Taste Within Reach
Train Attendant
Hey everyone! Can you help me clarify the different types of cars in the consist?
1. Locomotive
2. ?
3. ?
4. Superliner transdorm
5. Superliner Sleeper
6. Sightseer car
7. Diner car
Amtrak consists 2024
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Hey everyone! Can you help me clarify the different types of cars in the consist?
1. Locomotive
2. ?
3. ?
4. Superliner transdorm
5. Superliner Sleeper
6. Sightseer car
7. Diner car
That is a weird consist.
Front to rear:
-3 P42 locomotives, the rear 2 elephant style, unusual for Amtrak.
-Transdorm (spotting feature: forward half window on the upper level)
-Coach (spotting feature, no half window on the lower level on the blank side of the door)
-Another transdorm (?!)
- 3 coaches. The third one appears to have a non-existant lower level window pattern
-Sightseer
-Diner
-maybe a sleeper? Small and fuzzy, may have that lower half window, hard to tell.
This is not the consist of any revenue train. I think it has to be photoshopped or an AI generated picture.
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Note that Amtrak is notorious for photoshopping together consists for publicity photos so this probably isn't a real consist.
2 and 3 are also locomotives like #1.
5 is a Superliner Coach followed by another Transdorm, 2 coaches and, I can't tell what is in front of the lounge.
6 is Sightseer Lounge
7 is a Diner
Taste Within Reach
Train Attendant
Thanks! I'm curious, how to determine how many locomotives are needed for a route? By distance? I saw some consists led by 2 locomotives.
Thanks! Is there a specific order for the consist based on safety or installation regulations? For example:
- Car 2: TranDorm
- Car 3: Coach
- Car 4: Coach
- Car 5: TranDorm
- Car 6: Sleeper
...
It’s a photoshop picture.
No need to analyze it. The lack of numbers on the locomotive, the two transdorm cars. This train set is fake.
No need to analyze it. The lack of numbers on the locomotive, the two transdorm cars. This train set is fake.
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In my experience it would be very unusual to have a transdorm in the middle of the consist as in this example. The transdorm is almost always at the front end just behind the locomotives or just behind the baggage car if there is one. If a transdorm was being hauled deadhead (out of service) it would usually be at the front of the consist and ahead of the transdorm which is in service.
Consist length/weight.
Things Amtrak appears to consider when setting consists:
- Switching where enroute switching required Empire Builder, Lake Shore Limited, Sunset/Texas Eagle are examples.
- Security of baggage cars, baggage compartments are kept locked, passengers cannot pass through them.
- No pass through passenger traffic in dorms.
- Separation of classes, minimize pass through of Coach passengers through sleepers. Diners/cafes between Coach and sleepers.
- Access to vestibules for single level cars without vestibule. Reason vestibule ends of Viewliners are always next to diners.
Typical LD Superliner consist sequence for unswitched consists is baggage, transdorm, sleepers, diner, lounge coaches. For single level, Coaches, cafe, (diner), sleepers, baggage.
Switched consists are just each constituent train's consist coupled together. Sleepers on each end.
The consist in the picture is absurd and a fake.
A deadhead additional transdorm would usually be ahead of the baggage car, between it and the locomotives.
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west point
Engineer
Number of cars on a train depends mainly on the ruling grade of a route and the max draw bar HP to that consist. A P-42 looses a lot of HP when providing HEP. The newer ALCs provide more HP to drawbar when providing HEP which is variable depending on HEP draw variations. Best examples are SW chief over Raton that used to remove 3rd loco at ABQ westbound. Or CZ which needed extra HP westbound out of DEN.
Taste Within Reach
Train Attendant
Learn a lot from all the explanations. I just saw two diesel locomotives can run together, a practice known as double heading. They're connected using electrical cables and pneumatic hoses that synchronize the engines. This technology is called Multiple-Unit (MU) control. That's cool!
MU technology has been in place pretty much since the wide introduction of diesels into service in the late 1930's/1940s.
It was a bone of contention with the unions, since double heading steam engines could not be controlled together and required an engineer and fireman in each locomotive. MU'd diesels meant lost jobs. Railroads like Santa Fe would designate strings of 4 A-B-B-A Fs as one "locomotive" to get around it.
I have never heard the term double heading used in reference to diesels, only steam. Diesel have always run in multiple units since their introduction. If you think two is a lot, railfan some freight trains. You might see seven or eight. Though these days with radio controlled distributed power, big head end locomotive lash ups are becoming rarer. These days it might be more like 2 on the head end, 2 mid-train, 2 on the rear.
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I remember riding the old Desert Wind over Cajon Pass. It only had one unit and the dispatcher often routed it up the 3% South Track. The engineer would cut the HEP on the worst of the grade to get up it. Those were F40s
Looks like the first trans/dorm and coach are deadheading.
MU operation in freight service even included the Milwaukee Road's "two Joes and a Geep" combining two electric locomotives and one diesel-electric. The electric locomotives were added for the Cascade and Rocky Mountains.
Caesar La Rock
OBS Chief
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The Desert Wind use to have two locomotives prior to using only one locomotive on the train. Here is a video of an SDP40F/F40 combo leading the Desert Wind with Superliners sometime in 1980-81 and yes this video does have authentic sound. F40/SDP40F combinations were common on this train as well, since the remaining SDP40Fs were retrofitted with different cables, which allowed the HEP from the F40s to pass through the locomotive, and into the passenger cars.
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That is a very early iteration of the Desert Wind, during the Superliner transition era.
The consist is actually
Baggage
Heritage 10-6 sleeper (Pacific something) in revenue service
Hi Level transition coach.
Superliner Diner
Two Superliner coaches
Hi Level coach.
I make it to be 1981 sometime. I rode a similar consist in January 1981, the difference being that train only had an Amcafe running next to the 10-6, not a Superliner diner, a Hi Level transition coach, and a couple Superliner coaches.
It got Superliner sleepers in 1982 when they started running through sleepers switched to/from the SFZ at Ogden. When we rode in January 1981 sleeper passengers had to make a cross platform transfer from the SFZ to the Desert Wind's 10-6.
The mostly Superliner consist from 1982 for a few years generally included was a Hi Level transition coach, a couple Superliner/Hi Level coaches, a Superliner Diner, and a Superliner sleeper or two. In 1984 when we rode it again, they were running the Desert Wind's diner at least as far as Denver as well as the CZ's. The combined train through Colorado, which included the Pioneer not yet back on the UP, was impressively long and needed both diners.
In the later 80s it shortened up a bit. It pretty much ran a consist of a baggage, a Hi Level transition (which Amtrak had installed dorm rooms in the forward half of by then, but the rear was still coach used as overflow seating. Just about Superliner trains had those and they almost universally ran in the "10" car line). A couple coaches, a Hi Level Diner-Lounge (only running to Salt Lake) which Amtrak converted from a Hi Level Diner, and a Superliner sleeper. It was that era, with a single F40 and a 6 car consist, I recall them regularly shutting down HEP on Cajon Pass.
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That video nicely captured the mix of hi-level and Superliners common on the "Wind". Other than occasional guest appearances on the Texas Eagle, no train featured the ex-Santa Fe stock more in that era. One has to wonder how a VIA-style refurb of similar vintage cars would have extended their lives beyond just the PPC's.
The diners, lounges and transition coaches certainly were, as well as several of the "chair cars" - just can't be sure if all. The 6-axle diners were a regular feature on the DW, whether as the second diner on the Zephyr out of Chicago in peak season or added at Ogden/SLC (depending on the era). That train will always have a special fascination for me.
Yes
Caesar La Rock
OBS Chief
- Joined
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- Messages
- 716
They remained steam heat until the end of their careers as far as I know. The remaining units by that point were either traded in to EMD for more F40s or were traded in to the Santa Fe for switchers. In my opinion, Amtrak gave up too early on the SDP40Fs, especially when they didn't have no problem with the GE built P30CHs.
They should've retained a number of them for long distance trains. While the F40s were very good, they had issues on long distance trains like running out of fuel among other problems. SDP40Fs did run on the Santa Fe, Union Pacific, and SCL at speed without the derailment problems that plagued them on other railroads like BN, Penn Central (to be fair nothing was staying on the tracks let alone on time with that wreck of a railroad), and a few others I'm missing.
They had been purchased with the intent to make them the primary locomotives for long distance services.
The plan was to replace the steam generators with HEP generators, being able to provide HEP independent of the prime movers as Amtrak shifted to HEP. But as far as I know it was never implemented on any unit. The derailing issue came up and Amtrak shifted to F40s for everything (all Run 8 all the time to run HEP. We used to call them Blast Boxes). I hold no brief in any direction about that issue and their premature retirement from Amtrak, other than to say Amtrak deliberately bought SD's with C-C trucks to more easily dispose of them to freight railroads in the event Amtrak went under/was severely cut back. They did end up selling them to the freights, although not for the reason they thought they would.
The plan was to replace the steam generators with HEP generators, being able to provide HEP independent of the prime movers as Amtrak shifted to HEP. But as far as I know it was never implemented on any unit. The derailing issue came up and Amtrak shifted to F40s for everything (all Run 8 all the time to run HEP. We used to call them Blast Boxes). I hold no brief in any direction about that issue and their premature retirement from Amtrak, other than to say Amtrak deliberately bought SD's with C-C trucks to more easily dispose of them to freight railroads in the event Amtrak went under/was severely cut back. They did end up selling them to the freights, although not for the reason they thought they would.
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Nobody wants to spend 36-65 hours in one car + trips to the cafe with no seating.
