Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 13, 2015

The Hi-Levels are a fleet of bilevel intercity railroad passenger cars built by the Budd Company for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in the 1950s and 1960s. The first two coaches entered service on the El Capitan in 1954 and were an immediate success. Budd built sufficient coaches, dining cars, and lounge cars to fully reequip the El Capitan, with additional coaches seeing use on the San Francisco Chief. Despite plans no Hi-Level sleeping cars were ever produced. Amtrak inherited much of the Santa Fe's Hi-Level fleet in 1971 and continued to use the equipment on its western routes. In 1979 the first Superliners, based on the Hi-Level concept though built by Pullman-Standard, began entering service. As of 2013 Amtrak continues to operate five Hi-Level lounges, which it calls the "Pacific Parlour Cars", on the Coast Starlight.