Atlas Amtrak cars?

The amtrak cars are zephyr repaints. Many of the Zephyr cars made it to amtrak's early roster. The phase 1 paint job dates them basically to the mid 70s, and the sleepers were gone by the early 90s (environmental regulations, etc...). The diners are still in service for now (I found a picture of the Silver Restaurant via google, in Phase V paint), but will be retired as the Viewliner II equipment rolls out. I dont know about the Silver Diner that they also made.

Once they hit amtrak, they would have probably gone anywhere and everywhere that sleepers were used. The domes wouldnt have the clearance for the northeast, but there were some used elsewhere (I rode in a dome on the autotrain in the early 90s). Once the superliners showed up, I doubt they got much use out west.

If you have a 800 series P40 in the original fade stripe scheme, and wanted to repaint the cars to phase 3 paint, you could probably make a fairly believable early 90s train.

 Wow, thank you. Good info to use. I don't usually go exact to the prototype, but close enough for me. There's so much different stuff out there that I may have to study Amtrak history if I want it exact. The cars that come into the Niagara Falls station near me, are just single levels. They seem older.

 I'm guessing the viewliner 2 are the tall ones w/double levels? I got some books on diesels, looks like I'll be needing cars too. I'll see what Bing comes up with.

 here we go:

http://www.on-track-on-line.com/amtkrinf-diners.shtml

ah, just a # list.

this looks better:

http://hebners.net/amtrak/amtDINER8000.html

wow, some of these cars are older than I thought.

Most of the California Zephyr cars made it into Amtrak.  By the time they were running in Amtrak service they had the skirting removed.  I believe several of the cars were rebuilt for HEP and survived into the Heritage Fleet the last of which were retired in the mid 90's. 

In Amtrak Phase I and Phase II paint car fleets from predecessor roads remained largely intact until they could be replaced by more modern equipment.  This included the bi-level Budd Santa Fe cars from the El Capitan of 1956, single level cars from Budd, ACF, St Louis Steel and Pullman Standard and even a few heavyweights although those cars mainly were used in work train service.  I do have a photo of a former PRR B60b in Amtrak paint and in service though.  By the time the Phase II paint scheme came around, the older cars started getting retired.  This is especially true for a lot of the non-Budd cars as they simply were worn out.  With the rebuild into the Heritage Fleet and into the Phase III paint scheme, the roster included mainly rebuilt lounges, dining cars, baggage cars, coaches, a few variations on sleepers and the Slumbercoach.  The more exotic cars and all the observations were pretty much out of service at that point.  A few dome cars were rebuilt for use on the Capitol Limited, but that train eventually got Superliner equipment. 

If you are curious on typical Amtrak consists based on era, I could go on and on and on and on ..... while I model 1955ish PRR and CNJ in two rail, I still enjoy modeling Amtrak, and I do that in three rail so I can run it at the club layout.

Just curious if anyone has pics of the end car to this set? 

Thanks

Borderman, Atlas has not yet made the observation for their Zephyr, but it will look like this Kato one:

I'm rather glad it's taking Atlas longer than expected to make the entire set, as it helps the budget quite a bit.  I'm going to be picking up an extra observation so I can model it as a private car as it would appear today, with HEP and maybe a satellite receiver.  Need to redo the underframe as well, gotta have the retention tanks!

Here are a couple of pictures of the Atlas Zephyr Observation car I received from my Atlas Dealer, Bill Hirsch at Head-End equipment Highland Park, IL.

Mike S.

Thanks for the pics.

I have only one criticism of the Atlas Zephyr cars. I bought six so far and really like the detail and everything about them. However, it is a shame that Atlas could not have figured out a way to make the car length of the letter board area a knock-out. This would have opened up possibilities for the cars to be lettered for many other roads, including SCL, ACL, FEC, CP and ViaRail.