Hey everyone and welcome to a new video! Special officer and inspection company
rail cars have been in use practically since the beginning of Railways in North America.
They are used for everything from moving railway executives and guests from place
to place to examining rail lines and attending special events. One type of
inspection car that has become common in recent decades is something known as a “Theater Car”.
Theater cars get their name from the large picture window at one end of the car with descending movie
theater style seating for viewing the rail line as the train travels along.
Many freight railroads have converted old passenger cars into theater cars in house.
Likewise, Amtrak also has a fleet of several different business cars and theater inspection
cars that it has converted over the years. One of these cars is Inspection Car number 10,004,
which has very fittingly been given the name “American View”. This car started off life as
one of the original Viewliner 1 series prototype cars, a sleeping car carrying the number 2301.
The car shell was built by the Budd Company in the late 1980s, and was one of the last
built by Budd before the company spun off its rail car manufacturing division to Bombardier
Transportation. On Amtrak, the car ran in service as a sleeper for several years and was then stored
for a little more than a decade. In 2014, Amtrak completely rebuilt the car into an Inspection car.
Today, it travels around the Amtrak system, giving company executives and guests a front row seat to
the railroad. Earlier in 2023, the “American View” began another tour of the system to give Amtrak
executives an opportunity to study various routes for potential service improvements. In March,
it traveled on the back of the Empire Builder to Portland and then to Seattle and Vancouver,
BC to tour the Amtrak Cascades corridor. On one of the days, the car was added to the
back of Amtrak trains 516 and 519 for a round trip from Seattle to Vancouver and return.
I took a
trip down to Everett to follow the train along the Bellingham Subdivision. Not long
after arriving, northbound train 516 emerged from the morning fog
en route to Canada. The train had just departed Everett and was about to pass
through BNSF Railway’s Delta Yard at the beginning of the Bellingham Subdivision.
The engineer of train 516 gave a friendly wave as the train raced
along on the north side of Burlington. 516 had just departed Mount Vernon
and would make its next station stop in Bellingham about 20 minutes up the line.
At
Blaine,
the train rounded a curve by the old Great Northern Depot and entered Canada.
From some observation decks in Blaine, the train could be seen for quite a while as it
rolled along the coastline through White Rock. Train speeds through this area are limited to
21 miles per hour due to the proximity of the tracks to the often crowded beaches. Improvements
have been made to this section of track in recent years in the hope that speed limits
may eventually be increased along this section of the corridor for a faster arrival into Vancouver.
In addition to route improvements, one area of service improvement for this section of the
Amtrak Cascades corridor would be the option of adding additional train frequencies to the
route. Currently, there are two round trips a day between Vancouver and Seattle, with one
northbound and one southbound extending as far south as Portland, Oregon. The second round trip
just recently returned to the schedule on Monday March 6th after a temporary hiatus. Future service
proposals have suggested as many as 6 trains a day in each direction traveling to Canada.
I got one last view of the American View on the northbound trip as train
516 went around a corner along Boundary Bay. 516
would make a close to on time arrival at Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station.
The old Blaine Depot sat forlorn and boarded up. BNSF Railway has plans to tear down the building
at some point in the future. All Aboard Washington and other rail passenger advocacy groups would
like to see the Blaine Station restored and reactivated as a station stop for Amtrak Cascades.
I returned to Blaine that evening for the southbound run of train number 519
back to Seattle. The southbound trip was delayed about 40 minutes on its way out of
Canada by a combination of freight trains and marine traffic on the Frasier River.
Twenty minutes after sunset, the headlight of Charger locomotive
1404 illuminated the rails as the train rounded the corner.
The American View features lights on the end of the car
so riders can see the railroad even in the dark.
After waiting to meet northbound Amtrak train 518,
the southbound pulled into Mount Vernon for its station stop.
Train
519 departed Mount Vernon after a very brief 55 seconds in the station. From here,
the train would make additional station stops in Stanwood, Everett,
and Edmonds before arriving into Seattle’s King Street Station just shy of two hours later. As
the lights on the American View faded in the distance, I decided to call it a day.
Thanks for joining me for for this little trip following Amtrak Cascades and the American View.
If you have any thoughts on this video or suggestions for future videos, let me know
in the comments section below. As always, a big thanks to all my supporters on Patreon. To receive
updates every time I post to YouTube, click on the subscribe button and select the “receive all
notifications” option by clicking on the bell. I’ll be back next Friday at 9 AM Pacific time
for an all new railroad themed adventure right here on the YouTube channel. That’s
it for now. Until next time, I’m Mike Armstrong. I’ll see you down the line! Thanks for watching.