Amtrak Alco FB-1 and streamlined passenger cars

I mentioned a few weeks back in my post about my Amtrak Alco FA-1 that I was hoping to get an FB-1 to pair with it as well as a few passenger cars. Both those goals have been achieved and I now have a complete Amtrak set!

Like my FA-1, the FB-1 and the passenger cars were also manufactured by AristoCraft. The FB-1 came out of the box looking like it had never been run before and it performs amazingly well—just like new. Amtrak never operated Alco F units so this train isn’t terribly realistic, but no less realistic than the PE&A offering passenger service in the 1970s.

Amtrak Alco FB-1. Just like the FA-1 but it’s missing the cab.

Close up showing detail of the trailing end.

When Amtrak was formed in 1971 to take over remaining U.S. passenger rail service it inherited around 1,200 streamline passenger cars. While most of those cars have been retired since then, some are still in use today by Amtrak and many others are in use by tourist railroads around the country.

Amtrak 2306 “Chicago” is a passenger coach.

Amtrak 2406 “Metro Park” is an observation car.

Like most observation cars this one features a rounded end, as this car was intended to be the trailing car on a train. If you look at old promotional images of streamline trains, they frequently featured the rounded end of an observation car speeding away toward the horizon. Amtrak used their inherited observation cars at first but they have since been retired.

Amtrak 2506 “New Orleans” is a diner car. With the streamline era came greater emphasis on providing quality food service on trains. Amtrak still operates some of the streamline diner cars that it inherited in 1971, but only on long distance trains.

These cars are made from aluminum rather than plastic and they are much longer than freight cars, so each one weighs more than twice as much as a typical freight car. If I had a completely flat track with gentler curves, one locomotive would be sufficient to pull all three of these cars. But as my layout has a relatively steep grade plus some tight curves, it’s a bit too much for one locomotive to pull the full train. I’m also not able to operate two locomotives simultaneously using track power, so I’ll need to convert these two locomotives to battery power so they can work in tandem to pull the full train.

I haven’t swapped out the couplers on these cars yet. As these cars and locomotives only need to work with each other I thought I would leave the original AristoCraft knuckle couplers on them. But there is an inexplicable height difference between the locomotives and the passenger cars, so at the very least I’ll need to adjust them to match up. And one of the cars has a squeaky axle I need to investigate. Other than those minor issues they are in perfect condition.

Complete Amtrak train crossing the bridge.

There are a lot of photos available online as many streamline passenger cars have survived to the current day. Links below include some pictures of inherited streamline cars sporting Amtrak colors:

• A great collection of Amtrak passenger coaches and other cars from the mid-1970s
• A collection specifically of Amtrak observation cars
• Great overview article about the observation car
• Picture of Amtrak diner car 8551
• Picture of Amtrak diner car 8528
• And just in case you’re wondering what’s on the menu today, here are the current menus for Amtrak dining cars.