North America by Train

Amtrak has two kinds of trains: Superliner and Viewliner. The Superliner cars are double-decker and run mostly, but not exclusively, on Western routes. The Viewliner are single story cars. Evidently the New York station tunnel is too short to accommodate double decker cars. So any route that goes to New York must use the Viewliner cars

This is my first time on a Viewliner car and I got one of the newly remodeled ones instead of the older cars. Since the Viewliiner car is a single story, the rooms are taller than the Superliner rooms. Which means there's more room, and even a window, for the person in the upper bunk. Also, the upper bunk itself doesn't tilt out of the wall. It raises and lowers in a level fashion, kind of like an elevator.

The older Viewliner roommates had the toilet and a sink in them. But the new ones just have a sink and the toilet has been replaced with a hard shelf that you can use as a step when you're climbing up to the upper bunk. There is also an area to store luggage on a shelf above the door, over the hallway. But it's really hard to maneuver a suitcase into that space, so it's easier just to lower the upper bunk all the way and put your extra luggage on that, if you're traveling alone.

The sink is kind of cool in that there's no drain in the bottom So when you tilt it back up into the vertical position, all the water drains out the back.

One really weird thing about this room, was that even though it was all fully remodeled, including modern climate controls, and it looks like it could even be completely new construction, the soap dish at the back of the sink was extremely rusted. I really don't know if they installed a new sink unit and then put a rusty soap dish back in or what.Read more