Thanks, Dave; I was unaware of that. There might have been a note concerning this in Trains in 1948–but I was unaware of the publication at that time.
My Amtrak friends tell me the horn buttons hav two positions half depressed and fully depressed. Medium air pressure at half, full pressure at full. So it’s the engineers choice.
If you look at the engine, it will give you a idea weather or not the whole train is turned, now the Crescent is not turned at New Orleans, I have seen video of the tran going south and back north, and you can see that the baggage car was on the front of the train and going back north , it is now on the back of the train, and all they did was to do a run around with the engines, seeing that they were back to back, so the rear engine is now the lead engine, this is now done in a lot of places to do without a turntable, at first, and than to save time, and money, by not having to turn the train around, if it become that the baggage is needed at the front, than it will be with the run around, and when they had road-railers, they were at the rear of the train, so that they could be drop and another pick-up, had this done on the Capital Limited go back to Washington DC, it took them about 30 minutes to do the switching, before we got moving again.
That is intresting about the Crescent, since the standard procedure for all trains entering New Orleans, has been to turn on the wye that is near the station, and back in to the station–which process turns the train. Perhaps the video was made on a day after when, for some reason, the train could not be backed in?
Well, I am really going to reveal my ignorance here. But do all the seats in the coaches face the same direction? All of my recent trips on long-distance trains have been in sleepers. Not long ago I was on a Cascades Talgo, and I seem to remember that half the seats faced one way and half the other way. I do not think these trains are turned at their destination.
Maybe the turn at NOL wye loop could not happen if the loop was unuseable for some reeason ? The loop is a very tight curve.
The coach seats on most of the Superliner’s face forward. I believe the same is true for the coach seats on the single level cars on the long distance trains in the east.
One exception that I am aware of is the Heartland Flyer, which has three coaches. Half the seats face forward and half face rearward, depending on the direction of travel. The Flyer is not turned at its end points.
Individual seat pairs on Superliners and Amfleet (both I and II) can be rotated without removing them. It’s not an easy task, so it’s not done any more than absolutely necessary.
This operation was possible with reclining seats in all the coaches I rode over the years. In some cars, all that was necessary was turning the seats; in some (IC, especially), the seats would be pulled towards the aisle and then turned; in some, a lever was pushed and then the seats could be turned.
In the last years (from 1968 on) that the Terminal Station in Atlanta was used, the coach seats on the Southern Crescent would be turned since the former backup moves were no longer made. The seats on the Victoria-Courtenay RDC’s were turned at each end.
Now, back to Amtrak’s operation.
I rode the Southwest Chief two years ago and the coaches were on the rear. Upon arrival in Los Angeles, I go off in San Bernardino, they apparently turned the whole train on the wye. Going back east that evening on the same equipment had the same order of cars: baggage, sleepers, diner, Superlounge, and coaches on the rear.
I rode the Texas Eagle/Sunset Limited in the through coach from Little Rock to Los Angeles earlier this year. At San Antonio, in addition to the car being switched over to the Sunset Limited, the conductors went through and rotated the seats so they’d still be facing forward on the new train. One set of chairs was stuck and after the conductor worked on it for a while, he decided it was better to leave it as was. So in a sea of forward facing seats, we now had one seating group with seats facing each other. The car wasn’t so full that anyone actually had to ride backwards from San Antonio to LA.
The whole chair turning process didn’t take more than maybe 10 minutes for the car. It was fascinating to get to see it happen though.