I'm still questioning as to whether or not it's wise to take the sleeping car from New Orleans. Even when the coaches aren't full, the lone sleeper on 1/2 is generally heavily occupied. I wish they could just operate NOL-SAS as 1 coach, 1 coach/baggage, 1 CCC, and 1 sleeper at the rear, which could be connected to the back of the Texas Eagle. They can make coach passengers do the cross platform transfer but keep it as a single ride for folks in the sleeper. Do they not have enough equipment to do this? Why just outright cancel the sleeper?
They do have the equipment to run this train daily under the stipulations listed for the service, and if they manage to improve their equipment utilization slightly, would have just enough to operate the City of New Orleans to Miami. (Although, that would cancel the EBs fourth sleeper).
The cost of daily service over the entirety of the Texas Eagle and Sunset West routes is the sleeper from NOL to SAS. I think, personally, that this is a bargain. I would expect, however, that in the winter after the Texas Eagle hits LA daily, a through sleeper to NOL will be attempted on at least a tri-weekly basis as a seasonal experiment. If a through sleeper proves to be more profitable then a second or third sleeper on some other train, it will come to pass, taken from that other train.
Amtrak isn't stupid. They aren't going to eschew a through sleeper if putting that through sleeper LAX to NOL or even MIA proves to be a more profitable venture than it operating elsewhere. Amtrak has decided, no matter how, that this reorganization maximizes prospective service many times over. I agree. If a through sleeper makes sense, it will eventually happen. But first, let us have daily service along the entirety of the Sunset Route (Sunset East does not run on the Sunset Route, by the way) for the first time since the Espee cut it to tri-weekly in October of 1970.
Then we can work towards operations over the Gulf Coast (probably not as part of the Sunset), and once that runs all the way to Florida, it would then make sense to consider through sleepers and coaches, which, I suspect, will eventually come to pass.
I have often said publicly that a fair acid test between a realistic transit advocate and a doe-eyed railfan is their stance on the issue of this reorganization. A railfan wants the Sunset running tri-weekly. The transit advocate recognizes the overall benefit of running the trains daily being more important than the one seat ride, the sleeper over the day trip between SAS and NOL, and the historic interest value of preserving the famed
Sunset Limited in a sort of time-capsule to times gone by.
Amtrak is, first and foremost (and for most!) a method of transportation. Most people riding the Sunset between stops in NOL and SAS or even points beyond, are riding for relatively short distances, and while the train is nicer than other options, they are doing it to go see grandma and grandpa, not to ride the train for the sheer hell of it. Those passengers, the very core of Amtrak's business, prefer to know the train is running daily as a concept to the romance of riding the
Sunset Limited, a historic name giving the train some glamor, but of really no meaning to those core passengers.
