Bruce,
You are correct. That was how Amtrak claimed they could provide the equipment for that train in particular, was to make the operation push pull. Also, there was, and still isn't a place to turn/wye a train in Santa Barbara, so the only way to solve it was to convert to push pull. There was some speculation that ridership would go down a little, because half the passenger would have to ride backwards, but this proved to be untrue, as the ridership grew and grew to what it is today. Thanks for the memories!