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Ultimately, Amtrak awarded a contract for 50 sleeping cars with an option for 227 cars of various types to Morrison-Knudsen, who were also building the new California Cars based on the Superliner design. [8] [9] Morrison-Knudsen unveiled the first Viewliner shell at its Chicago plant on October 26, 1994. [10]
Amtrak offers sleeping cars on most of its overnight trains, using modern cars of the private-room type exclusively. Today, Amtrak operates two main types of sleeping car: the bi-level Superliner sleeping cars, built from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, and the single-level Viewliner sleeping cars, built in the mid-1990s.
The Placid series was a fleet of ten lightweight streamlined sleeping cars built by Pullman-Standard for the Union Pacific Railroad in 1956. Each car contained eleven double bedrooms. Amtrak acquired all ten from the Union Pacific and operated them into the 1980s; it retired the last in 1996. Several cars remain in private use.
[8] [9] The final use of the remaining Pacific Parlour cars on the Coast Starlight was on February 4, 2018. [10] The last Heritage Fleet car in Amtrak use was a 1955-built ex-Great Northern Railway full-length dome car, Ocean View, which was manufactured in 1955. Used intermittently, it was retired in 2019 due to its age and maintenance expense.
The deluxe sleeping car contains ten bedrooms, four roomettes, a family bedroom, and an accessible bedroom. [66] As built, the standard sleeping car could hold a maximum of 44 passengers. The Superliner I sleeping car weighs 167,000 pounds (75,750 kg); the Superliner II sleeping car weighs 160,275 pounds (72,700 kg).
The railway writer and historian Karl Zimmermann called them "the greatest treat for sleeping car passengers on Amtrak". [43] By the late 2010s Amtrak was manufacturing new parts for the Hi-Levels at Beech Grove, or in some cases retrofitting the Hi-Levels to use Superliner parts. [44] Amtrak retired the cars after their last run on February 4 ...
These cars have a dome on top of the car with a rounded-end or flat-end rear "observation" section (on the main floor) where passengers can sit and look out at the receding scenery. These cars often have additional sleeping compartments under the dome and/or in the "short end" as well as a bar and/or additional lounge spaces.
A dome car is a type of railway passenger car that has a glass dome on the top of the car where passengers can ride and see in all directions around the train. It also can include features of a coach, lounge car, dining car, sleeping car or observation. Beginning in 1945, a total of 236 were delivered for North American railroad companies.