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[fjahncke]

Is there a source four the exact consist of Amtrak trains with loco and car numbers on a given day?
As part of a vacation trip to the USA, on March 3rd/4th 2005 my wife and I travelled on "The Cardinal" from Chicago, Ill. to Philadelphia, PA. Now my wife gave me a "Cardinal" HO train set by Walthers as a christmas gift. As the cars are unnumbered and come with decal sheets offering all appropriate selections, I like the idea idea to apply car numbers matching the train we actually rode on.
Does anybody have any idea how to obtain that information?

[ndbprr]

If there were any towers along the way the tower sheet would list the engine numbers as part of the train ID. The previous tower would contact the next in line and say something like, " #42 through ___ at 5:39 (24hour clock) with the 334 and the 452 (engine #'s)". The towerman would the repeat that back and mark it on his sheet. Then when the train passed his tower he would call the next one and relay the same message after marking the time the train passed on his sheet. Most railroads and I assume Amtrak assign certain cars to certain runs only switching them out when maintenance demanded it. They had an employee handbook called the makeup of passenger trains that listed the types of cars to be included in a given train like 4 coaches, 3 sleeping cars, 1 dome, 1 baggage and the class of car to be used. If you are in a place where you could get to Chicago and watch it pass for a couple of days you would probably have your answer as to car numbers. Just check on odd days or even days becasue the one that goes east today will be the westbound tomorrow and the westbound today will be the eastbound tomorrow as it takes one day to go east and one day to go west. You will have to take the date you went east and count them off to get the right day to check the cars. I would suspect that the cars would be fairly easy to get that way. If there is going to be a variation it will be the engines.

[cnw4001]

You might try contacting Amtrak directly and certainly they have a record of the consist somewhere.

Of course there is not assurance they would be willing to do the research but going to the web site and looking through the contacts would be a place to start. The "contact us" link takes you to a form which you fill in and it would be read.

I had a similar experience with United Airlines and they did provide the registration of an airplane which operated on the first flight I had made.

Good luck.

Dale