A Dining Car Bonanza

[jordon412]

I was at work one day and was thinking about how Amtrak is replacing its heritage diners, built all the way back in the 40's or 50's, with new Viewliner dining cars. It got me to thinking about how this could provide the chance for tourist railroads or major railroads with their own passenger cars (i.e. Union Pacific, CSX, BNSF, Norfolk Southern, etc.) a quick and cheap dining car in good condition. Though the dining cars have Head-End-Power (HEP), which will include tourist railroads to invest in a source of HEP for the dining car, I would hate to see these old dining cars end up as scrap. I don't know if I could contact Amtrak and let them consider selling them instead of scrapping them, but this would put some [desperately needed] extra money in Amtrak's pockets. Anyone out there thinking the same thing?

 

[cascaderailroad]

In Altoona, they burnt up the trolleys in a bonfire, as gutting them would have caused exposure to PCB's and asbestos, that was used in early construction.

Old railcars are outlawed, once they become unfit for service, by airbrake, bearing, wheelset, truck changes and other improvements ... making them obsolete, costing alot of money to retrofit old equipment so that it is FRA compliant