom: That covers the WAS-NYP section of things. It's a nice comparison for some purposes (and I may need to go through and compare numbers to the Regionals and Acela), but it doesn't apply to the east-west runs in the same way.

Lawdude: It's a mediocre comparison...if for no other reason than the extra OBSassenger proportions. From what I'm gathering, you've basically got about double the OBS as Amtrak does serving fewer passengers. And I sadly lack the ability to guess at what that cost would come to.

Edit: Though, making an honest guess, I suspect that top bucket is a bit more than what would be break even with Amtrak. If I had to take a guess, and I base this in part on my Silver Service analysis, break-even for a full train would probably be somewhere between third and fourth buckets if you could max out your sleeper:diner ratio and allow for the presence of a cafe/lounge/bar car. Do note, for example, that Pullman's B/C/D accommodation prices all cluster pretty closely together for a single traveler while you get a good deal more separation on Amtrak between levels of service.


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## Ispolkom (Apr 28, 2012)

Anderson said:


> lspolkom: That covers the WAS-NYP section of things. It's a nice comparison for some purposes (and I may need to go through and compare numbers to the Regionals and Acela), but it doesn't apply to the east-west runs in the same way.


Wrong link, sorry. There's a Pennsylvania fare chart for 1967 that covers New York - Chicago, and several B&O charts covering Washington - Chicago. I'd imagine that the Capitol Limited cost in the same neighborhood as the Broadway Limited.

Streamliner Schedules is the first place to look for any information about post-WW2 crack trains.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Apr 29, 2012)

BTW, guys, I found this site for measuring money value from previous years: http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/


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## Anderson (Apr 29, 2012)

lspolkom: Thanks for the other link; that one is actually right about what I needed (though it doesn't indicate any extra fares, sadly...but those often wound up being relatively small in the grand scheme of things).

Swadian: Thanks for the link; I've used them in the past, but it was _really_ nice to have the link here in this thread so I could go "right in".

So, running with that chart, I get the following:

Pennsylvania Railroad, June 1967 versus 2011; Extra Fare not listed

CPI=Consumer Price Index (i.e. the government-selected goods backet)

LC=Labor Cost for a production worker

IV=Income Value, or share of per capita GDP

In a Roomette:

CHI-NYP: $83.99 equals $566.00 (CPI), $686.00 (LC), or $970.00 (IV)

CHI-PHL: $76.21 equals $513.00 (CPI), $623.00 (LC), or $880.00 (IV)

CHI-WAS: $72.49 equals $488.00 (CPI), $592.00 (LC), or $837.00 (IV)

Pullman Sleeping Car Equivalent: $900/$1050 for one person.

In a Duplex Room:

CHI-NYP: $87.40 equals $589.00 (CPI), $714.00 (LC), or $1,010.00 (IV)

CHI-PHL: $79.62 equals $536.00 (CPI), $650.00 (LC), or $920.00 (IV)

CHI-WAS: $75.90 equals $511.00 (CPI), $620.00 (LC), or $877.00 (IV)

Pullman Sleeping Car Equivalent: $900/$1050 for one person.

In a Bedroom (one person):

CHI-NYP: $95.63 equals $644.00 (CPI), $781.00 (LC), or $1,100.00 (IV)

CHI-PHL: $87.32 equals $588.00 (CPI), $713.00 (LC), or $1,010.00 (IV)

CHI-WAS: $83.60 equals $563.00 (CPI), $683.00 (LC), or $966.00 (IV)

Pullman Sleeping Car Equivalent: $1050 for one person.

In a Bedroom (two people):

CHI-NYP: $163.01 equals $1,100.00 (CPI), $1,330.00 (LC), or $1,880.00 (IV)

CHI-PHL: $148.24 equals $988.00 (CPI), $1,210.00 (LC), or $1,710,00 (IV)

CHI-WAS: $140.80 equals $948.00 (CPI), $1,150.00 (LC), or $1,630.00 (IV)

Pullman Sleeping Car Equivalent: $1650/$1950 for two people.

For calculating any extra fare:

CPI Multiplier is approximately 6.74

LC Multiplier is approximately 8.17

IV Multiplier is approximately 11.55

I would include the Master Room/Drawing Room fares ($1050/$1500 for one and $1950/$2850 for two), but those are really off the charts even compared to the old rates because of how much of the fare was "locked up" in the coach charge versus the room charge (a drawing room was an extra $13.50 over a bedroom; a Master Room was $23.25).


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## dlagrua (Apr 29, 2012)

Anderson said:


> lspolkom: Thanks for the other link; that one is actually right about what I needed (though it doesn't indicate any extra fares, sadly...but those often wound up being relatively small in the grand scheme of things).
> 
> Swadian: Thanks for the link; I've used them in the past, but it was _really_ nice to have the link here in this thread so I could go "right in".
> 
> ...


Did you use all high bucket fares as the basis for comparison? In the 1960's the minimum wage was about $1.00 per hour. Let us not forget that fares back then did not include any meals. I will attempt to dig up some more fare info. I recall seeing an ad from the 60's in which the NYC advertised that their single duplex roomettes cost only $7 more than coach fare. Not to doubt you but your fare comparison seems hard to believe.


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## Trogdor (Apr 29, 2012)

dlagrua said:


> The only reason for the subsidy is because Amtrak has decided to spend more money than it takes in, a common problem throughout government.


Overly simplistic analysis (that it was Amtrak's "decision" to lose money), especially from someone who whines to no end about how expensive Amtrak's sleepers are.

The reason for the subsidy is that the cost of providing the service exceeds what the market will pay in fare revenues, yet society still deems it an important service to provide. That's one of the purposes of government.


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## jis (Apr 29, 2012)

Trogdor said:


> dlagrua said:
> 
> 
> > The only reason for the subsidy is because Amtrak has decided to spend more money than it takes in, a common problem throughout government.
> ...


Indeed. We pretty much know that if Amtrak could simply double LD fares without losing ridership, it would come very close to breaking even or becoming slightly positive. And then we would have the whiners whine at four times the volume following the Law of Exponential Whine Intensity.  On the NEC Amtrak has pretty much achieved that balance. At the end of the day RASM has to be equal to or greater than CASM for an operation to survive long term, whatever the source of said revenue.

At least the airlines have finally learned that lesson and are working towards ensuring a level of revenues that can sustain the service reasonably, even though with somewhat lower growth in ridership.. And my oh my - the whines that it is eliciting! Fortunately, each time airlines raise fare, and gasoline prices go up, Amtrak gets some leeway to raise fares and get to a more sustainable financial situation, taking advantage of the inherent energy efficiency of steel wheel on steel rail.


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## afigg (Apr 29, 2012)

dlagrua said:


> Did you use all high bucket fares as the basis for comparison? In the 1960's the minimum wage was about $1.00 per hour. Let us not forget that fares back then did not include any meals. I will attempt to dig up some more fare info. I recall seeing an ad from the 60's in which the NYC advertised that their single duplex roomettes cost only $7 more than coach fare. Not to doubt you but your fare comparison seems hard to believe.


If I'm reading his post correctly, he was using PRR stated prices in 1967. Back then, there was far less price variations in ticket prices for travel, be it by air or train. It was before the age of computer databases and on-line purchases which allowed the airlines, Amtrak, hotel chains, etc to evolve a complex system of bucket prices, discounts, frequent flyer/travel point programs, constant changing of prices to reflect demand for revenue enhancement. Makes it far easier to project a typical 1967 price to today dollars than it will be to compare 2012 prices to 2057 prices in 2057.

Minimum wage in 1967 versus today is not a valid price comparison because minimum wage is set as the result of a political process. CPI or even IC that Anderson used provides a far more valid price comparison. Overall, travel costs have drop markedly since the 1960s. Far more people per capita travel distances for vacations, family visits, tourist trips, and business trips than they did 50 years ago. The airlines, Amtrak, bus companies have all reduced costs, eliminated staff, shrunk overhead, increased operating efficiencies to make for lower ticket prices from 1967 to 2012, once overall inflation is adjusted for.

I really don't see the issue. There have been multiple price comparisons posted here and on other forums that show that coach and sleeper prices on Amtrak are for the average person lower than they were in 1950s and 60s. Even after the Amtrak price increases of the past several years. The Pullman prices wll be roughly equivalent to the 1960s prices, because Pullman will be providing a high end luxury service with high staff costs.


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## dlagrua (Apr 29, 2012)

I will be fair about the cost comparison. In 1971 a total Amtrak roomette fare from NYC to Chicago was $98.11 one way (source Amtrak fare book). In 2012 dollars that is $566.30. If we combine the coach fares to today's roomette prices, this comes out at approximately Amtrak high bucket. Conclusion: prices have held pretty much constant with inflation, which over that period averaged about 4.2%. Amtrak Sleepers are not more expensive than they were in 1971.

Inflation calculator is here:

Inflation calculator


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## Swadian Hardcore (Apr 29, 2012)

I just found this link with New York Central timetables from 1871-1968. I think that there are also fares inside. http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/ptt/timetables.htm


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## white rabbitt (Apr 29, 2012)

ya'll must be rich if u are being serious to want to waste money haveing a gathering on pullman train couse only rich folk can afford those prices the hoi polloi and the peons cant afford pullmans


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## CHamilton (Apr 29, 2012)

wabbitt said:


> ya'll must be rich if u are being serious to want to waste money haveing a gathering on pullman train couse only rich folk can afford those prices the hoi polloi and the peons cant afford pullmans


I suspect that AUers have a range of incomes. I know that there are lots of retired people and students with limited incomes. But some of us would rather spend money traveling, and skimp on other expenses. I, for one, don't own a car, so even with taking the occasional train trip, my total transportation expenses are actually less than for many people.


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## dlagrua (Apr 29, 2012)

wabbitt said:


> ya'll must be rich if u are being serious to want to waste money haveing a gathering on pullman train couse only rich folk can afford those prices the hoi polloi and the peons cant afford pullmans


The Pullman trips are being marketed as upscale rail accommodations to "white collar" professional people, corporate executives and small business owners. Its like anything else first class....airlines, designer clothing, Mercedes/BMW Automobiles, upscale restaurants, gold and diamond jewelry etc. They are all expensive and made for those that can afford them.There is apparently a select audience for a $1500 to $1800 rail fare. We'll see. Quite frankly Amtrak on the wrong day of the week can be expensive as well. Our trip on the Autotrain North the week of May 7th is costing us $760.00 one way. The final few remaining bedrooms sold for $860 plus coach and auto fare. That's about a $1200 to $1300 fare. We won't pay that much as we don't believe that riding in a well used "cubical" is worth that much money but some people hard up for the trip North did.

IMO the main disadvantage to the new Pullman service is their point to point service. Passengers are only allowed to board at the departure and destination points. Will this be a limitation? Time will tell.


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## Donctor (Apr 29, 2012)

I have read that, toward the end, New York–Chicago and Chicago–New Orleans were the two big long-distance markets for business travelers. Was this the case?


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## Swadian Hardcore (Apr 29, 2012)

Donctor said:


> I have read that, toward the end, New York–Chicago and Chicago–New Orleans were the two big long-distance markets for business travelers. Was this the case?


I guess that if there was a 16 hour schedule and proper marketing, these routes would still have quite some biz travellers. But even with the current schedule, they are still getting sold out.


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## Anderson (Apr 29, 2012)

Donctor said:


> I have read that, toward the end, New York–Chicago and Chicago–New Orleans were the two big long-distance markets for business travelers. Was this the case?


They were the last two to retain an all-Pullman train (the Broadway Limited and the Panama Limited, respectively; the latter name was swapped for the CONO only after a popular song provided a marketing opportunity...the CONO was the second-tier train on that run IIRC). Whether those were primarily business or leisure travelers on the Panama Limited is a good question.

There was a third that held up fairly well, namely Southern's _Crescent_...while I think it trailed in third (remember, Atlanta was a _lot_ smaller in the 60s), Southern kept it and a day train on that route (though the _Piedmont Limited_, the day train, stopped at Atlanta while the _Crescent_ was tri-weekly past Birmingham) even post-Amtrak.

As to what I used to compare the Pullman fares to, I used the 1967 PRR fare table available at streamlinerschedules.com. There are two big things to remember with the old fare system from that era:

1) There really weren't buckets. Though a few roads (either CN or CP were among the first) were able to vary fares a bit based on seasonal demand towards the end, there was no concept of revenue management. Not only weren't there good systems to handle it, but I don't think the ICC was willing to be that flexible.

2) A _lot_ more of the fare was "swallowed up" in the coach charge. Even with this in mind, please consider that in all of these cases I'm going off of the parlor car railroad fare (the base coach fare is usually lower) plus the room charges. Also, a lot of this was structural (the room charges went to a separate entity, Pullman, and the railroad still needed a chunk of the cost to cover running the train). However, if you look at the Penn Central fare tables from '71 on the NEC, note how little variation there is between the Metroliner Metroclub seats and the "regular" trains' coach fares:

One-way Fares, NYP-WAS:

Coach: $13.00

Parlor Car: $23.40 ($20.25 fare plus $3.15 accom. charge; $3.15 more for a drawing room)

Metroliner Coach: $17.00

Metroclub: $27.40

-Worth noting (and someone else picked up on this) is that if you doubled coach fares but kept the sleeper fares alone (and didn't lose business in the process), a lot of the LD trains would be somewhere around break-even. This would also be reasonably close to the older fare structure. In some cases, you could also make a substantial dent in things if you were able to hike the room charges and add rooms.

Finally, with minimum wage, not only is that a result of a political process, but the minimum wage has varied in what it can buy/what it is worth dramatically over time. I list multiple measures because I don't trust one measure to be perfect...for example, the CPI has been massively affected by the housing situation over the last few years.

(A closing note that just came to mind: I realized that, having real perspective on a lot of this, I'm generally less inclined to grumble about expensive fares. Add-on fees, yes, but not fares so much.)


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## Donctor (Apr 29, 2012)

Anderson said:


> Donctor said:
> 
> 
> > I have read that, toward the end, New York–Chicago and Chicago–New Orleans were the two big long-distance markets for business travelers. Was this the case?
> ...


There certainly was a mention of the Panama as serving a business market in one of the many books about Amtrak. (Of course, it was mentioned in the context of "Amtrak tried to run the service as a day train in 1971, seemingly unaware that they were abandoning a substantial market.") I'd be interested in learning more about this.

Note: I am not looking to start a discussion about how Amtrak's service is inferior to that of its predecessors. I don't care.


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## Anderson (Apr 29, 2012)

Donctor said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > Donctor said:
> ...


I'm going to take a stab: The IC was still, as far as I know, operating two trains (the Panama Limited and the CONO) on this route at A-Day. My guess is that the Panama was an overnight through train while the CONO was largely operating as a day train "counterpart" to it. If Amtrak drops one train from the schedule and keeps the day operation (the CONO) instead of the night one (the Panama Limited), that would cut one of the markets out. This sort of combination/consolidation happened all over the system...sometimes it worked well (the Broadway comes to mind), and sometimes it didn't (the infamous Cincy layover on the James Whitcomb Riley...though as Amtrak's scheduling issues with the Cardinal have shown, that route is just a pain no matter what you try to do).

And if I'm recalling right, that's pretty much how it played out...Amtrak kept the CONO, but relabeled it as the Panama Limited for marketing purposes until the song hit...by which time it had changed the scheduling back to an overnight run (so first the PL ran on the CONO's schedule...and then the CONO ran on the PL's). I'd be up for corrections, but this is about what I think happened.


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## ehbowen (Apr 29, 2012)

Anderson said:


> Donctor said:
> 
> 
> > Anderson said:
> ...


Looking at the timetables.org web site, it appears that the switch of both schedule and name was made in November of 1971. The CONO as originally envisioned by Illinois Central was a high-speed day train which could leave from Chicago at 8 in the morning and get you into New Orleans before midnight that same day. From what I understand, it did a booming business at the intermediate points and it carried a lounge and full diner. By 1971 IC's trackage had started to deteriorate and the train could no longer maintain the midnight arrival. Plus with the building of parallel Interstates the intermediate market traffic was drying up. An overnight schedule was better suited for making connections in the terminal cities, so Amtrak killed the CONO and rechristened it the Panama Limited on an overnight schedule in late 1971. It wasn't until sometime in the early '80s that the overnight train was renamed City of New Orleans.


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## Mackensen (Apr 29, 2012)

Anderson said:


> Donctor said:
> 
> 
> > Anderson said:
> ...


Sort of. The IC had both trains running, with the CONO on the traditional daytime schedule and the Panama Limited overnight. Amtrak kept the CONO for the first few months, but brought back the overnight schedule and the Panama Limited name on the first official (11/14/1971) timetable. Part of the reason (according to Craig Sanders in _Amtrak in the Heartland_) was a midnight arrival in Chicago. The CONO doesn't come back until 1981--there's a ten-year stretch with the Panama Limited name and the overnight schedule.


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## henryj (Apr 29, 2012)

Trogdor said:


> The reason for the subsidy is that the cost of providing the service exceeds what the market will pay in fare revenues, yet society still deems it an important service to provide. That's one of the purposes of government.


This is an amazing analogy, that this is one of the purposes of government. Perhaps it's why we are broke. I thought this was the purpose of government:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."


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## jebr (Apr 29, 2012)

henryj said:


> Trogdor said:
> 
> 
> > The reason for the subsidy is that the cost of providing the service exceeds what the market will pay in fare revenues, yet society still deems it an important service to provide. That's one of the purposes of government.
> ...


By your inference, anything above a basic "post road" (to deliver mail) should also be a toll road. And air traffic control should be a private enterprise, since the Constitution doesn't provide for anything remotely close to the road system we have now, nor do they have an air traffic control system. And we definitely shouldn't be helping pay for those airports with tax money.

Frankly, "general Welfare" is so broad that a lot can fall under it. Amtrak, for many people on this board, would be seen as promoting the general welfare of the country. But there's many threads that have already discussed this ad nauseum.


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## henryj (Apr 30, 2012)

jebr said:


> henryj said:
> 
> 
> > Trogdor said:
> ...


On the other hand, your interpretation could mean that 'government' pays for everthing we need. In addition to 'free' plane and train rides we could have free autos, cell phones, cable tv, refrigerators, food, or any of the so called necessities. I am an old school accountant, so I just wonder where is all this going to come from? Who is going to pay? Oh yeah, the government can just print all the money they need. The ultimate social welfare state. Didn't the Soviet Union already try this?


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## Steve4031 (Apr 30, 2012)

All of this mess is getting away from the discussion of the sleeper service and its details IMHO. Could we please get back on topic. I'm excited about riding this, and I'm more interested in that then this other. If im out of line, I apologize.


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## Ryan (Apr 30, 2012)

No, you're absolutely correct.


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## jis (Apr 30, 2012)

As far as doing a AU gathering on this goes, I suppose a few could get together and do a mini-gathering. But I doubt that a full fledged AU Gathering can be pulled off on this relatively expensive service. For example, even though I could afford it, I would probably prefer to spend that sort of money to visit Iguazu Falls instead, or something like that.


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## VentureForth (Apr 30, 2012)

wabbitt said:


> ya'll must be rich if u are being serious to want to waste money haveing a gathering on pullman train couse only rich folk can afford those prices the hoi polloi and the peons cant afford pullmans


And many here have worked extremely hard for the priviledge to do just that. I can dream to fly in a Gulfstream, and that would only cost around $6000 per hour.


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## Shortline (Apr 30, 2012)

We probably will keep an eye on it and see how it does, maybe give it a shot someday. I think I would rather take the Canadian for about the same price. That's always been on my must do list.


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## Anderson (May 1, 2012)

henryj said:


> jebr said:
> 
> 
> > henryj said:
> ...


Defining what the Soviet Union was is a very interesting exercise for another day. However, I could point out some of the more idealistic-but-misguided efforts in places like France, Britain, and so forth (such as housing blocks that started crumbing well ahead of schedule, "integrated" neighborhoods that misfired, and the like). Honestly, the question of what degree of welfare state can work depends a lot on the underlying culture.

For an example of the government trying to print their way to prosperity, I would offer Labour Britain in the 70s as a pretty fun example. Another valid one would be a lot of petro-states that tried to keep printing when oil prices fell (Mexico in the late 80s/early 90s comes to mind, and _that_ little gem lost us the Mexican passenger system).

I'll add a point: I'm not opposed to toll roads or gas taxes being applied in various mixtures. There are some places where the government ought to "subsidize" road travel (usually in rural areas where you simply don't have the population density to even _get_ toll roads to work), but I would _not_ be terribly broken up if a lot more interstate highways acquired tolls to cover their maintenance budgets and the need for capital improvements (especially as, in a lot of cases, we're beginning to get to the point where _lots _of highways are going to need major overhauls in the next decade or two...you've got a lot of bridges that are coming up on 80 years old in the Eastern US, for example).

Moving back to the topic of the thread: I agree that the Canadian is probably a better bang-for-buck deal if you've got the time and the access..but even the advantage there is beginning to slowly shrink as time goes by.


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## Devil's Advocate (May 1, 2012)

Anderson said:


> A lot of petro-states that tried to keep printing when oil prices fell (Mexico in the late 80s/early 90s comes to mind, and _that_ little gem lost us the Mexican passenger system).


Source?



Anderson said:


> There are some places where the government ought to "subsidize" road travel (usually in rural areas where you simply don't have the population density to even _get_ toll roads to work)


I respectfully disagree. If you want to live far away from everyone else then either go without or pay for everything that needs to be flown, trucked, piped, or wired out there just for you. No more leeching off urban taxpayers to fund modern amenities in the middle of nowhere. This is usually when I hear about the myth of family farms and the like, but these days most of our food comes from conglomerates like ADM and Cargill who can probably afford to build and maintain their own roads and infrastructure. It's not much different with where our meat comes from either. Many "family farms" and ranches today are nothing more than tax abatement schemes masquerading as critical resources. If we call them what they really are and scrap all these outdated subsidies and tax loopholes that are being used for purposes they were never intended then maybe we could start using some of that money to pay off our debt.


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## Anderson (May 1, 2012)

Texas Sunset said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > A lot of petro-states that tried to keep printing when oil prices fell (Mexico in the late 80s/early 90s comes to mind, and _that_ little gem lost us the Mexican passenger system).
> ...


I'll hand in the Wikipedia article on the Mexican peso crisis as my source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_economic_crisis_in_Mexico

Basically, Mexico went to hell financially in the 1980s...they had a lot of loans taken out during the oil boom in the 1970s that they were unable to pay. They more or less staggered along until 1988, when Carlos Salinas basically began to privatize everything in sight in a desperate attempt to re-fire the economy (NAFTA was part of this effort, too). To be fair, the government had mismanaged quite a bit (the Mexican National Railroad was not exactly known as being well-run, to put it mildly), but the situation was such that even if the government wanted to hang onto certain things...the fiscal state of affairs was not such that they could do much. The devaluation was a symptom of the problem, to be fair, but it was a _bad_ one.

As to the point of "modern amenities in the middle of nowhere", I think that there is a marked difference between, on the one hand, ensuring that there is a viable infrastructure in place in areas such as Wyoming and North Dakota, or decent ground transportation links between Omaha and Denver, instead of having to go back and rebuild large chunks of the system every time there's a resource boom or a population shift; and on the other hand, ensuring universal broadband access or funding cell phone towers in some of these places. I'd also take pains to point out that there are probably plenty of rural taxpayers who want to know why they're being asked to pitch in for urban mass transit that there's not even a city in their state that _could_ qualify for grants for.

Mind you, I'm not talking about a 100% subsidy here...but then again, nobody here tends to talk about that (at least on the operating side) for Amtrak. In general, we talk about paying for the capital side of things and then kicking in 20-25% on the operating side overall. Part of the reason for this, mind you, is that there are almost always going to be parts of any broad-access system that lose money and parts that make it and cross-subsidize...and in some cases, those numbers aren't going to come out in the black. Just because something incurs net costs does not make it unnecessary or undesirable.

To offer an example, take the Post Office as an example...even when it was profitable, there were always going to be middle-of-nowhere parts of the system that lost money on low volume while other parts saw enough activity to generate multiple-daily delivery (which New York City maintained in areas up through the 1980s). Should rural delivery have been cut because it lost money?


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## Shortline (May 1, 2012)

Texas Sunset said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > A lot of petro-states that tried to keep printing when oil prices fell (Mexico in the late 80s/early 90s comes to mind, and _that_ little gem lost us the Mexican passenger system).
> ...


Source?


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## jis (May 1, 2012)

One wonders what all this has to do with Iowa Pacific's Pullman Sleeper prices. But carry on....

Those who would in the meantime like to get a ride on the PV _Caritas_, _High Iron Travel Rail Excursions_ offers reasonably priced tickets to travel on it on several of its positioning moves. The schedules and fares can be found at the _Caritas Positioning Move Page_


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## dlagrua (May 1, 2012)

I make a motion that we move the subject of economics and the political system to another thread. Its great that we can discuss these subjects here with civility but whether Amtrak should be around to serve the public interest or not appears to be a matter of personal opinion. I do not believe that all of us will ever agree one way or another.

Getting back to the New Pullman Company; at the very least they should display at National Train Day. If they wish to charge premium prices for their service, then they should show the rail traveler what higher quality service they will get for their money. Looking at the chart, a one way trip for two from NYP to CHI comes out at around $1600 to $2000 plus meals. That's an expensive trip for even an upper middle class rail traveler.

I've toured the Pullman sleepers of yesteryear at the Illinois Railroad Museum and quite frankly the bedrooms in the Amtrak Superliners and Viewliners are very similar. The exception might be that the mattresses were better back then. Showers in the rooms were also virtually non-existent so where is the value? In a luxurious lounge perhaps? The food will probably end up being a step up but we've had some very good meals on Amtrak too. Is it that you will have better privacy? The Amtrak bedroom or Roomette is very private. The question is that if you choose to charge 2 to 4X what an Amtrak bedroom trip costs, will the service and accommodations be two to four times as good? Like many other travelers I will reserve judgement until I see the new Pullman cars, find out about the personalized service, examine the menu and compare the two.


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## Devil's Advocate (May 1, 2012)

Anderson said:


> I'll hand in the Wikipedia article on the Mexican peso crisis as my source:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_economic_crisis_in_Mexico


You have yet to explain how privatizing the passenger rail system was necessary or even beneficial to the Mexican population in objective terms. The US has accumulated even more total debt than Mexico has. Our currency is at growing risk of substantial devaluation over time. Why shouldn't Amtrak be privatized to save the day the same way that privatizing _Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México_ "saved" Mexico? Have you ever visited Mexico or is this all coming from Wannapedia?



Anderson said:


> As to the point of "modern amenities in the middle of nowhere", I think that there is a marked difference between, on the one hand, ensuring that there is a viable infrastructure in place in areas such as Wyoming and North Dakota, or decent ground transportation links between Omaha and Denver, instead of having to go back and rebuild large chunks of the system every time there's a resource boom or a population shift.


Our population has been shifting in the same direction for a half century or more. Why shouldn't our tax expenditures follow the same general path?



Anderson said:


> I'd also take pains to point out that there are probably plenty of rural taxpayers who want to know why they're being asked to pitch in for urban mass transit that there's not even a city in their state that _could_ qualify for grants for.


What would you say if we changed the rules so that no urban resident had to pay for any exclusively rural subsidies and no rural resident had to pay for any exclusively urban subsidies?



Anderson said:


> To offer an example, take the Post Office as an example...even when it was profitable, there were always going to be middle-of-nowhere parts of the system that lost money on low volume while other parts saw enough activity to generate multiple-daily delivery (which New York City maintained in areas up through the 1980s). Should rural delivery have been cut because it lost money?


The USPS is a perfect example of urban postage subsidizing rural mail. The "heartland" has made it clear that they are fed up with lopsided subsidies that "share the wealth" among strangers. So maybe we should start respecting their very vocal opposition and stop sharing our postage with their rural mail network. Everybody wins.



Shortline said:


> Texas Sunset said:
> 
> 
> > Many "family farms" and ranches today are nothing more than tax abatement schemes masquerading as critical resources. If we call them what they really are and scrap all these outdated subsidies and tax loopholes that are being used for purposes they were never intended then maybe we could start using some of that money to pay off our debt.
> ...


I believe it was a report on the 2007 _Census of Agriculture_ that first opened my eyes to the number of "family farms" having less than $10,000 in sales. Does that sound like a fully functioning farm to you or does that sound like someone who is shooting for the absolute minimum amount of productive cropland and/or minimum number of livestock to receive their tax credit?


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## Ryan (May 1, 2012)

Texas Sunset said:


> I believe it was a report on the 2007 _Census of Agriculture_ that first opened my eyes to the number of "family farms" having less than $10,000 in sales. Does that sound like a fully functioning farm to you or does that sound like someone who is shooting for the absolute minimum amount of productive cropland and/or minimum number of livestock to receive their tax credit?


There is an amazing amount of data there.

I think you were talking about this (taken from Table 58):

http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/







This also seems to support your hypothesis:


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## JayPea (May 1, 2012)

I live in a county which is rural in nature (90% of the land is farmland). Most of our farmers are 4th and 5th generation farmers. And as they are the ones who seem to drive the fancier cars, have the fancier homes, and more toys (motor homes, etc.), they are among the farms who make good money. Either that, or they are posers.  It may come as a surprise that local farmers are very much in favor of seeing farm susidies end. Folks here want to make their own way and don't want to depend on handouts. I should add virtually all farmland here is owned by family farms rather than big corporations. And I should also add we do have many who have moved here from urban areas. THEY are the ones who *****, whine, and moan about not having enough tax - supported infrastructure, not the locals


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## Anderson (May 1, 2012)

Texas Sunset:

You asserted that I said that privatizing the Mexican railway system was beneficial to Mexico. *I made no such assertion.* What I stated was that the Mexican government mismanaging its finances led to the loss of the passenger rail system there; I would have thought it self-evident that I would view this loss as a bad thing. FNM's freight operations being reformed may be another story entirely, but I certainly view the loss of the passenger network in Mexico as a bad thing.

As to the point on subsidies, I don't see how you can completely disentangle one from the other...and in some cases, there would be a (rather large) net cost to the economy of pulling a few links out of the network. There's actually a wonderful example of this: How well does the NEC work if we don't have the Hudson tunnels? Realistically, even if you broke things down to a Zip Code or County level to use for cutting subsidies, you'd end up with a messy hodgpodge of bad connections in the system.

Anyhow...I'll actually agree with dlagura on moving the subject back (if possible) or splitting the discussion into a separate thread (if necessary). As to Pullman's services: Well, I think there is certainly room to debate value here. A fair point on the PV market: Yes, Pullman's numbers are higher than a positioning move (where the operators are pretty much looking to "grab what they can" and where some of the rates can be competitive with Amtrak: KCY-LAX on Caritas for two is about $1400; in a bedroom on Amtrak the same day, the price is about $1700), but if I'm not mistaken it's still well below a "regular" PV space rental (witness some of the prices for space on cars for the AAPRCO convention in Chattanooga this year).


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## Devil's Advocate (May 1, 2012)

Anderson said:


> Texas Sunset: You asserted that I said that privatizing the Mexican railway system was beneficial to Mexico. *I made no such assertion.* What I stated was that the Mexican government mismanaging its finances led to the loss of the passenger rail system there; I would have thought it self-evident that I would view this loss as a bad thing. FNM's freight operations being reformed may be another story entirely, but I certainly view the loss of the passenger network in Mexico as a bad thing.


All I have to go on is what you write and my best attempt at understanding it. If I'm wrong in my assumptions then I'm happy to be corrected. I very much want to understand what happened to Mexico's passenger rail because I think it would have important lessons for what could happen here as well. Unfortunately there has been very little written about Mexico's loss of passenger trail anywhere I've looked so far. All I've seen is that Mexico was apparently pressured into large scale privatization by those who would be providing third party financial support, including the US government. Issues such as misuse and abuse of oil revenues and crippling peso devaluation have been a fact of Mexican life for a very long time. Privatizing passenger rail had no chance of substantially correcting or impacting any of that. Thus, I did not see a legitimate connection any more than I see how defunding Amtrak could balance America's federal budget.



Anderson said:


> As to Pullman's services: Well, I think there is certainly room to debate value here. A fair point on the PV market: Yes, Pullman's numbers are higher than a positioning move (where the operators are pretty much looking to "grab what they can" and where some of the rates can be competitive with Amtrak: KCY-LAX on Caritas for two is about $1400; in a bedroom on Amtrak the same day, the price is about $1700), but if I'm not mistaken it's still well below a "regular" PV space rental (witness some of the prices for space on cars for the AAPRCO convention in Chattanooga this year).


It's hard to debate pricing without having seen any of these cars or their service levels. However, I do think it makes it all the more clear that Amtrak prices are quickly approaching and even surpassing private varnish rates. That seems utterly shocking to me. Both in the sense that people are willing to pay that and in the sense that Amtrak still can't make a dime to this very day.


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## Anderson (May 1, 2012)

Texas Sunset said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > Texas Sunset: You asserted that I said that privatizing the Mexican railway system was beneficial to Mexico. *I made no such assertion.* What I stated was that the Mexican government mismanaging its finances led to the loss of the passenger rail system there; I would have thought it self-evident that I would view this loss as a bad thing. FNM's freight operations being reformed may be another story entirely, but I certainly view the loss of the passenger network in Mexico as a bad thing.
> ...


Texas,

It's fine; I'll take a mea culpa on bad wording if need be. It's the internet, it happens.

My understanding of what happened is more or less this: The government had a lot of enterprises under its control (NdeM was on the list with some others), but the government went broke...so it threw NdeM to the market and wasn't willing to subsidize/require continued passenger service in any form as part of the sale. It was part of a messy "privatize everything" initiative that a lot of countries underwent between about 1980 and 1995, from Britain and Australia to Mexico and Argentina. I'm not familiar with the transactions involved, but I think the corporations doing the buy-outs may have even insisted on passenger service being discontinued ahead of the transfer to avoid any headaches. It's also quite possible that the Mexican government had mismanaged NdeM for long enough that throwing the whole thing to the private sector and letting someone else straighten it out was seen as being in the public interest. The passenger side might have been a small element of any losses, but it's possible that the government just didn't see any compelling reason to keep up a few passenger lines when it was otherwise getting out of the business.

With that said, I'm not entirely familiar with how passenger service was holding up in the run-up to the sale/shutdown. I know that Jim Hudson on here has said that service quality was still solid in the 1980s, and that the Mexican First Lady took the train during that time (in a full-service Pullman), but it is entirely possible that things also more or less went to hell in a handbasket in the last decade or so.

As to the Amtrak situation vis-a-vis the PV prices, in general on non-positioning moves the prices end up being substantially more. I'm willing to guess that most of the cost of the positioning move is already covered in the price of whatever the car is being moved to/from...like I said, they're trying to simply grab what they can on a move that has to happen. An equivalent for Amtrak would be several of the cars on the Auto Train in the "anti-seasonal" direction (NB in the fall, SB in the spring): The "main" direction makes money, but Amtrak has to get the cars and staff back into position somehow...so you get low buckets all over the place.

Amtrak also runs into three bumps against profitability, even at current prices:

1) Volume is a problem. If Pullman runs a 5-car set (3 sleepers, a diner, and a lounge) on the LSL, then depending on car configuration they may be carrying more sleeper passengers out of NYP than Amtrak is. A lot of Amtrak's trains physically can't carry the traffic they need to make money for want of space on-board.

2) The buckets confuse the picture. A lot of the comparisons we're dealing with here are dealing with the top bucket...but I'd love to know what the "average" bucket of a roomette or bedroom is (out of the five available). Amtrak probably can't sell out all that many trains at top bucket, but they certainly seem to be moving towards using the higher buckets more and the lower ones less.

3) I can't speak to what the PV margins look like, even for the more "commercial" operations. It's possible that at the end of the day, a lot of PV operations are operating on very thin profit margins...or even that many are losing money but kept up as what amounts to a very well-subsidized hobby where you're only paying for 10% of the upkeep cost (the rest being covered by charters and so forth). IP is another story (as was AOE), but both companies were/have been able to tap into at least some economies of scale in their operations. This even shows up in Amtrak's haulage fees...it costs less to hook 5 cars onto one train than to hook one car each onto five separate trains.

And none of this gets into the question of the coach side of things (where fares /really/ came down over the years). From what I've been able to gather, at least at higher buckets on most routes, sleeper passengers are paying pretty much their full cost of travel with whatever extra revenue comes in "spilling over" to "bail out" the coach side of things. With a Pullman-type operation, you would therefore expect fares to be somewhat higher (to account for less scale in the operations plus arguably improved service)...which is what you see. Neither operation takes into account the situation with coach passengers (who have a _lot_ of the same fixed per-passenger or per seat mile costs; there are some added costs on the sleeper side dealing with OBSassenger ratios and car maintenance allocations, but those station maintenance fees, track rent costs, and a lot of the costs associated with running the train should probably distribute pretty equally).


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## TimePeace (May 1, 2012)

*yawn* ... Pullmans? What Pullmans?


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## Bob Dylan (May 1, 2012)

:hi: Thanks Anderson for remembering my Posts about NdM Passenger service! For the benefit of you and Chris, basically the Salinas Brothers looted the Treasury of Mexico during Carlos' term in office. Due to International pressures from, as was said the US Government, and the World Bank, Mexico went on a Privitization kick that completely changed the Economic system of Mexico! The Mexican Governemnt had subsidized most things for decades including Food,Utilities,Education and Transportation, but once the "New" Financial plan went into place basically everything in Mexico was up for grabs except Pemex, the National Oil Company! This is basically the reason that Carlos Slim of Mexico is now the Richest Person in the World and that so many Foriegn Companies have taken over Mexican Companies! (ie WalMart is the Biggest Grocer, Chase and Citi Bank are financial Giants etc. etc.)

As to Passenger Rail, I doubt that it ever again will be a factor in Mexico except for the Two Tourist Trains that still run, the Copper Canyon LD Train and the Tequila Express, a Day Trip Train between Guadalajara and Tequila! (Also Mexico has one of the worlds most Extensive Bus Transportation Systems reaching even the most remote Villages and Pueblos!) I do wonder what happened to the Old Equipment, including much of the Mopac Eagle stuff, that used to make up the consists of so many Mexican Trains?? Considering what it cost, the Best Trip for the Money I ever made was from Laredo to Mexico City on the old Aztec Eagle in an ex-Mopac Pullman with a Diner, Dome and Lounge Car! It cost all of $28!!! :wub:


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## AlanB (May 1, 2012)

dlagrua said:


> I will be fair about the cost comparison. In 1971 a total Amtrak roomette fare from NYC to Chicago was $98.11 one way (source Amtrak fare book). In 2012 dollars that is $566.30. If we combine the coach fares to today's roomette prices, this comes out at approximately Amtrak high bucket. Conclusion: prices have held pretty much constant with inflation, which over that period averaged about 4.2%. Amtrak Sleepers are not more expensive than they were in 1971.
> 
> Inflation calculator is here:
> 
> Inflation calculator


Also keep in mind that in 1971 a sleeper ticket did not include meals in the dining car, one still had to pay for them separately. Today meals are included in the price of the ticket.


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## jebr (May 1, 2012)

Texas Sunset said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > As to the point of "modern amenities in the middle of nowhere", I think that there is a marked difference between, on the one hand, ensuring that there is a viable infrastructure in place in areas such as Wyoming and North Dakota, or decent ground transportation links between Omaha and Denver, instead of having to go back and rebuild large chunks of the system every time there's a resource boom or a population shift.
> ...


The question is, ultimately, where do we draw the line for "middle of nowhere" and semi-populated rural areas? No, we shouldn't be investing in four-lane highways through the middle of nowhere just to serve some local populace, but there's relatively few instances where that's even happening. Most of our four-lane highways through rural areas support some kind of intercity traffic that demands a four-lane highway. Even the urban populace uses it from time to time, and intercity infrastructure is necessary to haul goods between cities. Two-lane tar roads are necessary to facilitate transportation, and that infrastructure is relatively built already and only requires maintenance. Expecting rural towns to have zero tar roads into them is not a good way to save money.

Also, believe it or not, property taxes at minimum help pay for (and often pay for much or all of) township roads that go out to the rural areas. They're only dirt roads, so anything less would literally be no access.

Subsidizing flights into extremely remote areas seems foolish, yes. But stating that anything outside of the core city/suburbia is unworthy to receive anything outside of what they can pay for themselves is also foolish. It's part of living in a society: there's things that we pay for that certain people don't like, but are necessary for other people and can't be efficiently provided for otherwise.


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## Steve4031 (May 2, 2012)

Let's get back to the Pullmans.


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## jis (May 2, 2012)

AlanB said:


> dlagrua said:
> 
> 
> > I will be fair about the cost comparison. In 1971 a total Amtrak roomette fare from NYC to Chicago was $98.11 one way (source Amtrak fare book). In 2012 dollars that is $566.30. If we combine the coach fares to today's roomette prices, this comes out at approximately Amtrak high bucket. Conclusion: prices have held pretty much constant with inflation, which over that period averaged about 4.2%. Amtrak Sleepers are not more expensive than they were in 1971.
> ...


So it is not surprising that as they were not making money then, they are not making money now either. Sad.


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## JackieTakestheTrain (May 2, 2012)

On a different note: Are there pictures of the interiors of these cars or even artist renderings that are public? Would love to see the insides (and dream a bit!)


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## RRUserious (May 2, 2012)

They gonna have old fashioned porters, too?


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## afigg (May 2, 2012)

JackieTakestheTrain said:


> On a different note: Are there pictures of the interiors of these cars or even artist renderings that are public? Would love to see the insides (and dream a bit!)


There is a sales sheet with key dates on the Pullman Rail Journeys website. The schedule calls for the Pullman website to premier in June, so that is likely when the formal marketing photos of the interiors and cars will be posted. Reservations will be taken starting in August. The reason for no interior photos yet could be is that they are still working on refurbing the cars and redoing the interiors.

The sales sheet lists an average of 10 staff members per departure. They will have to sell a lot of rooms to pay for the staff.

Media and travel familiarization tours are planned for September. So travel agents and media people for the high end travel industry may get some free trips!


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## Anderson (May 3, 2012)

afigg said:


> JackieTakestheTrain said:
> 
> 
> > On a different note: Are there pictures of the interiors of these cars or even artist renderings that are public? Would love to see the insides (and dream a bit!)
> ...


What does it tend to cost per-person either per-day or per-round-trip for the OBS on something like this?


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## cirdan (May 4, 2012)

afigg said:


> That may be a market mistake on their part to not take on passengers on at least a couple of larger market stops in-between. This is such a different type of sleeper service from Amtrak offers is that it makes no sense for Amtrak to adjust their Viewliner sleeper assignments based on a 2 day week premium service schedule.


That's what I was thinking.

I can see why in terms of fares there will not be any reduction for travelling short, but in terms of being able to join or leave the train in stations where the train stops anyway, it's a bit strange to rule that out from the start.

I guess this is only a preliminary plan though, and that more detailed schedules will be published closer to the date.


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## cirdan (May 4, 2012)

Texas Sunset said:


> I believe it was a report on the 2007 _Census of Agriculture_ that first opened my eyes to the number of "family farms" having less than $10,000 in sales. Does that sound like a fully functioning farm to you or does that sound like someone who is shooting for the absolute minimum amount of productive cropland and/or minimum number of livestock to receive their tax credit?


A lot of people (like the Amish) don't really farm to sell but produce most of what they need themselves. $10,000 in sales sounds enough to me to purchase all the things you can't make yourself.

If you value freedom above capitalism, you will agree that nobody has to trade if they don't need to.


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## jis (May 4, 2012)

afigg said:


> The sales sheet lists an average of 10 staff members per departure. They will have to sell a lot of rooms to pay for the staff.


The staff size of 10 suggests that they will basically have 2 Sleeping Cars (1 SCA per car), a Lounge (1LSA + 1conductor) and a Diner (4SA + 2 Chefs) on each trip.

I suppose the Pullman Conductor will be subordinate to the Amtrak Conductor, i.e. effectively be an Assistant Conductor.

I wonder if Amtrak will spring for a second P32ACDM on the NYP - ALB leg considering that the cars are claimed to be heavyweights.


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## cirdan (May 4, 2012)

jis said:


> I wonder if Amtrak will spring for a second P32ACDM on the NYP - ALB leg considering that the cars are claimed to be heavyweights.


Are there still suffiecient spare unist available?

Noting that due to the schedules, such a unit would not really be avaliable for any other meaningful use.

Also, am I the only one to find it surprising they want to start in November? That's not exactly prime travelling season and they may find the path to breaking even very long.


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## jis (May 4, 2012)

cirdan said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > I wonder if Amtrak will spring for a second P32ACDM on the NYP - ALB leg considering that the cars are claimed to be heavyweights.
> ...


For occasional use I am sure they could dig up one, say by subbing a P42 on a NFL train instead of it carry a P32 all the way, which they sometimes do.


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## Devil's Advocate (May 4, 2012)

cirdan said:


> Texas Sunset said:
> 
> 
> > I believe it was a report on the 2007 _Census of Agriculture_ that first opened my eyes to the number of "family farms" having less than $10,000 in sales. Does that sound like a fully functioning farm to you or does that sound like someone who is shooting for the absolute minimum amount of productive cropland and/or minimum number of livestock to receive their tax credit?
> ...


We live in what could be arguably termed the most hyper-capitalistic society in the history of mankind. I hear what you're trying to say but I am not aware of any trade-averse population large enough to explain these numbers, including the Amish.



cirdan said:


> If you value freedom above capitalism, you will agree that nobody has to trade if they don't need to.


Some of our justices on our supreme court made similar claims as they began to lay the groundwork for the eventual dismantling of the PPACA. It's true that there are millions of Americans who live without any conventional trade to their name, but most of these folks are not avoiding trade as part of a conscious decision. They are without trade because they are destitute and/or because they are incarcerated. In other words they are not likely to be running any family farms or showing up in any agriculture report that doesn't revolve around controlled substances.


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## afigg (May 4, 2012)

cirdan said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > I wonder if Amtrak will spring for a second P32ACDM on the NYP - ALB leg considering that the cars are claimed to be heavyweights.
> ...


If Pullman Sleeper sticks to the routes shown in their brochure, the Pullman cars will be added to the northbound LSL only 2 days a week. The eastbound trip would be via Pittsburgh and Philly. So a second P32ACDM 2 days a week on the northbound leg only should not present much of an additional equipment load. Although they would end up with an additional P32 in Albany, but they can shuffle the engines around.

As for starting in November, that is before the Thanksgiving and December holiday season. The November start date is likely just the way their schedule worked out once the company decided to pursue the luxury sleeper service.


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## jis (May 4, 2012)

afigg said:


> Although they would end up with an additional P32 in Albany, but they can shuffle the engines around.


They do a lot of P32 shuffling at Albany anyway, since it is the home base for P32s and they have to change out P42s for P32s for several trains headed to Penn Station each day and vice versa.


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## Gratt (May 4, 2012)

Am I the only one bothered by the high prices for the second passenger in a room?

Once a room is purchased the additional costs of adding another person (even if food is included) are small. That is why Amtrak only charges the rail fare when you add an additional person to a room.

I understand charging $1050 for the room with one person, but to ask an additional $900 for a second person sounds ridiculous. At that point I might as well get another room.


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## me_little_me (May 4, 2012)

Gratt said:


> Am I the only one bothered by the high prices for the second passenger in a room?
> 
> Once a room is purchased the additional costs of adding another person (even if food is included) are small. That is why Amtrak only charges the rail fare when you add an additional person to a room.
> 
> I understand charging $1050 for the room with one person, but to ask an additional $900 for a second person sounds ridiculous. At that point I might as well get another room.


When they figure out that their customers have figured it out, it will change.


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## Anderson (May 4, 2012)

me_little_me said:


> Gratt said:
> 
> 
> > Am I the only one bothered by the high prices for the second passenger in a room?
> ...


This actually also shows up in the B/C accommodation costs: For one person, it seems to (under some circumstances, at least) be identical in cost to book one person in a single bedroom as to book one person in a double bedroom...which makes _no_ sense whatsoever. If anything, the fare structure seems to encourage lone travelers to go with level B and couples to go with level C (rather than vice-versa). Note that none of the figures involve a single supplement (at least, as far as I can tell).

My gut says that the final numbers may be different than these...there's _just_ enough that doesn't make sense in the numbers to suggest that the samples may be a little way off from what actually comes out.


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## Blackwolf (Nov 10, 2012)

Resurrecting an old topic..

But, does anyone have some first-hand knowledge on how this venture is working out? Considering I've not heard a peep about Iowa Pacific's Pullman service in some months, I got curious. They are selling accommodations, and the next scheduled departure is from Chicago this Wednesday (Nov. 14th) enroute to New Orleans (I imagine hitched to the back of CONO.) According to the website, all choices of accommodation on that trip are still available... I'm not sure that is a good sign.


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## MikefromCrete (Nov 10, 2012)

According to Trains News Wire, they held a dedication of their New Orleans equipment in Chicago last week, five cars, I think, painted in the old IC's colors of chocolate brown and orange. So, they're just getting started.


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## Tumbleweed (Nov 10, 2012)

dlagrua said:


> The New Pullman company has now posted loads of new info on the service including accommodation prices. The cost of the Pullamn rail journeys are not inexpensive but it appears that they are providing a true first class experience.
> 
> I believe that the prices are only for sleepers. The cost of dining in probably additional.
> 
> ...


linky no workee here....


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## ScottRu (Nov 10, 2012)

Alas, the "Travel by Pullman," and the "Pullman Roster" links seem to have been pulled. I'll try to track them down on YouTube.


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## PRR 60 (Nov 10, 2012)

Try this link:

Travel by Pullman


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## ScottRu (Nov 10, 2012)

This is a fun conversation. JIS's concept of the "Law of Exponential Whine Intensity" was really a highlight for me!


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## ScottRu (Nov 10, 2012)

And PRR60, thanks... that link works!


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## Steve4031 (Nov 10, 2012)

I wonder when the regular service starts in 2013. There are only a few trips available for right now.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Nov 11, 2012)

Wow, I love the full-length dome! The problem is that IC never had any! Also, it's not the full expierience without the glory of a 15-car train with steam heating and cab units! Close, very close, though!


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## me_little_me (Nov 11, 2012)

Blackwolf said:


> Resurrecting an old topic..
> 
> But, does anyone have some first-hand knowledge on how this venture is working out? Considering I've not heard a peep about Iowa Pacific's Pullman service in some months, I got curious. They are selling accommodations, and the next scheduled departure is from Chicago this Wednesday (Nov. 14th) enroute to New Orleans (I imagine hitched to the back of CONO.) According to the website, all choices of accommodation on that trip are still available... I'm not sure that is a good sign.


I would be hesitant about trusting their web site yet. As a lark, yesterday I tried to see what the reservation procedure was. I picked Nov 14 from Chicago. There was A type compartment for $1900+ (for 2), B type (for 2) for $0.00 then C & D for $800/$500 (if I remember correctly). So I picked B. It actually let me select it then wanted to know if I wanted electronic ticketing ($0.00) or mailed tickets ($25.00). I chose electronic. Then it took me to the pay page. At that point I decided not to enter my CC info even though the price was $0.00. What would happen if I did?


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## Bob Dylan (Nov 11, 2012)

It's a nice looking O,peration for sure and IF one can Afford it, probably Worth it! Personally I think putting the $$ into trips on the Ocean and the Canadian would be more value for the dollar! The CONO and the LSL are not the best Routes Amtrak runs, wonder why they didnt use the Zephyr, Chief or the Empire Builder for these Land Cruises??

Disclaimer: Wish I could afford to ride anyway! :giggle:


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## Devil's Advocate (Nov 11, 2012)

jimhudson said:


> It's a nice looking O,peration for sure and IF one can Afford it, probably Worth it! Personally I think putting the $$ into trips on the Ocean and the Canadian would be more value for the dollar! The CONO and the LSL are not the best Routes Amtrak runs, wonder why they didnt use the Zephyr, Chief or the Empire Builder for these Land Cruises??


My thoughts exactly Jim!

At first glance I would think I'm among the sort of people they're trying to tempt with this level of service, but their current routing options are of no interest to me whatsoever. A big part of what makes _The Canadian_ worth the cash outlay is that the natural beauty of the route is every bit as impressive as the hardware that plies the route. It's a great package that goes together well and helps lift your money right out of your wallet. CZ, SC, EB, or CS? You can bet I'd probably be among the first to register. But the CONO and LSL? Nah, I don't have any need or desire to ride those routes in luxury. Or coach for that matter. Just not something I'm interested in.


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## Gratt (Nov 11, 2012)

jimhudson said:


> It's a nice looking O,peration for sure and IF one can Afford it, probably Worth it! Personally I think putting the $$ into trips on the Ocean and the Canadian would be more value for the dollar! The CONO and the LSL are not the best Routes Amtrak runs, wonder why they didnt use the Zephyr, Chief or the Empire Builder for these Land Cruises??
> 
> Disclaimer: Wish I could afford to ride anyway! :giggle:



Agreed, I think such a premimum service would do nicely on the "out west" trains like the CZ and the SWC. The reason though I bet they picked the CONO and the LSL is that a shorter trip allows equpiment to be turned and used more often. It also makes it easier to keep food stocked and fresh on each trip.

So I guess they are betting they will get "more bang for their buck" on these routes. Though I really hope the next line will either be the Card or CZ


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## afigg (Nov 11, 2012)

jimhudson said:


> It's a nice looking O,peration for sure and IF one can Afford it, probably Worth it! Personally I think putting the $$ into trips on the Ocean and the Canadian would be more value for the dollar! The CONO and the LSL are not the best Routes Amtrak runs, wonder why they didnt use the Zephyr, Chief or the Empire Builder for these Land Cruises??


The single night trip costs less to operate and aims at a different travel market than a 2 night Chicago to west coast service. The prices for a 2 night trip for CHI to LAX, based on their current prices, might be in the $2K to $5K range, which is a lot. The economics of and market for a 2 night trip, for what they are doing, has to be shakier than the one night service. At the prices they are charging, they are not going after the railfan - although there will be some who book the service, but the high income and wealthy individuals who live in NYC and Chicago who will take a luxury overnight train in place of flying to CHI or NYC.

I wonder why they started with the Chicago to New Orleans route, but that may have been the easier route to start and allows them to get the kinks out of their service before starting up the more lucrative CHI-NYP run. If the market is serving cities which have a lot of people with money, Miami has that. If the Chicago to NYC service does well, I would think that a seasonal NYC/Philly/DC to Orlando & Miami Pullman service on the Silver Meteor might work. Yes, Pullman is currently operating out of Chicago, but could run a peak season operation out of NYC for interim periods.

My take on the Pullman Rail Journeys is that we should not look at it like a rail fan, but instead at where are the cities with a significant proportion of high net worth or high income individuals who have enough leisure time that they will consider taking a day to travel on the train for fun. NYC and Chicago make the cut on having enough wealthy people.


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## TraneMan (Nov 11, 2012)

Are they pulled behind the CONO, or do they have their own loco?


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## Devil's Advocate (Nov 11, 2012)

Well, I have no idea who they're targeting right now. Wealthy people would presumably be able to charter a car wherever they wanted to go. This service won't really cater to folks like that. Rail fans may not be rich but they might be willing to save up and splurge on a luxury rail trip as we've seen in numerous trip reports on this very forum. Folks like me, who aren't rich but have little or no debt to worry about can afford these sorts of trips by controlling spending elsewhere in the budget. Once you start traveling internationally $2K - $5K doesn't sound quite so outlandish anymore. My vacation time is usually in short supply but I've still managed to take weekend trips as far away as Tokyo as it's much easier to get a Friday and Monday off than a full week. In any case my guess is that this service is intended for professionals who are curious about passenger rail and want a step up from the current sleeper class. Another theory is that this service is intended to help capture sales of folks who book late and find the Amtrak cars sold out. Unfortunately, since Amtrak apparently has no reservation agreement with the Pullman operation I'm doubtful most folks who encounter sold out trains will even be aware that this option exists. Seems like some sort of commission or revenue sharing arrangement would be highly preferable to the current scenario where folks just randomly stumble upon this. Are there any signs or other indicators at the stations where these cars operate?


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## Blackwolf (Nov 11, 2012)

jimhudson said:


> Agreed, I think such a premimum service would do nicely on the "out west" trains like the CZ and the SWC. The reason though I bet they picked the CONO and the LSL is that a shorter trip allows equpiment to be turned and used more often. It also makes it easier to keep food stocked and fresh on each trip.
> 
> So I guess they are betting they will get "more bang for their buck" on these routes. Though I really hope the next line will either be the Card or CZ


I generally agree with this as the main reasons for choosing this route first. The CONO is also one of Amtrak's shortest trains in terms of consist length, which also plays into the decision when adding an additional 6 heavyweight cars on the tail. As it is, Amtrak is placing a second locomotive at the point when hauling the Pullman cars, where-as the CONO would normally only run with one. When it comes time to run on the LSL, things could be interesting. I'm seeing three locomotives on the point very soon, including two dual-modes into NYP.

Maybe, if it proves to be a successful venture, we'll see the Western LD trains being added into the mix. Lets say, 5 years from now? They will need to refurbish more than the handfull of cars they have currently. Might need to have a fleet of 20 or more, which will not be cheap (or easy to pry away from current PV owners!)



TraneMan said:


> Are they pulled behind the CONO, or do they have their own loco?


They have to use Amtrak for a myriad of reasons. For the foreseeable future (if they continue to exist more than a few years and then fizzle out like AOE) the Pullman service will be permanently hitched to the back of a standard Amtrak consist like a red-headed stepchild.


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## cirdan (Nov 12, 2012)

I'm surprised there has been very little news on this. If IP wants to fill these cars they need to get the message out so as many people as possible find out about it. Aside from RR forums, i have not seen or heard any discussions or announcements.


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## dlagrua (Nov 12, 2012)

While I applaud Pullman for offering premium passenger rail service, it seems that they are doing very little to market it. Currently the only service is from Chicago to New Orleans. Will the CONO route be enough to support future market growth? IMO the LSL route would have been a better starting point. It's often hard to get a sleeper on that train, the sleepers often sell out and high bucket fares are the norm. There is also a large amount of rich people living in Manhattan and that marketplace is loaded with high end/upscale hotels and restaurants. I wonder how the service is doing on the CONO route.

I always believed that the future of Amtrak, included replacing their sleepers (on some routes) with those owned and run by an outside service (or selling some routes off to private railroads) but there is no indication that this is even being considered. With the huge deficit and fiscal crisis that Washington has created, (and now has to deal with) anything may be possible. Time will tell. .


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Nov 12, 2012)

My understanding is....

The current runs on the City of New Orleans is for training. They do plan to use this route for service.

The New York and Chicago route that has not seen a train, will be the Capitol Limited route east to Pittsburgh then connect with the Pennsylvanian to New York. Still waiting on that switch in Pittsburgh. Also may change if the Lake Shore Limited flips with the Capitol Limited.

Iowa Pacific owns over 100 passenger cars in various stages of renovation or regular-use assignments.

Also one thinks the marketing for these trains is been done to non-railfan sites / ways. I think the few posting done on fan web sites by the Owners are bring the need buzz to this venture. However the main target are not foamers.

Side note did anyone see the full page Ad for the Rocky Mountaineer in the USA Today newspaper.


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## afigg (Nov 12, 2012)

Texas Sunset said:


> Well, I have no idea who they're targeting right now. Wealthy people would presumably be able to charter a car wherever they wanted to go. This service won't really cater to folks like that. Rail fans may not be rich but they might be willing to save up and splurge on a luxury rail trip as we've seen in numerous trip reports on this very forum. Folks like me, who aren't rich but have little or no debt to worry about can afford these sorts of trips by controlling spending elsewhere in the budget. Once you start traveling internationally $2K - $5K doesn't sound quite so outlandish anymore. My vacation time is usually in short supply but I've still managed to take weekend trips as far away as Tokyo as it's much easier to get a Friday and Monday off than a full week. In any case my guess is that this service is intended for professionals who are curious about passenger rail and want a step up from the current sleeper class. Another theory is that this service is intended to help capture sales of folks who book late and find the Amtrak cars sold out. Unfortunately, since Amtrak apparently has no reservation agreement with the Pullman operation I'm doubtful most folks who encounter sold out trains will even be aware that this option exists. Seems like some sort of commission or revenue sharing arrangement would be highly preferable to the current scenario where folks just randomly stumble upon this. Are there any signs or other indicators at the stations where these cars operate?


I was not writing about the really wealthy people who would charter a private biz jet to travel between NYC and CHI. Or own their own biz jet. The market for the Pullman are the higher income and comfortably off types who can afford to pay $2K or $4K without worrying about it. NYC has more millionaires than any other place in the US by a respectable margin as I recall.

With the high prices and premium service, I don't see Pullman getting that much business from people switching because the LSL or CONO is sold out. I would expect that ads for Pullman will be on the Amtrak website once the Pullman service is fully operational. Whether Pullman would pay for a link option in the Amtrak reservation system when someone enters CHI<->NYP and CHI<->NOL for the dates that the Pullman cars are running, don't know. The Pullman service is still in the early stages, we will find out more as it rolls out. Then we will find out whether it can succeed or not over the next year or so.

I expect there will be changes in how they operate such as selling rooms to/from intermediate stops on the routes, Memphis for CONO. The CHI-NYP situation is more complex because Pullman is apparently looking at running on both the LSL and CL/Pennsylvanian combo. If the Three Rivers or a Broadway Limited were still running, I think that would be the preferred route for the Pullman service because they could sell rooms to/from NYC, Philly, and perhaps Pittsburgh. There are a lot of well off people in the Philadelphia area.


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## AlanB (Nov 12, 2012)

dlagrua said:


> I always believed that the future of Amtrak, included replacing their sleepers (on some routes) with those owned and run by an outside service (or selling some routes off to private railroads) but there is no indication that this is even being considered. With the huge deficit and fiscal crisis that Washington has created, (and now has to deal with) anything may be possible. Time will tell. .


Why would Amtrak or smart Government ever consider such an idea when it would increase the loss for Amtrak by doing so?

As NARP showed in their study from a few years ago, that the cost per passenger mile for Amtrak is $0.1870; if Amtrak takes away the sleepers the cost for those in coach was $0.1888 per passenger mile. In other words, getting rid of the sleepers would increase the needed subsidies for those in coach.

And the loss of the sleepers would probably also mean the loss of the dining car, which might decrease ridership in coach and further increase the subsidy.


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## cirdan (Nov 12, 2012)

afigg said:


> I was not writing about the really wealthy people who would charter a private biz jet to travel between NYC and CHI. Or own their own biz jet. The market for the Pullman are the higher income and comfortably off types who can afford to pay $2K or $4K without worrying about it. NYC has more millionaires than any other place in the US by a respectable margin as I recall.


Just as a matter of interest, are there still many people who own and travel in their own PV?

That probably compares to a private jet cost-wise, but would take a more railroad-inclined person.


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## Devil's Advocate (Nov 12, 2012)

cirdan said:


> Just as a matter of interest, are there still many people who own and travel in their own PV? That probably compares to a private jet cost-wise, but would take a more railroad-inclined person.


Private varnish is similar in cost to a nice house. A private jet is similar in cost to_ DOZENS _of nice houses.


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## dlagrua (Nov 12, 2012)

In reply to AlanB's rebuttal:

Why would Amtrak or smart Government ever consider such an idea when it would increase the loss for Amtrak by doing so?

>>>>Since when has government become smart?

As NARP showed in their study from a few years ago, that the cost per passenger mile for Amtrak is $0.1870; if Amtrak takes away the sleepers the cost for those in coach was $0.1888 per passenger mile. In other words, getting rid of the sleepers would increase the needed subsidies for those in coach.

>>>>>>Very true. I am aware of these cost figures and do not dispute them. If a private concern took over the sleepers they would have to pay Amtrak for the privilege to do so. Like all other cutthroat businesses these days, Amtrak could then downsize and cut costs.

And the loss of the sleepers would probably also mean the loss of the dining car, which might decrease ridership in coach and further increase the subsidy.

>>>>>>> True again, but with all of the Amtrak haters in Washington and being faced with an acute fiscal crisis who knows what will be proposed, cut or sold off. We have already heard some politic ans imply that de-funding Amtrak is a primary objective to eliminating the US deficit.. Some politic ans either believe this or that government has no business in passenger rail. Point is that logic doesn't seem to apply.

Like yourself (and many others here) I am a proponent of Amtrak but I feel very uneasy with the direction that Washington may take in the next few years .. I hope that for the good of the American people, Amtrak continues to grow or at the very least is maintained as it is. Admittedly, the scenarios presented here are far fetched but when the fiscal cliff approaches, anything may be possible. You appear to disagree and I hope that you are correct, but take a look at what is now happening at the US Post office for a preview of things to come. Am I really that far off the mark????


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## jis (Nov 12, 2012)

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> My understanding is....
> 
> The current runs on the City of New Orleans is for training. They do plan to use this route for service.
> 
> The New York and Chicago route that has not seen a train, will be the Capitol Limited route east to Pittsburgh then connect with the Pennsylvanian to New York. Still waiting on that switch in Pittsburgh. Also may change if the Lake Shore Limited flips with the Capitol Limited.


No additional switch is needed in Pittsburgh to manage the car shuffling needed in the eastbound direction. The crossover that we hear about is needed for doing the same shuffle in reverse in the westbound direction. So the eastbound can already be run via Pittsburgh without any new crossover construction. Indeed I believe their preference might be to run it westbound via Pittsburgh too, if they could, but currently they can't.

As for using the LSL eastbound .... on the eastbound tacked onto the LSL they'd have a somewhat serious problem at Penn Station with the tail of the train sticking out and fouling part of the A Interlocking ladder blocking access to tracks 1 through 4 completely, which would be entirely unacceptable. For the westbound the tail would still foul part of the interlocking in the east but much less severe consequences, since that will not make tracks 1 through 4 inaccessible any more than they already are from that end.

There really is no track available at Penn Station that is accessible from the Empire Connection that can hold 12 or 13 cars plus an engine or two AFAICT.


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## johnny.menhennet (Nov 12, 2012)

jis said:


> Just-Thinking-51 said:
> 
> 
> > My understanding is....
> ...


This is the most helpful post I've seen in this topic. Thank you jis. That clears a lot up.


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## AlanB (Nov 12, 2012)

jis said:


> There really is no track available at Penn Station that is accessible from the Empire Connection that can hold 12 or 13 cars plus an engine or two AFAICT.


Yeah, tracks 7 & 8, with 8 being the last track that can still get to the Empire connection, can both support a 13 car train. But that leaves no room for an engine. And maybe, just maybe, track 8 could support 1 car/engine hanging off the platform without fowling any interlocking if they hung half the engine off at one end and half a car off the other end.


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## Devil's Advocate (Nov 12, 2012)

afigg said:


> I was not writing about the really wealthy people who would charter a private biz jet to travel between NYC and CHI. Or own their own biz jet.


Neither was I. Private jets, private yachts, and exotic sports and luxury cars are mainstream purchases among wealthy individuals. While private varnish is a rarther sparse secondary market of limited appeal, even among the extremely wealthy. For example, who is still making brand new private rail cars the same way numerous brands are still making brand new private jets and luxury yachts and exotic automobiles? Nobody I know of. Private varnish is a market that is so tiny compared to other luxury transportation that it's barely on the map at all.

In my experience $2k-$4k is a mainstream international trip for those who are able to participate in such things. Some folks may only manage a single week of five star service out of that amount, while others may be able to manage a month or two of one-star service, but in general international trips aren't cheap. I only know a few millionaires but none of them own private jets. Even a fractional jet contract would dwarf the cost of owning and maintaining private varnish.

On the other hand, asking $2k-$4K for a private varnish ticket on the CS, CZ, EB, or SC would be nothing but a tiny drop in the bucket to a millionaire and would still be workable for many in an upper middle class bracket who are familiar traveling abroad and willing to save up for a special trip. I'm not wealthy by any first world measure, but even those kinds of prices are within my range of workable expenses if I felt I was getting my money's worth and was willing to cut back on other expenses. On my last AGR ticket the cash cost would have been damn near $2,000 each way, so we're not even that far from Amtrak's own sleeper rates at this point.


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## afigg (Nov 12, 2012)

jis said:


> As for using the LSL eastbound .... on the eastbound tacked onto the LSL they'd have a somewhat serious problem at Penn Station with the tail of the train sticking out and fouling part of the A Interlocking ladder blocking access to tracks 1 through 4 completely, which would be entirely unacceptable. For the westbound the tail would still foul part of the interlocking in the east but much less severe consequences, since that will not make tracks 1 through 4 inaccessible any more than they already are from that end.
> 
> There really is no track available at Penn Station that is accessible from the Empire Connection that can hold 12 or 13 cars plus an engine or two AFAICT.


Ah, I had not heard nor thought about the problems an extra long LSL consist would have pulling into NYP from the Empire tunnel. Thanks for posting this. Now the plan to go eastbound on the CL & Pennsylvanian and westbound on the LSL makes sense. Interesting track interlocking and connector constraints are into play to add the Pullman service cars to the trains.

Are there any reported dates or ballpark guesses as to when Amtrak might start on and then complete the re-build of the A interlocking ladder? That would allow an eastbound LSL with the Pullman cars to access the 17 car long platforms.


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Nov 12, 2012)

jis said:


> No additional switch is needed in Pittsburgh to manage the car shuffling needed in the eastbound direction. The crossover that we hear about is needed for doing the same shuffle in reverse in the westbound direction. So the eastbound can already be run via Pittsburgh without any new crossover construction. Indeed I believe their preference might be to run it westbound via Pittsburgh too, if they could, but currently they can't.
> 
> As for using the LSL eastbound .... on the eastbound tacked onto the LSL they'd have a somewhat serious problem at Penn Station with the tail of the train sticking out and fouling part of the A Interlocking ladder blocking access to tracks 1 through 4 completely, which would be entirely unacceptable. For the westbound the tail would still foul part of the interlocking in the east but much less severe consequences, since that will not make tracks 1 through 4 inaccessible any more than they already are from that end.
> 
> There really is no track available at Penn Station that is accessible from the Empire Connection that can hold 12 or 13 cars plus an engine or two AFAICT.


Thank you Jis.

This is a much bigger problem, I wonder when they found out, and how there going to service NYC now? That is if they are even going to try.

However I did notice last time I grab the west bound Lake Shore Limited (On a Sunday) there was a very noticable lull in the action before the board call. Maybe it can stick out past the platform. Might not work during the week but....


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## jis (Nov 12, 2012)

They won't have a problem running the way they plan to with 4 cars. Five will create problems I think. Eventually when the corssover is put in place at the westend of PGH they will be able to run it on the Cap and Pennsy both ways. The Pennsy has access to the longest platforms at NYP, so it will be no problem to place these cars on it. Besides going around the Horseshoe Curve is probably worth something afterall.


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## Blackwolf (Dec 21, 2012)

Learned some rather troubling news about Pullman Rail Journeys while on the CZ this last Tuesday.

Had lunch while passing through Glenwood Springs with a gentleman and his wife, and learned that he was/is the shop foreman for one of Iowa Pacific's car shops. Long story short, he's laid off currently and the shop is closed as the company (specifically, Pullman Rail Journeys, though indirectly this is IP as well) is grappling with 26 million dollars worth of debt to get all the cars ready, hire crews and then pay Amtrak to get the CONO service started.

As of the first week of December, Pullman Rail Journeys have been indefinitely suspended. This is not a rumor; Amtrak has embargoed PRJ's entire rolling stock and currently cars are marooned in Chicago as well as New Orleans.

The reason for the embargo is, the week after Thanksgiving on a north-bound haul toward Chicago, the axle of one of he PRJ sleepers snapped. The man did not state which sleeper it was, but said it was a six-axle heavyweight and the axle that broke was the middle of the first truck. The event resulted in a minor derail, and luckily the train was traveling at low speeds when it occurred. The PRJ consist was set off at the nearest siding, the Amtrak operating crew refusing to pull the PRJ consist the rest of the way to Chicago. No word on what happened with the PRJ passengers, but a freight locomotive pulled the cars in question (including the one with the broken axle) the rest of the way to Chicago as a dead-head move.

Until a full investigation is completed, Amtrak has cancelled the contract for Pullman Rail Journeys.

Sad... Seems they might be done before ever really starting.


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## MikefromCrete (Dec 21, 2012)

The last two cars of the Pullman consist were pulled (the car with the broken axle was second from the last) with the remaining Pulllman cars taken to Chicago. Reports said CN banned any Pullman cars from its tracks, perhaps Amtrak has also. Some really bad timing since the accident occurred on the first round trip on the CONO route.


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## cirdan (Dec 21, 2012)

How sad.

Right now, the booking system still seems to be open.

I do hope they manage to get this fixed and get a service running. I was looking forward to travelling ... one day, maybe to celebrate some special occasion.


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## dlagrua (Dec 21, 2012)

I would say that the Pullman service was an I'll conceived idea. Lightweight streamliners with NEW trucks would have been a far better option. Private varnish probably ride the rails often but for a 3X weekly service they may need to run on new wheel truck assemblies. Nothing wrong with running historic/heritage equipment as Amtrak does it every day but it must be rebuild properly


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## Ctim2 (Dec 22, 2012)

I thought I heard that they were running with borrowed PV equipment?

Tim


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## Agent (Dec 22, 2012)

Ctim2 said:


> I thought I heard that they were running with borrowed PV equipment?
> 
> Tim


That's what I heard.


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## TVRM610 (Dec 23, 2012)

I'm very interested to see what happens with this company.... I've never really understood the goal. It seems to me they would be better off running a first class train on a route that is not served by Amtrak but would be marketable to travelers with money... Like Chicago to Tampa via Atlanta and Orlando. Then the sales pitch is "take the fancy train to florida" rather that "ride our fancy train instead of Amtrak".

What I have heard is that Pullman isn't trying for luxury as much as a historic Pullman experience. Which of course by its very nature is first class.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Dec 23, 2012)

TVRM610 said:


> I'm very interested to see what happens with this company.... I've never really understood the goal. It seems to me they would be better off running a first class train on a route that is not served by Amtrak but would be marketable to travelers with money... Like Chicago to Tampa via Atlanta and Orlando. Then the sales pitch is "take the fancy train to florida" rather that "ride our fancy train instead of Amtrak".
> 
> What I have heard is that Pullman isn't trying for luxury as much as a historic Pullman experience. Which of course by its very nature is first class.


I agree. I don't think this will end up working out. These private trains without subsides keep on failing. That heavyweight sleeper definately needed a new truck, maybe it's not so bad on the lightweights.


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## MikefromCrete (Dec 24, 2012)

TVRM610 said:


> I'm very interested to see what happens with this company.... I've never really understood the goal. It seems to me they would be better off running a first class train on a route that is not served by Amtrak but would be marketable to travelers with money... Like Chicago to Tampa via Atlanta and Orlando. Then the sales pitch is "take the fancy train to florida" rather that "ride our fancy train instead of Amtrak".
> 
> What I have heard is that Pullman isn't trying for luxury as much as a historic Pullman experience. Which of course by its very nature is first class.


It's a lot easier to add cars to an existing Amtrak train than to arrange passage with a freight railroad over a non-passenger route, provide for locomotives, crews, etc. The company would have to have success with its initial routes before adding expensive standalone service.


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## Anderson (Dec 24, 2012)

Swadian Hardcore said:


> TVRM610 said:
> 
> 
> > I'm very interested to see what happens with this company.... I've never really understood the goal. It seems to me they would be better off running a first class train on a route that is not served by Amtrak but would be marketable to travelers with money... Like Chicago to Tampa via Atlanta and Orlando. Then the sales pitch is "take the fancy train to florida" rather that "ride our fancy train instead of Amtrak".
> ...


On its own, AOE wasn't a failure and didn't collapse because of a lack of business...it failed because of corporate mishandling elsewhere in the company. Big difference, and a meaningful difference at that.


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## TVRM610 (Dec 24, 2012)

MikefromCrete said:


> It's a lot easier to add cars to an existing Amtrak train than to arrange passage with a freight railroad over a non-passenger route, provide for locomotives, crews, etc. The company would have to have success with its initial routes before adding expensive standalone service.


Oh yes I agree. I know that the current service was / is a test for future services. I just think that IF they want to continue in the future it would make more sense to start a new service. I know I would be much more inclined to pay a higher fare if I got to ride a route that I can't ride any other way.

For what it's worth... the company does own some old classic passenger locomotives that are usable on the mainline (they were used when they ran dinner trains out of Chicago Union Station). Of course the locomotives are the easy part compared to scheduling with freight railroads etc.


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## TVRM610 (Dec 24, 2012)

Anderson said:


> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> > TVRM610 said:
> ...


Can I ask for more details? I never really knew why AOE ended... or the Grande Luxe after them... any details you can share? (feel free to PM me if it would go terribly off topic)


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## Anderson (Dec 24, 2012)

TVRM610 said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > Swadian Hardcore said:
> ...


Ok, this is just my understanding, but I believe that AOE/Grand Luxe got merged in with Colorado Railcar (I'm not 100% certain it was Colorado, but that's the name that comes to mind). Colorado got into trouble due to management issues, Grand Luxe's reserve funds got raided, and the whole thing went bust when the money ran out, with the luxury passenger operation (which I believe was still viable) getting dragged down.

Also, I'd point out that AOE/Grand Luxe _did_ last about 20 years...while it went belly up in the end, I'd bet that the original owners/investors didn't do too badly for themselves.


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## AlanB (Dec 24, 2012)

I'm not sure if Tom Rader was the original owner of AOE or not. I think he was, but again I'm not sure. Regardless Tom was also responsible for the Florida Fun Train many years ago. After that failed, he setup Rader Railcar, which then became Colorado Rail Car. I'm not sure if he actually raided the funds from Grand Luxe, but regardless as CRC failed, it pulled down the entire empire including Grand Luxe. I suspect that Grand Luxe's attempts to run cars on the back of Amtrak trains like the company that started off this topic, may have also hurt, as those runs did not sell well at all. Most ended up being cancelled. I tried booking one, and it was cancelled when I called. They did run a few trips, but a majority were cancelled before they ever ran.

I personally thought that they picked the wrong time of the year to start operations. I'm not sure if they would have succeeded had they started in the summer, but starting around the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday period I believe caused some of the sales issues.

The State of Oregon actually had to step in and prop up CRC for almost a year, just so they could get their DMU's finished and out of the shop so that they could start their commuter service.


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## TVRM610 (Dec 24, 2012)

So was AOE and Grand Luxe the same company? I assumed Grand Luxe was someone purchasing the remains of AOE when it failed. I guess I never thought someone would "rebrand" a company with such a great name as AOE to something so dull.


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## Anderson (Dec 24, 2012)

TVRM610 said:


> So was AOE and Grand Luxe the same company? I assumed Grand Luxe was someone purchasing the remains of AOE when it failed. I guess I never thought someone would "rebrand" a company with such a great name as AOE to something so dull.


That's something I've never been clear on, either. I know there was a succession, but I'm not sure how it went.


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Dec 24, 2012)

TVRM610 said:


> So was AOE and Grand Luxe the same company? I assumed Grand Luxe was someone purchasing the remains of AOE when it failed. I guess I never thought someone would "rebrand" a company with such a great name as AOE to something so dull.


No American Orient Express and Grand Luxe were different companies. When AOE shut down the equipment was sold to the next operator which named it "Grand Luxe". They could not use the name AOE due to pending legal action from the European train operator.

Also there was two version of AOE. 1st try was high-end rooms and dinning on the tail of Amtrak train. 2nd was the land cruise. Then the equipment was sold to Colorado Railcar family renamed "Grand Luxe". The equipment is currently getting rebuild again for the Greenburg express.

Google is your friend on this sad story line.


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