Trains News Wire recently toured Amtrak Business class car No. 81546 at Penn Station New York; it’s one of more than 90 cars with the new Amtrak interior, and it was sitting along side an unmodified Amfleet I coach for a stark comparison. Duncan Copland, director of industrial design at Amtrak, and Alison Simon, director of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor Business Development Group, explained the new interior.
“What had been done with the previous interior modifications of the cars took 9 years to finish all the work. This time around, we intend to complete all the work in 12 months,” Simon said. She indicated that the refresh for more than 450 cars would be done at a multiple Amtrak shops to get the job done faster.
Copland says more cushioning was added to the seats; a quick test shows them to be more comfortable than the current Amfleet seats and firmer. Fabric is out, and imitation leather is now the material of choice, with seat frames untouched. The seat back cushions have a slight rounding at the top, instead of being straight, and should be easier to clean. Business class seats are light and dark grey, with a blue accent in the middle top of the seat; coach seats are solid light gray.
New overhead LED lighting provides sufficient light for reading after it gets dark; cove lights above the luggage racks are to be refitted with LED lighting as well in the future. The lavatories will also boast of LED lighting.
The last part of the $16 million dollar project will refurbishment of the cafe cars. Focusing on the galleys, Copland indicated the front counter of the galley will be made of a tougher plastic, which is easier to keep clean.
With a highly restricted budget, Amtrak has undertaken a Cinderella transformation, taking the railcar of the past to the passenger car of today.
So when do the Amfleet II’s and the Superliners get their makeovers?
I’ve ridden in the refurbed cars about 10 times so far. The seats are nice, although personally I prefer cloth to vinyl. The seats are very visually appealing, although I do wonder how clean the lightish-gray vinyl as used in the regular coaches will stay over time. I am sure the old blue cloth seats are filthy, but you can’t tell due to the color of the cloth.
The new, thicker seat back cushions have the effect of reducing the pitch to a noticeable degree. It’s beginning to feel tight, but the seat is comfortable. The new LED reading lights are great and should rarely need replacing.
Lastly, the bathrooms in these cars are pretty disgusting. They could use a complete replacement instead of new lighting.
Germany’s Deutsche Bahn (DB), among other operators, has been updating its passenger fleet for decades now, in addition to building new ICE consists. Cash-strapped Amtrak could use the savings for other needs. It isn’t always necessary to think “new build” first. (Sometimes it is, though, as with the Viewliner coaches, diners and baggage cars to overcome tunnel clearance problems on the NEC.)
Though it could just be the lighting in the photograph, my first impression is that it looks dark. And under no circumstances should the seat pitch be reduced. I’ve ridden Amfleet lately in Northeast Regional Service, and the seat pitch was already a little tight.
Any refurbishment is as big improvement and it sounds like this one was well thought out considering the budget restraints.
Looks good; but, of course, they still have the original seat frames, with those too-low armrests.
Some day some benefactor of humanity will bring back the postwar Sleepy Hollow seats.
Looks very nice.
Very nice!!
I wonder when they’ll get to re-doing the Superliner I cars. I rode in a sleeper a year or two ago that still had those amazing acid green doors on the toilets and shower room from 1976.
Very nice. I wonder if the refresh includes reducing the pitch between the seats just a bit. In older cars it’s so large as to make using the tray tables a challenge. Reducing it would help some and allow for the addition of more seats.
I don’t know how I feel about a lavatory that “boasts” about anything, even if it is LED lighting.
Is the photo of business class? Didn’t previous business class have 2 and one seating for wider seats?
If they could only improve the outside. Amfleet’s “can” profile looks terrible with Viewliners and Heritage cars.