Soon we were on our
way and made it to Sacramento, but 3 hours late at that point .
The diagram of the sleeper car
rooms, left, is on the wall of the Coast Starlight sleepers, but not
where it needs to be, on the Amtrak website, so people can choose an
upper or lower level room.
A few notes about rooms: Notice that rooms 1 through
10 on the upper level and 11 through 13 on the lower level are less
than half the width of the train. These are roomettes or economy
rooms, without a bathroom, and are the most complained about rooms on
the train because they are so small. During the day you have two
wide seats, facing each other, with a fold out table between and a nice
window on one side and a sliding glass door with curtains on the hall
side. At night, the car attendant makes up the room by
making the two seats into a lower bunk and then lowers the upper
bunk. This configeration leaves bunk beds along the outside wall
of the room, parallel to the tracks and leaves about 10 inches between
the edge of the upper bunk and the sliding door to get up and into the
top bunk. Most people don't realize the 'roomettes' are this
small. There is one bathroom on the upper level, by the stairs in
the middle of the car.
Notice that the upper level Deluxe rooms (with bathrooms) are labeled A
through E, and they are 3/4 the width of the train car. These
rooms have a benchseat perpendicular to the window which makes into a
lower bunk. An upper bunk drops down. The most important
thing is that there is a bathroom/shower and sink in the room.
Notice that you lose a bit of room in "A" for the passageway to make
the turn to the exit door of the car. All through-train traffic
uses the upper level, so there is a good chance there will be other
sleeping car passengers passing your room to get to the Parlour Car and
Diner.
Downstairs, the level all passengers enter the car, in addition to the
four roomettes, there are two room, F and H, that are the full width of
the car. F stands for Family and H for Handicapped. The
Family
Room is a stretch because there are still the two single bunk beds as
in the
Deluxe room, but additional small beds fold down along the side of the
room for small children (no bathroom). In the Handicapped room
there is the upper and lower berth again, a wheelchair lockdown, and a
bathroom stool with a curtain you can pull around it instead of solid
walls, making more maneuverability for a wheelchair.
The car
attendant will bring meals to the occupants of this Handicapped room
since it would
be impossible for the occupants to get up the narrow staircase and
through the train on the upper level to the diner. This also
means a wheelchair-bound passenger cannot go to the Parlour Car,
Observation Car, nor the diner. However, unlike in the old days,
they can travel by train and move to the lower level of the Observation
Car, to the snack bar, at a stop with a platform, stay there for some
time, then return to their car and room at another stop with a
platform.
Or, detrain at a crew-change platform for a few minutes.
Definitely contact the conductor before making such exterior car-to-car
movements.
Also on the lower level are three toilets and one
shower with changing room. Since there really is not any
room for luggage in your room, luggage should be left at the bottom of
the stairs in the two-level luggage area, or checked at the
station. Be sure, if you check luggage, that the station of
origin has facilities to take your luggage and the destination station
has facilities for taking your luggage off. The schedule will
show you this information.
Click BACK in your browser to return to this page after visiting the
following sites:
