I read a article the stated this about the RM:
"Though meals are enjoyed at your seat, there is reason to get up and walk around -- each car, regardless of class, has a small outdoor viewing platform where you can get a blast of fresh mountain air."
I don't see any open platforms in the photos.
???
Still in training.
In the past they have had a rather relaxed attitude around opening the top half of the dutch doors in vestibules.
Their dome cars do have an open air platform on the lower level at one end. I'm not sure if coach (formerly redleaf, now silverleaf) passengers would have any access to this.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
SD70DudeTheir dome cars do have an open air platform on the lower level at one end. I'm not sure if coach (formerly redleaf, now silverleaf) passengers would have any access to this.
When I rode it they restricted the dome cars to Gold Leaf only and they passed out a Gold Maple Leaf Pin for your shirt so the crew could tell and also herd you around when you were off the train. Gold Leaf also got the better transportation and hotel accomodations usually as well. It was very Mr and Mrs Howell (Gilligans Island). I remember one of our tour guides on the Icefields parkway even sneered over the PA (only heard on the Gold Leaf tour bus) at the Silver Leaf passengers as "getting in our way" or something to that effect. He was not serious but still a slight slip in professionalism since we are both paying the same company.
I rode the first eastbound trip earlier this week from Moab to Denver, they do indeed leave the Dutch Doors open for the entire trip (including inside the Moffat Tunnel!) for passengers to view at any time. For me being a long-time lover of vestibule riding this was a very large pleasant surprise. With even the infrequent Union Pacific excursions now prohibiting open vestibules I never thought I would have another opportunity to lean out of an open vestibule on a main line. And to have the ability to do that on the legendary Denver & Rio Grande mainline was even better. BTW - the mud and rock slide damage in Glenwood Canyon is much worse that I imagined...both I-70 and the railroad still have some major clean up to do, we had a 10mph slow order for about half of the canyon slowly passing slide areas.
It is a dangerous practice to have the top of the vestibule door open with a passenger train running at speed. A while back when I was stationed in Germany the Passenger Compartments had windows that would slide halfway down.........later DB changed it so they would only open about 10-15%. However, what you had happen especially during Oktoberfest when the trains were full of drunk people hanging out the windows would be objects thrown from one speeding train into another as they passed, scary to have a beer can full of beer slam into the inside of your compartment at 30-40 mph. The Conductors did their best to walk the outside hallway and monitor and ask the windows be closed when they witnessed such behavior.
Even without the human component, crap would fly out of passing freight trains via the wind stirred up sometimes and impact the side of the passenger car. Sometimes rocks from newly ballasted track. So keep that all in mind next time your hanging out at a vestibule window that is open. Debris flying up happens fast with little to no warning.
The rear platform ride is dangerous as well there was more than one occasion at 40-45 mph on those double deck dome car platforms where if I was not hanging onto the railing with a grip and it wasn't for the low cieling.... I probably would have been ejected off the rear of the train due to a sudden dip in the track.......that made the rear platform act as a diving board of sorts.
Hence this is why Amtrak frowns on both.
Memories of trips back in the fifties like my high school trip to Washington DC when we had a coach on the National Limited to Cincinnati. I spent much of the time in West Virginia looking out an open upper dutch door enjoying the fireworks show of the brakes as we went down the grades. After I got home, I had to see an eye doctor to get the brake dust out of them.
My 1999 RockyMountaineer trip in Gold Class allowed me to use the open platform that you experienced the lurch of a low joint on. While I didn't have any issues, I would wonder about the companies experience. I found it very enjoyable.
It seems liability suits are more limited in Canada, so a Canadian company setting up an operation in the US might be more at ease with things like open dutch doors, until the first lawsuit.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.