The major difference here is trains West of Chicago (and the Auto Train) use “Superliner” equipment. These are two level cars you enter on the bottom and they connect on the upper level. The sleepers have rooms on both levels and the bulk of the seating is on the upper level of the coach cars. The observation car has the cafe car portion downstairs.
IIRC they have discussed replacements for them for a long time as they were built in the the late 70’s for the first batch and in the mid 90s for the second batch. While safe, just not up to modern standards of what people expect, particularity in the sleepers as most rooms only have one single plug and they don’t offer WiFi.
Superliner is not just west of Chicago. We’ve been on them and see plenty of them here in the East.
Unless they scaled that back, too. I admit my last was 19 years ago.