Can crew open sleeper doors?

[Chatter163]

Wow, resurrected this thread after four years.

 

[Bob Dylan]

This discussion of the how difficult/easy it might be to open a locked roomette door in the case of an emergency, and a followup comment about how safe a person might feel to know that there is a way of opening the door from thru outside, reminds me of the Canadian VIA trains were you can sleep in "open" cabins with just a curtain separating you from the hallway. How train cultures can differ...

Sections were the Norm here up until the Heritage Fleet went away, and Open Sleepers are common all over the World, not just on the Canadian.

 

[Steve4031]

I suspect that sleeping cars with sections were never in Amtrak's fleet. My first overnight Amtrak trip was on the San Francisco Zephyr in 1974, and I did not see any sections on that train. I was only eight or nine years old but was already into trains and enjoyed walking through the various cars. I knew about bedrooms and roomettes. If I had seen section accommodations, I would have asked about them because they would have been new to me.

Regarding safety in sections, there are three in each car on the Canadian. It would be difficult for someone to enter an occupied lower birth without creating a disturbance and alerting passengers in the surrounding accommodations.

 

[zephyr17]

Sections were the Norm here up until the Heritage Fleet went away, and Open Sleepers are common all over the World, not just on the Canadian.

Open sections were not the norm in the US post World War II. Railroads pretty much stopped ordering open section cars and emphasized private rooms in their advertising. A good example is the CZ open section cars. Put into service in 1949, they proved quite unpopular. They were converted into flat top coaches around 1960.

Railroads that continued to offer open sections did so because expense guidelines for Federal employees traveling on government business mandated lower berths. However, many railroads still preferred to simply retire open section cars and just sold roomettes to government employees at lower berth rates.

Amtrak did not acquire any open section cars. All sleepers acquired by Amtrak were private room cars. So no open section cars made it to Amtrak, let alone went through the later "Heritage" HEPing program. They pretty much only selected 10-6s to put through the Heritage program.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Open sections were not the norm in the US post World War II. Railroads pretty much stopped ordering open section cars and emphasized private rooms in their advertising. A good example is the CZ open section cars. Put into service in 1949, they proved quite unpopular. They were converted into flat top coaches around 1960.

Railroads that continued to offer open sections did so because expense guidelines for Federal employees traveling on government business mandated lower berths. However, many railroads still preferred to simply retire open section cars and just sold roomettes to government employees at lower berth rates.

Amtrak did not acquire any open section cars. All sleepers acquired by Amtrak were private room cars. So no open section cars made it to Amtrak, let alone went through the later "Heritage" HEPing program. They pretty much only selected 10-6s to put through the Heritage program.

You are correct Sir.

As a kid in the 40s and early 50s I rode in many Sections, but poorly worded my post while intending to say that Amtrak didn't have Open Section Sleepers as you pointed out.

 

[Asher]

I suspect that sleeping cars with sections were never in Amtrak's fleet. My first overnight Amtrak trip was on the San Francisco Zephyr in 1974, and I did not see any sections on that train. I was only eight or nine years old but was already into trains and enjoyed walking through the various cars. I knew about bedrooms and roomettes. If I had seen section accommodations, I would have asked about them because they would have been new to me.

Regarding safety in sections, there are three in each car on the Canadian. It would be difficult for someone to enter an occupied lower birth without creating a disturbance and alerting passengers in the surrounding accommodations.

I traveled to Seattle by rail in 1942 at the age of 4+ I remember being in a room of some size very reminiscent of rooms on trains today. There were five of us, a very young sister and my twin brother along with my grandparents. I remember sleeping in a Pullman I guess because of the lack of beds in the room. I think if you were not in a section car at night you would not realize it was a Pullman car.