Amtrak heritage cars retirement thread

[edjbox]

Since there is a topic for when viewliners will come on line, this topic will complement it in discussing which heritage cars are being retired. Anyone with any news please post here

 

[HeritageBags]

Baggage car 1234 is enroute to Beech Grove via the Capitol Limited right now. A couple other 1200 series cars have gone to Beech for storage in the past few weeks. Probably some others, too. Looks like 1756 is on 851 to IND today.

 

[R30A]

Copying and pasting from my post yesterday on RR.net trying to track the same thing:

Considering that the Viewliner Baggage cars are said to be going into service tomorrow, I figured now is as good a time as any to start tracking the retirement of Heritage baggage cars.

The Fleet as it stood prior to the ordering of the Viewliner fleet: (Italicized are the cars retired between 2009 and now. Active cars in bold. Some retirements may have slipped by me.)

1953 ATSF Budd baggage cars:
1159-1164, 1203-1204, 1206, 1211, 1212, 1216, 1221, 1234-1235, 1237, 1241-1242, 1245, 1247-1248, 1855, 1857

1955 ATSF ACF baggage cars:
1252, 1253, 1255, 1257, 1260

1957 ATSF Budd baggage cars:
1230-1232, 1249

1957 Pullman Standard baggage carsACL and NP respectively)
1132, 1135

1950 SP Budd 44 Seat Coach conversions:
1709, 1754, 1760

1953 ATSF Budd 48 Seat Coach conversions:
1702-1703, 1705, 1707, 1708, 1710-1712, 1714-1717, 1720, 1750, 1761

1954 SP Budd 44 Seat Coach conversions:
1721, 1751-1753, 1755, 1762-1763

1961 UP Budd 44 Seat Coach conversions:
1701, 1730-1731, 1733-1736, 1738, 1756-1759

(Above comes from my notes, which rely heavily on Amtrak by the Numbers by Elbert Simon and David Warner, and the Wayner Car Spotters,in addition to the On-Track-On-Line website, and Passenger Train Annual 1988)

 

[edjbox]

Which baggage car was on the Carolinian?

 

[Bus Nut]

Surprised that Budd bags would be put out to pasture before the rattletrap coach conversions, but what do I know. (See username.)

 

[edjbox]

Which baggage car was on the Carolinian that was involved in the recent wreck? Looked like a converted baggage/mail to me but can't tell the number

 

[R30A]

1755 iinm

 

[CREW DORM#2524]

1755. It's still sitting along with E#185 in Rocky Mount.

 

[Anderson]

Surprised that Budd bags would be put out to pasture before the rattletrap coach conversions, but what do I know. (See username.)

It's probably a case of Amtrak moving to retire almost all of them over the course of a few months. I count 71 baggage cars above, versus I believe 80 bags/bag-dorms Amtrak bought in the Viewliner II order (55+25 turned to 65+15 IIRC). Honestly, Amtrak is probably going to move them all to Beech Grove and then evaluate which (if any) it wants to hold as spares/backups in the event that an issue arises with the Viewliner IIs over the next 2-3 years.

 

[PRR 60]

Surprised that Budd bags would be put out to pasture before the rattletrap coach conversions, but what do I know. (See username.)

It's probably a case of Amtrak moving to retire almost all of them over the course of a few months. I count 71 baggage cars above, versus I believe 80 bags/bag-dorms Amtrak bought in the Viewliner II order (55+25 turned to 65+15 IIRC). Honestly, Amtrak is probably going to move them all to Beech Grove and then evaluate which (if any) it wants to hold as spares/backups in the event that an issue arises with the Viewliner IIs over the next 2-3 years.

Current order: 70 full baggage cars, 10 baggage-dorm cars, 25 diners, 25 sleepers.

 

[Seaboard92]

Just saw a 1700 series on the crescent

 

[edjbox]

With the many new viewliner ii baggage cars now in service which old baggage cars have been retired since the spring?

 

[dlagrua]

Anyone know how many Viewliner II Baggage cars and Baggage dorms have been deployed to date? On our last couple of trips we have only seen many Viewliner II Baggage cars and no Baggage dorms. When we left denver on Aug 9 the EB CZ arrived delivering a Viewliner II to Denver Union Station. We departed and the Baggage car remained on the far siding. We had no idea what this was all about but again we saw these cars on various Amtrak trains at that time.

 

[keelhauled]

57 baggage cars have been delivered. 0 bag-dorms. I believe they are in service on all Eastern trains and the Empire Builder.

 

[Acela150]

Anyone know how many Viewliner II Baggage cars and Baggage dorms have been deployed to date? On our last couple of trips we have only seen many Viewliner II Baggage cars and no Baggage dorms. When we left denver on Aug 9 the EB CZ arrived delivering a Viewliner II to Denver Union Station. We departed and the Baggage car remained on the far siding. We had no idea what this was all about but again we saw these cars on various Amtrak trains at that time.

You would and will know when the m

Bag dorms are released.

Delivered a VL II for training most likely.

 

[neroden]

There's actually something slightly odd going on. There are enough Viewliner baggage cars delivered (57) to support all the trains with baggage cars (required: 51 if I'm not mistaken) plus spares. The Sunset, Chief, Zephyr, and Starlight are still using Heritage baggage cars, which is *18*. That seems really high given the number of Viewliner baggage cars available.

Maybe there's something else going on: not all the crews successfully trained on the new cars yet, or a very large number of cars out of service for mods at any given time, or something.

 

[PVD]

I think a few of them (heritage bags) are used on trains w/o baggage service in the Midwest to bring some short consists up to minimum length required by one of the host railroads. CN comes to mind, but I might have that wrong. The number of bags in use can exceed the number of bags required for baggage service. The real number is how many are released for service, not delivered, since a bunch are still being used for training, and not all have been released from Hialeah.

 

[Thirdrail7]

R30A should have the numbers. BTW, I believe you can add 1762, 1731 and 1232 your existing count, R30a.

Additionally, not all delivered bags have been accepted for service at this time and mods are still underway on some of the accepted bags.

 

[MARC Rider]

57 baggage cars have been delivered. 0 bag-dorms. I believe they are in service on all Eastern trains and the Empire Builder.

I believe they're also in service on the Capitol Ltd. At least I see one on the Superliner trainset setting in the Ivy City yard every morning on the way to work.

 

[PaulM]

Baggage car 1234 is enroute to Beech Grove via the Capitol Limited right now.

I saw a derelict on the back of what I presume was the CL as I was boarding the south bound Illinois Zephyr in Chicago yesterday. But how would that get it to Beach Grove?

 

[R30A]

As of now, I have active:

1953 ATSF Budd Baggage:
1159-1164, 1204, 1206, 1237, 1241, 1247-1248

1955 ATSF ACF Baggage:
1260 (Likely the last ACF car on Amtrak's active roster)

1957 ATSF Budd Baggage:
1230-1231

1950 SP Budd 44 Seat Conversion:
1709, 1754, (1760)

1953 ATSF Budd 48 Seat Conversion:
1702-1703, 1705, 1708, 1710-1711, 1714, 1716-1717, 1750, 1761

1954 SP Budd 44 Seat Conversion:
1751-1753

1961 UP Budd 44 Seat Conversion:
1701, 1730, 1733, (1735), 1738, 1756-1757

Cars in parentheses are those with reported future retirement dates having passed, without any report of an actual retirement.
Sources remain the same, with the addition of ThirdRail7's contributions.
I may have missed a few here, Shout out if you see an error!

 

[neroden]

Wow. That's 39 still in service. I guess some of them are padding out the consists running on CN.

 

[ronkstevens]

Surprised that Budd bags would be put out to pasture before the rattletrap coach conversions, but what do I know. (See username.)

It's probably a case of Amtrak moving to retire almost all of them over the course of a few months. I count 71 baggage cars above, versus I believe 80 bags/bag-dorms Amtrak bought in the Viewliner II order (55+25 turned to 65+15 IIRC). Honestly, Amtrak is probably going to move them all to Beech Grove and then evaluate which (if any) it wants to hold as spares/backups in the event that an issue arises with the Viewliner IIs over the next 2-3 years.

The way that they are chopping up the AEM-7's, I doubt it. Probably check them out and see if there are any worth selling and scrap the rest as soon as they can.

 

[west point]

Some Heritage bags may be kept in CHI for the CN requirement of a certain number of axels on Amtrak trains on its tracks.

 

[edjbox]

Looks like 3 heritage baggage cars are in Wilmington, based from information and pictures from the nec fb group