Dimensions of Superliner cars

Alberich,

Funny you should ask. I spent yesterday playing with the P42 and the superliners and they are still on my workbench.

1) Generally speaking 12.5mm from center is safe. But really you should get a copy of the standards from a European organization called MOROP. They have produced a set of standards, NEM, in French and German that cover what you're asking. I think the standards you want will be NEM102 & NEM103. The U.S. clearance values can be found at: nmra.org/sites/default/files/standards/sandrp/pdf/s-7_2012.02.pdf

2) Knuckle to knuckle, the P42 is 100mm long, the superliner cars 120mm long. The bolster-to-bolster distance (used in some of the calculation you ask about in #1) is 83mm. The height to top of rail 22mm.

3) If you do the math from #2 the total length is just under 600mm. I would suggest planning for a 5 car train. Amtrak typically runs a minimum train of a sleeper, lounge, diner, and two coaches. The only exception I'm aware of is the Spokane/Portland leg of the Empire Builders which runs without a diner. Who knows, maybe you'll want to run a privately owned Tuscan red car on the end of this train as well.

Mark


2)

Mark, I would add a baggage car for a little extra lengh, but I am fan of long trains.

True, but then I'd want a transition car
and then I'd want ....

I was doing some research today and ran across a few images of the potential extremes or modeling of Amtrak Service:

Moo:

SO glad you said that. We thought long and hard about the transition car and finally came to the conclusion that it simply did not justify the tooling cost to create it because it is a fairly easy modification for some of our more advanced clients to do themselves. We also like to leave a few things undone on all of our projects as incentive for folks to stretch their modeling muscles and create unique pieces. This is one of them.

Whoever gets it done, please post pictures!

Best
-Rob(A)
AZL

PS: some of those decals are going to be VERY difficult as the small text on the superliners pushes the boundaries of what we can do in the factory with laser etched plates and pad printing. It just might be better to leave the printing as-is, or simply delete the "wrong" stuff. But I don't mean to discourage trying - the main thing is to put the plate at the top of the end car so you don't see the door.

PSS: Next folks will ask about heritage baggage cars: They are on our "to-do" list, but I doubt they will be delivered this year. Your budget might be better spent on something else this year because we will build the "right" baggage cars for the superliners without compromise.

Hi Mark,
I found this about the transition sleeper cars on Railroad.net. They are also known as passenger-dorm cars and are numbered as the AMTK 39000 series.
Bill Mock

Postby CHI_Amtrak_Fan » Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:16 pm

The 620 sleeper is the transition sleeper that transitions the high level doors of most superliner equipment to the lower level doors of the baggage car ahead. Many will refer to this car as the Trans-Dorm because it serves this transition purpose and holds the crew roomettes.

Picture of Transition Sleeper

The rough layout of the transition sleeper is:

**forward direction of travel**
Crew roomettes
Center of car with stairs to lower level
23--24
21--22
19--20
17--18
C---T/S
**backwards direction of travel**
Where
C=Coffee station (seldom used)
T/S= Toilet/Shower

All of the roomettes sold in the Transition Sleeper are on the upper level. Since all transition sleepers are Superliner II equipment, and Amtrak began selling rooms to the public only in the last couple of years, I found that the roomettes were in excellent shape.

So, Looks like you're going to need to change your other reservation too!

David Z
Last edited by CHI_Amtrak_Fan on Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
CHI_Amtrak_Fan

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