With the acquisition of SC44’s and the subsequent retirement of the first P40/42’s will we see some of the P42’s converted to cab cars? I would think they would be lighter than the converted F40’s would they not?
Or might we see purchase of passenger carrying cab cars from Siemens if/when that order materializes?
Pros/cons on both?
I am not so sure. F40 was a regular locomotive body built on a frame. I think the P-42 are like a unibody type construction and cutting a hole in each side might weaken it’s overall strength.
Some of the later F40’s converted, the ones used for the Cascades for example did not get the baggage doors installed. The car body was left intact.
There are many collisions of Amtrak and vehicles. Instead of scrapping the P-40s and -42 just make them cab cars. Each major collision just scrap the cabbage and that saves the cab cars. Costs probably less ?
Isn’t the prime mover a stressed member in the construction of the P40’s & P42’s monocoque? Remove it and you remove the integrety of the monocoque.
Coaches with a control cab are obviously not a new idea. Amtrak has had a few on the roster with the converted Metroliner coaches and Caltrans owns as-bulit bi-level control coaches on the San Joaquin route. It would not surprise me if the Siemens order includes control coaches.
Why not go right to the source? Here is the PDF of the PRIIA single-level passenger rail cars.
AMTRAKKER, for some reason this site is not allowing me to respond to your private message. I can receive but not reply.
Are you using a newer version of Firefox? If yes, this is a glitch that has been around for some time.
I recently “upgraded” my browser and was struck with this. Had to download Chrome and use that when replying to PMs.
Potential early answer to this question: the latest announced Amtrak ‘fire sale’ (list put up around October 10th and the URL to it on RyPN) lists several P42s for sale. If the plans were to rework for cab cars, we’d have seen at least one ‘experiment’ before these locomotives were offered outright.
Note that ‘cab car’ does not imply ‘cabbage’ – you could easily leave some, even most, of the ‘unremovable’ part of a structural engine block in place and forgo cutting side openings. I would also suspect that a ‘sled’ with stiffness at least equal to that provided by a 7FDL could be welded up easily as a replacement, and carry any required ballast on its members ’
So, an F40PH is basically a GP40 with a full width hood…sort of. The carbody of the F40 is structural - at least that’s what some EMD engineers told me once upon a time. In order to get the thing to make weight, they had to lighten the frame and put some structural integrity in the carbody.
Cutting a hole in the side of a P42 could be done if you carried the stength around the opening with some stucture. The “engine is part of the structure” thing rings a bell, but I’m not so certain. Even that’s no big deal Just replace with some steel if need be.
I looked through this spec and noticed that unlike METRA which puts “fireman side” rear facing cameras on its locomotives (as a result of the accident with an exiting passenger that lost her legs) Amtrak does not give the engineer a camera/screen to show the opposite view of the train. Do any Amtrak cabs have these?
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I do not know current or ‘as-trained’ Amtrak enablement, but the last time I was in DC I rode from near Baltimore into Washington Union Station on a MARC Penn Line train that routinely accelerated to 114mph (in push mode with what turned out to be an HHP-8) and observed no off-side camera use at all. Starting procedure at each station was to crack the cab car throttle up to about 5mph, then shove it to full open, cross the cab and lean halfway out of the open door on that side to check the train, then go back and sit down. No safety belt, nobody to help him if he went out the door too far (presumably the alerter would shut the train down after a few seconds, but that wouldn’t help his health in the meantime!) No idea what might be done differently in poor or cold weather.