Coach on the Zephyr seems to be sold out for a test booking on June 22. A roomette is $387.
For NEC South, at least 9 CETC desks IIRC, plus a few additional desks for the Empire Corridor, Hell Gate etc.. This does not include PSCC which handles Penn Station, Harold and Sunnyside. But the traffic density on the NEC South is way more than almost any other segment of trackage in the US, except perhaps MNRR and LIRR.
I have not taken a sleeper lately, but at least up until a few years ago, Amtrak was good about conjuring something tasty for their first class passengers, such as the late night steak dinners they fed us out of St. Paul, MN when the eastbound EB became an overnight train, arriving in Glenview some 2 days and 14 hours late.
For all intents and purposes, I consider the Keystone and Hartford Springfield to more or less be a part of the NEC. Perhaps thats why you felt the need to nitpick my number: 2-3.
The problems at Battle Creek are beginning to be addressed at this time, a presentation given by an Amtrak rep to the MIPRC in Nov, 2020 mentions the following-
There was obviously a delay in getting the the NEPA work started, as the request for bids was not posted until December 1, 2021.
The Downeaster also seems to work pretty well even with Pan Am freight using the same tracks.
Agreed; it might be my second most frequent route, as I go to Portland to perform about 6 times a year. But in my opinion, the Downeaster doesn't really have the frequency to be compared to the NEC. With the Acela, the NEC has basically hourly frequency, which puts it in a class all on its own.
I'm honestly surprised such a rural route can support this. Or am I wrong to say it's rural?
Hiawatha and Chi-STL services are now running pretty reliably but the speed and frequency on both is capped by the Class I owners. The only way that we will get the fast, frequent service that the market will support outside of the NEC is by assembling publicly-owned alignments that can upgraded over time. This would be mostly regional corridors but could include some long distance routes such as CHI-NYC and Chi-Florida with good markets throughout their length.
You listed the Piedmont as a corridor and the DE has at least as many frequencies if not more.
Did not list Piedmont. You’re mixing me up with MARC rider
I agree but we need to be waiting fore ever for any available equipment to increase service/
They pretty much take up the same amount of space as a roomette and only sleeps one person. Since the amount of space required is directly proportional to capacity, which directly corresponds with price, this is no improvement on a roomette and, in fact, cuts capacity.
I think that an Amtrak Roomette is 6.5'x3.5' or 22.75 sq ft and sleeps flat while a Napaway Butterfly Suite is 5'x3.3' or 16.5 sq ft. but it is a lay flat at an angle, which is a bit of an advantage for the Napaway on square footage and a bit of a negative on the lack of sleeping flat. But the Napaways take up less than 75% of the space of a Roomette which is interesting. The problem is that I am not sure how to fit Napaways into a sleeping car in a way that takes advantage of the smaller footprint...
Exactly. The Napaway would, I believe, not be as workable as the twin bunks for two people in a Roomette even though it might be nearly as good for those traveling alone. But half or more of the Roomette passengers are singles so if you assign some of the singles to smaller, cheaper Napaways it might be a win-win. But going to the expense of adding an extra room type to the sleeper fleet is a remote possibility.
Maybe it is too big to manage, but I look at it as more of as the modern-day Amtrak never really had a lot of choice as to what it would be. It remains an agglomeration of historical train routes that may, or may not, reflect current population trends and needed/desired movements of people. Various parties defend various parts of the system, and nothing much changes to create a cohesive rail system that most of us here would prefer.
