Amtrak Superliner Lounge

Technical Specifics

The Superliner I cars trace their origins to Amtrak's search for new long-distance equipment in the early 1970s. When the national passenger railroad issued a request for proposals in 1973, planners widely assumed the winning design would be bilevel, in large part because of the success Amtrak had inherited in the form of 73 Hi-Level cars originally built by the Budd Company for the Santa Fe Railway between 1954 and 1964. Those cars had proven well suited to western long-distance travel, and the new design was consciously shaped by their example. The design work was carried out by Louis T. Klauder and Associates, finalized by mid-1974, and Pullman-Standard ultimately won the construction contract over competing bids from Boeing, Budd, and Rohr. Amtrak placed an initial order with Pullman-Standard on April 2, 1975, covering 235 cars at a cost of approximately $143.6 million. The order was subsequently expanded to 284 cars, with the total expenditure rising to around $250 million. Deliveries ran from 1979 through 1981, well behind the originally scheduled completion date of mid-1978. The first coaches entered regular revenue service on February 26, 1979, operating between Chicago and Milwaukee. The Empire Builder, running between Chicago and Seattle, became the first long-distance train to receive a permanent Superliner assignment on October 28, 1979. Through 1980 and 1981, Amtrak progressively re-equipped its western long-distance trains, including the San Francisco Zephyr, the Southwest Limited, the Coast Starlight, and the Sunset Limited. The final car delivered, a sleeper completed in July 1981, was also the last passenger car ever constructed by Pullman-Standard, and was named in honor of company founder George Mortimer Pullman. The Superliner I fleet proved highly significant for Amtrak's long-distance operations. Amtrak estimated that converting a train to Superliner equipment increased ridership by roughly 25 percent. The cars' electrical head-end power systems made them far more reliable in the harsh winter conditions of the northern plains than the older steam-heated equipment they replaced, a quality that proved particularly valuable on the Empire Builder. A second generation of cars, the Superliner II, was later built by Bombardier Transportation between 1991 and 1996, adding 195 additional cars to the fleet and allowing Amtrak to finally retire the aging Hi-Level cars that had originally inspired the Superliner design.

Model Train Manufacturers

Brands that produce Superliner I in HO scale

Prototype Reference

Real-world information about this equipment type