What if it's the transition sleeper?

I am apparently in one next week, room #20. Can I tell if I'm near the front? My concern is the noise, since I guess that car is near the engine.

There's a diagram of the transition car here.

Well, I guess you just hit on the one case where you can tell! :cool:

By that diagram, room #20 would be in the rear half of that car--the car would be traveling from left to right. The stairs shown at the opposite end of the car go down to the lower level, which is reserved for crew dorms and an office space for the conductor. Since the door to the rest of the train has to be on the upper level (in order to connect and allow walking through), it always has to be oriented the same way.

Not all transition dorms are exactly the same, but all of them would be oriented the same way. I'm not sure how the room numbers line up in the different versions, though.

You sure you don't want to be closer to the engine? Hearing the whistle all night long is part of the romantic heritage of railroading! Any real railfan should appreciate that!! :p:D

You may be able to change rooms by talking to the sleeping car attendant once aboard the train. I had a trip from LA to San Antonio booked where I was going to meet my wife who was on a business trip. Her trip was changed so I ended up adding a leg from San Antonio to Chicago but was assigned a different room for that leg. When I boarded, I talked to the sleeping car attendant and he told me that I could stay put in my original room.

Speaking of fare buckets, on that trip I travelled from Boston to Washington DC to Chicago to Sacramento to LA to San Antonio to Chicago and back to Boston. For all of the Superliner accomodations, I was assigned roommette #5. By the end of the trip, I felt very at-home in that room!

While I'll admit that I'm far from an expert on Trans/Dorms, I'm not sure how they can be different. They're all Superliner II's and they were all built using the same floor plan.

Someone over on AU (Rafi?) posted a picture of the crew dorm room and I asked how they got that shot, as I thought the second half of the car was off limits (well before the stairwell), since someone else had posted a picture of the saloon-style swinging doors near the middle of the car. Whoever shot the photo of the crew lounge said, IIRC, that some TDs are different and don't have that door and actually allow you to go down as far as the stairwell.

So I assumed there were different ones...

I was in the transition car the past few days. This one did not have any saloon-style swinging doors. You could walk all the way down to the stairwell to the baggage car.

I would kind suck if it did have doors before the stairwell. You'd lose access to 2 of the 3 showers and 3 of the 4 bathrooms (or 4/5?).