CHICAGO — Amtrak is addressing the coach capacity shortfall on the Coast Starlight and Sunset Limited while shuffling equipment to beef up summer consists on other Superliner-equipped trains.
However, the railroad still contends it can’t come up with two Viewliner sleeping cars and two Viewliner diners to augment the triweekly Cardinal, its perpetually sold-out New York-Washington-Chicago train.
Ramping up
Assigning an additional coach or sleeping car to the available inventory of long-distance trains means that Amtrak must find enough cars for every consist. The table at right shows the number of trainsets required to the operate Superliner-equipped trains.
Adding one car to every Southwest Chief, for instance, requires five cars of that type. The 30- to 45-year-old equipment typically gets cycled through periodic maintenance when demand is lighter. The Chief, which has been running since the New Year holiday with a single sleeping car plus roomettes in the train’s transition sleeper, has been a tough ticket. Chicago-Los Angeles roomette fares through March 15 range from $806 to $1,438 (four rooms were left at this price for March 14 as of Thursday). There is also one date where roomettes are sold out.
But later this month, another full sleeping car is being added to every Southwest Chief through the summer, along with a full baggage car. A third coach will be added in April, once Colorado’s Winter Park Express finishes its season. This will help accommodate campers destined to and from the Philmont Scout Ranch, a bus ride away from the train’s stop in Raton, N.M.
Elsewhere in the long-distance network:
- The Chicago-Seattle/Portland, Ore., Empire Builder is also getting a second Seattle sleeping car from March through the summer, but not a second Seattle coach. The train continues to operate with a full coach, coach-baggage, and one sleeping car (plus the Sightseer Lounge) on the Portland section. The train operated with two Seattle coaches and two Portland sleeping cars in summer 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, but subsequent Chief and Builder accidents depleted the Superliner fleet.
- The California Zephyr adds a third sleeping car in early June, made available from Auto Train reductions, but not a third coach. The extra coach “performed well in 2025,” Amtrak said, responding to a Trains inquiry, “but the equipment will operate on the Coast Starlight (as a third car) and Sunset Limited (a second Los Angeles-New Orleans coach) to maintain their consists.” Both of those trains have had numerous coach sellouts over portions of their routes during the past year. Before the Starlight lost its first-class Pacific Parlour Car in early 2018 in response to an edict from then-president Richard Anderson, the train usually operated April through December with four coaches and three full sleeping cars.
In other moves, the Superliner-equipped Fort Worth-Oklahoma City Heartland Flyer adds a third coach in March, but a shortage of single-level Amfleet II coaches means that the Lake Shore Limited’s Boston section won’t get a second coach until summer. A debut date has not been announced for the first Airo Cascades trainsets, but they likely won’t be available until after World Cup soccer matches are staged in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., in June and July. Except for two higher-capacity Talgo Series 8 trainsets, the Cascades have been selling out with two Amfleet I coaches and an Amfleet café-business class car.
— To report news or errors, contact trainsnewswire@firecrown.com.
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