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[quote user="ACY"] I work out of the Lorton crew base, so the Sunset & its connections are pretty far out of my territory.  But I wonder how those "protect" cars are crewed.  Somebody needs to make 42 revenue berths in the sleeper and be there to attend to the passengers' needs.  There is no San Antonio Crew Base to provide onboard service personnel to do these things.  The closest o.b.s. crew base is a very small one at Fort Worth, which may be too small to provide anybody.  I suspect the cars may not be there to substitute in the case of late trains.  They may be there to be used as substitutes in case a car has a serious mechanical defect enroute and needs to be cut out of the consist.  In that case, the defective car would be cut out and the new car cut in, and the poor attendant would probably have to transfer all his supplies (linens, blankets, pillows, cleaning supplies, etc. etc. etc.),  leave behind the car he has properly set up, and start from scratch on a new car in the middle of the night.  The passengers would probably have to wait in the lounge or diner (probably closed for service/sales) until he got the work done.  If that's the case, my sympathy is with the poor attendant.  And the sleepy passengers. Tom [/quote] Several years ago, which was the last time that I rode the Texas Eagle through San Antonio, the sleeping car attendants on the Eagle through sleepers changed in San Antonio. The LAX to SA attendant stayed on the car until 6:00 a.m., when he was replaced by the Chicago based attendant, who had arrived the night before on the southbound Eagle.  Westbound the process is reversed. Only the attendants on the through sleeping cars are swapped out in San Antonio. The other OBS personnel stay with the Sunset Limited or the Texas Eagle.   The reserve cars were positioned in SA when the Sunset Limited's departure time out of LAX was moved back to 10 p.m., thereby reducing the time in SA to transfer the two cars from the eastbound Sunset Limited/Texas Eagle to the northbound Eagle. If the Sunset Limited/Texas Eagle does not make the connection in SA, the northbound Eagle would not have a regular sleeper. If the SA/LAX bound Eagle is very late and cannot transfer its through cars to the Sunset Limited/Texas Eagle, the northbound Eagle has the required cars for the return trip to Chicago. If this were to occur, the reserve cars probably would be coupled onto the Sunset Limited because they would be needed eventually in LAX to balance the equipment needs for the eastbound Sunset/Eagle. The spotted cars are heated and/or cooled so that they can be placed into service quickly. I presume the beds in the sleeper have been made up. If the cars are required for the northbound Eagle, the sleeper would be serviced by the attendant who arrived the night before on the Eagle terminating in SA, which is the normal procedure given the change of the car attendant in SA. The only time the reserve cars would be needed is when the through cars are transferred. That happens three days a week.  On the other days of the week, when the southbound Eagle terminates in SA, they are available for the trip back to Chicago. Thus, the only potential use for the parked cars occurs on those days when the Sunset Limited is operating. This whole mess could have been avoided by dropping the Sunset Limited, running the Eagle as a through train, even on a three day a week schedule, and implementing a connecting train from New Orleans to SA. Amtrak apparently did not push the issue for reasons unknown. So the result is that a passenger railroad that some say is equipment constrained keeps two cars in San Antonio that as a seldom tapped reserve. Not only are the cars idle most of the year, Amtrak had to have an electric power supply built to keep the cars cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
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