I have posted this thought elsewhere, but I believe confining Sleeper service Boston Washington is a smart move.As any Member here knows, Amtrak is extremely short of Viewliner sleepers. The intent was to order 100 of them, but the Appropriations process cut that to 50. Since the "previous Administration" chose not to make timely repairs to wreck damaged Superliner equipment, it was necessary to withdraw those cars from the Wash-Chi Cardinal and replace them with single level equipment including Viewliner Sleepers.
Presently, the only place where Amtrak has "half a chance" of maintaining a "protect" Viewliner (i.e. a car available to substitute for a broken one - "bad order" in RR talk) is New York. If a Viewliner inbound to Wash on the Cardinal is "bad ordered" there is no reasonable alternative other than to take the car inbound on the Federal to use on the outbound Cardinal, and hope that with "buying some time" they could get the bad ordered car roadworthy in time for that evening's Federal.
Unfortunately, that car would "not exactly' be available for protect at Wash if it were chugging on down to the Tidewater - more likely than not devoid of faces in the windows.
So have I described a "rob Peter to pay Paul' situation? You bet!; but what does one do when they are desparate?
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