Heritage Amtrak bathrooms in the 1990s?

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Late night on the Lake Shote limited I discovered a secret. The ladies rooms had huge upolstered chairs and huge mirrors. The walls had southwest and Native American decor. I could lock the door and basically have a entire roomet to myself from 1 to 4 in the morning. My guess from the decor that these were old Santa Fe heavyweight cars??

[daveklepper]

I'm confused by "last night."  Amtrak is not operating any heavyweight cars oin the Lake Shorev Limited ecxept for very rare private-car move.  There may be some heritage light-weight equipment equipped with retention toilets stil in service.  Was this a  sleeping car or coach?

[rcdrye]

1953 El Capitan Budd-built 48 seat coaches were assigned to the Lake Shore in the mid-1990s.  When the cars were refurbed for Amtrak the folks doing the job had the sense to leave the seats (Heywood-Wakefield Sleepy Hollow) and decor alone.  The cars only lasted three years on the El Capitan before being bumped to other trains when the Hi-Levels showed up.

[anglecock]

Thank You the resouvor of knowlege is bottomless here. Miss those heavyweights the lightweights dont seem to ride as well as those old Budd Cars

[pennytrains]

https://link.shutterfly.com/qdoXFUszvrb

A look around the restroom on heavyweight Mount Baxter.

[rcdrye]

Amtrak got 63 of the 65 1953 coaches.  One of them (set up as an 88 seat Clocker coach) survived the 1987 Gunpow wreck, at 125 mph, 20 mph above its permitted speed of 105.  About half got converted to HEP, but many of those were converted to the ill-conceived 1700 series baggage-express cars. A couple of them ended up on the Algoma Central and some went to Providence & Worcester.

Here's a 1987 photo (by Chuck Zeller, from rrpicturearchives.net) of one from the Amtrak HEP era.

 

http://s3.amazonaws.com/rrpa_photos/103433/amtk4703-1.jpg 

[anglecock]

Well those levers I am afraid to pull them for fear of ...

[daveklepper]

With the better eading glasses, I see I had read "late night" as "last night,"

On the Lake-Shore?  Ex-AT&SF Budd lightweight coaches for sure.

[Overmod]

I think this is the closest thing to a heavyweight that Budd built:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Autotrain_Lorton.jpg

To me, 'heavyweight' describes plate-steel construction, normally requiring six-wheel trucks to bear the weight of single-level cars...

Cars from Amfleet on may be of 'lighter-weight' construction than the streamlined-age Budds, but that doesn't imply we now call the old cars heavy.

I still haven't figured out how Amtrak gets decent ride out of Superliners with those Waggon Union trucks.  But that's different.