Hi-Level
The Hi-Level was a type of bilevel intercity railroad passenger car used in the United States. Car types included coaches, dining cars, and lounge cars; a sleeping car variant was considered but never produced. Most passenger spaces were on the upper level, which featured a row of windows on both sides. Boarding was on the lower level; passengers climbed up a center stairwell to reach the upper level. Vestibules on the upper level permitted passengers to walk between cars; some coaches had an additional stairwell at one end to allow access to single-level equipment.
The Budd Company designed the car in the 1950s for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway for use on the El Capitan, a coach-only streamliner which ran daily between Los Angeles and Chicago. The design was inspired by two recent developments in railroading: the dome car, employed in intercity routes in the western United States, and bilevel commuter cars operating in the Chicago area. Budd built 73 Hi-Level cars between 1952 and 1964.
The first two prototype coaches entered service on the El Capitan in 1954 and were immediately successful. Budd built sufficient coaches, dining cars, and lounge cars to fully equip the El Capitan, with additional coaches seeing use on the San Francisco Chief. Amtrak inherited the entire fleet in 1971 and continued to use the equipment on its western routes. Tunnel clearances restricted their use in the eastern United States. In 1979, the first Superliners, based on the Hi-Level concept although built by Pullman-Standard, entered service. Amtrak gradually retired most of its Hi-Levels in the 1990s as more Superliners became available. Five lounges, dubbed "Pacific Parlour Cars", provided first-class lounge service on the Coast Starlight until their retirement in 2018.
Background
The Santa Fe introduced the El Capitan in 1938. The train ran on the Santa Fe's main line between Chicago and Los Angeles. Like other streamliners of the pre-war period, the El Capitan carried coaches only, and had no sleeping cars; this was meant to provide passengers with a lower-cost alternative to the sleeping car-equipped Super Chief, which served the same route. Passengers flocked to the new train, and the Santa Fe added cars to meet the demand. The train grew from five cars in 1938 to twelve in 1942. By the early 1950s fourteen was common. Only seven or eight of these would be passenger-carrying coaches; other cars included head-end cars, a baggage-dormitory for the crew, two dining cars, and a Big Dome lounge.Sometimes demand was high enough to justify running a second instance of the train on the same day. The Santa Fe sought a solution to increase the capacity of the train without lengthening it further. Two popular innovations by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad suggested a solution. First, in 1945, the CB&Q introduced the dome car, in which passengers rode on a second level high above the tracks, affording better views. Second, in 1950, it placed bilevel rail cars in commuter service in the Chicago area. Taken together, these innovations suggested a new possibility: a long-distance bilevel coach, with greater capacity than single-level cars, and the panoramic views of a dome.
History
Santa Fe
The Budd Company approached Santa Fe in 1952 with the proposal to build long-distance bilevel cars, building on the gallery commuter car concept. Santa Fe accepted the proposal, and took delivery of two prototype coaches in 1954. The cars went into regular service on the El Capitan. Following a positive customer response, the Santa Fe ordered 47 more cars: ten 68-seat "step down" coaches, twenty-five 72-seat coaches, six lounges, and six dining cars. These constituted five equipment sets, sufficient for daily service on the El Capitan. The project cost $13million.A press trip took place between Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh on June 16, 1956, using the route of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Santa Fe exhibited the equipment throughout the United States during June and early July. A formal christening took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on July 8, with the Duke of Alburquerque in attendance. Regular revenue service began on July 15. The new train was far more efficient than its predecessor. As Fred Frailey explained:
Trains editor David P. Morgan thought the equipment was "comfortable" and " well, even above 90 mph". S. Kip Farrington wrote that he was "definitely sold on the high level in every angle" and that it was "here to stay". A typical train comprised two step-down coaches, five standard coaches, a lounge, and a dining car. The Hi-Level cars continued in service after the Santa Fe combined the El Capitan and Super Chief in 1958. The Santa Fe also converted six single-level baggage cars to baggage-dormitories, with a spoiler at one end to create a visual transition. The cars dated from the 1938 version of the El Capitan.
Despite their success, the cars did not inspire a wave of imitators. By the late 1950s, private-sector passenger travel was in what turned out to be irreversible decline. Most railroads were cutting service; few ordered new equipment of any kind. An exception was the Chicago and North Western Railway. The CNW, like the Burlington, used bilevel coaches on its Chicago-area commuter routes. In 1958 it ordered thirteen intercity bilevel cars from Pullman-Standard: ten coaches, a parlor car, a coach-parlor, and a coach-lounge. Visually they resembled the CNW's existing commuter equipment; a noticeable difference from the Hi-Levels was the adoption of head-end power instead of steam. The cars entered service on the Peninsula 400, a Chicago–Ishpeming, Michigan, day train, on October 26, 1958. The CNW would be the only other railroad to introduce bilevel equipment on intercity runs.
By the 1960s, the Santa Fe encountered capacity problems on the San Francisco Chief, which ran between Chicago and San Francisco. Unlike the El Capitan, the Chief carried a mix of sleeping cars and coaches. To augment capacity, the Santa Fe ordered more coaches in 1963–1964. This was the final major order for new long-distance passenger equipment before the coming of Amtrak; after Kansas City Southern Railway bought ten new coaches from Pullman-Standard in 1965, no new locomotive-hauled coaching stock would be built until the first Amfleets arrived a decade later. Each San Francisco Chief carried four Hi-Level coaches, displacing six single-level coaches.
Amtrak
Throughout the 1960s passenger ridership declined on American railroads while losses mounted. In 1971 the United States federal government created Amtrak, a subsidized for-profit corporation, to take over intercity services and reverse the decline. The Santa Fe, after some hesitation, participated. Amtrak took over the Santa Fe's remaining trains on May 1, 1971. It acquired the entire Hi-Level fleet and continued to operate them. The primary assignment continued to be the combined Super Chief/''El Capitan, known as the Southwest Limited from 1974 to 1984 and the Southwest Chief thereafter. The Chicago–Houston Texas Chief, another ex-Santa Fe train, also carried Hi-Level coaches.Amtrak was impressed with the Hi-Levels and used them as the basis for the design of the bilevel Superliner family of railcars. The first of 284 SuperlinerI cars began arriving from Pullman-Standard in 1978. As the Superliners went into service, Hi-Levels could be found on more of Amtrak's trains throughout the Western United States. Hi-Level coaches appeared on the San Francisco–Chicago San Francisco Zephyr, Chicago–San Antonio, Texas–Los Angeles Eagle, and the Chicago–Seattle, Washington/Portland, Oregon Empire Builder. Dining cars displaced from the Southwest Limited filled in on the Ogden, Utah–Los Angeles Desert Wind. Tunnel clearances around New York City and elsewhere prevented their use on the Northeast Corridor.
The Superliner I order did not include any "step down" coaches, so Hi-Level coaches continued to fulfill this function on Superliner-equipped trains. In the 1980s, Amtrak rebuilt many of these coaches as dormitory-coaches, with half of the car given over to crew space. Amtrak retired all six single-level baggage-dormitory cars by 1981 in lieu of converting them to HEP. By 1990 the Amtrak fleet stood at 69 cars: 36 dormitory-coaches, 21 coaches, six diner-lounges rebuilt from dining cars, and the six lounge cars, which Amtrak marketed as "See-Level Lounges". The arrival of 195 SuperlinerII cars from Bombardier Transportation in 1993–1995 permitted the retirement of most of the remaining Hi-Level cars. The Chicago–Toronto International used a mix of Superliners and Hi-Levels from 1995 to 2000. Hi-Levels remained in service on the Oklahoma City–Fort Worth Heartland Flyer into the 2000s. The majority of the Hi-Level fleet was retired at the beginning of 2003. The private equity fund Corridor Capital owns most of the fleet, and has proposed employing them for various passenger projects within the United States, including a plan to revive the Coast Daylight.
The last major Hi-Level assignment on Amtrak was the Los Angeles–Seattle Coast Starlight''. In the late 1990s Amtrak refurbished five of the six lounges for use as sleeping car passenger-only lounges, branded as the "Pacific Parlour Car". Amtrak offered separate food and beverage service in the upper level and installed a movie theater in the lower level. The railway writer and historian Karl Zimmermann called them "the greatest treat for sleeping car passengers on Amtrak". By the late 2010s Amtrak was manufacturing new parts for the Hi-Levels at Beech Grove, or in some cases retrofitting the Hi-Levels to use Superliner parts. Amtrak retired the cars after their last run on February 4, 2018, citing safety concerns and rising maintenance costs. They were the last Hi-Levels in regular service, and among the few remaining Heritage Fleet cars. The Steam Railroading Institute, a heritage railroad based in Owosso, Michigan, acquired several for use in excursion service. Three cars were sold to the Naugatuck Railroad in January 2025.