Almost two years ago, I put up a thread about Dreamstar Lines, a company aiming to reinvigorate private passenger rail in the US with an overnight service between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which has been absent since the discontinuation of Southern Pacific's Lark service in 1968. Today, I've come to bring you some updates

>restored Bilevel cars (either Santa Fe Hi-Levels or retired Amtrak Superliners) will be used at first, but there planes to replace them long-term with modern purpose-built cars
>BMW subsidiary Designworks, has been contracted to design the car interiors, drawing heavily from Art Deco (often considered the zenith of American passenger rails service)
>there are now four class, family, bedroom, suite, and standard, the latter will be the highest class despite its name
>amenities will include both late-night dining in a dedicated bar car as well as room-to-room breakfast service
>rather than purchase surplus Amtrak or Caltrans motive power, or even buying Simens Chargers, ZELTECH and HyOrc have been contracted to design custom locomotives using the Rankine-cycle for the service in order to comply with California emissions requirements
>start of service has been pushed back to 2026 at the earliest (shocker), with the aim of launching in time for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles

Sources:

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/how-freight-rail-fueled-a-new-luxury-overnight-train-startup

https://drifttravel.com/dreamstar-lines-art-deco-iinspirednteriors-overnight-rail-service/

https://www.railway-technology.com/news/zeltech-dreamstar-clean-energy-locomotives/?cf-view

The company website's even gotten an overhaul recently, albeit still full of AI-slop

https://www.dreamstarlines.com/

Link to the last thread https://archive.palanq.win/n/thread/1974491/#q1974491