Bill Kratville / Autoliner was the one who decided which western cars
ended up in Amtrak, of the offered cars. Autoliner refurbished some,
some were done by Pullman, some elsewhere. At the time, and for many
years before and since, Bill worked for the UP.
If BN wanted to retain cars for company service or for whatever use -
even to selling the cars to non-Amtrak entities (like the Mexican RRs
or Autotrain), they could do so. Autotrain ended up with some 31 UP
domes, along with WPs domes, and some AT&SF full domes. Since the
five diners were extremely similar, I would think that the earlier
diners would be more "preferable" strictly due to low use. One was
essentially a spare for the CZ, the other two for KC trains - which
didn't have a whole lot of use (compared with the DZ cars which were
in full use all the time). The NCL cars would be less preferable
simply due to their construction - and again, harder use.
They likely had an inspection of all the cars, checking especially
the running gear, and desirability of the interior - and picked the
two to retain.
Note that some railroads, esp. the UP, but also the AT&SF regretted
losing so many of their cars and ended up purchasing quite a few back
from various sources.
At 12:32 PM 6/29/2008, Stephen J. Levine wrote:
>I wonder if it had something to do with where the cars were assigned
>just prior to Amtrak, and also what diners Amtrak used on its San
>Francisco and Denver Zephyrs in the early years.
>
> I believe that, by May of 1971, the only ex-Q train that ran a
> full diner regularly was the Denver Zephyr. The California
> Service/Nebraska Zephyr used the Chuck Wagons as their food service cars.
>
> sjl
>
>Russ Strodtz <borneo@19main.com> wrote:
> It may be set by PC doing what Amtrak wanted. There were sets on
>lists and I'm not even sure that they were able to inspect everything
>that they could look at. It is my understandment that other than
>the Suburban what they got was what they were told to send out as
>Amtrak wanted them. Also heard that UP could not understand exactly
>what they wanted and how it was figured out but they still got what
>was wanted. Still did not get enough and had to lease all kinds of
>odd stuff.
>
>Even in recent times that are some odd things that are hard to
>understand. If you can spend government money I guess that is
>what will be decided.
>
>Russ
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Stephen J. Levine
>To: cbq@yahoogroups.com
>Sent: Saturday, 28 June, 2008 18:33
>Subject: [CBQ] Why didn't Silver Inn and Silver Manor go to Amtrak?
>
>I have always been curious as to why the 1952 diners Silver Inn and
>Silver Manor were not acquired by Amtrak.
>
>If BN was trying to hang onto the newer equipment for their own
>executive trains, the 1956 DZ Silver Tureen and Silver Chef were
>their newest diners, followed by the ones running on the North Coast
>Limited. Yet these all went to Amtrak.
>
>If the goal was to sell Amtrak the newest equipment, then why did
>the 1948 CZ diners go to Amtrak instead of the two diners above (the
>third 1952 diner, the Silver Cuisine, did go to Amtrak.
>
>Was it because, with the Kansas City service not working out the way
>it was intended, these two diners became underused and thus, by
>1971, were in the best condition of any of the Budd diners? I was
>wondering if anyone had any inside information.
>
>sjl
>
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Bob Webber
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