Got to ride the Talgo train from Seattle to Vancouver, BC and back this week. A quick review:
Equipment interior: It’s 10 years old now and showing it a bit. The interior surfaces are a bit dirty, but seats and carpeting are clean. Seats are leather and very comfortable. Tables for four at the ends of some cars are nice for groups. Ride is generally smooth. I’d be hard pressed to say it’s any better than Amfleet, though. But, considering the weight and that it’s single axle, that’s pretty amazing. The ride is generally quiet, more so than Amfleet, but only because the HVAC blower is very quiet. Most annoying feature is the pneumatic doors at each end of the car. Very noisy and not reliable. Widows are nice sized. Would have rather had pull-down shades than cloth curtains, though. Would have helped as sun set over the sound. Bathrooms were a bit nicer than Amfleet although they got just as trashy in a hurry during the trip.
The cars have TV screens in the overhead and headphone jacks. This is good. They didn’t work on the way up. This is bad. But they did show a movie on the way back. This is good. It was a PG13 rated one - I would not have been pleased if I had elementary aged kids along. This is bad.
Equipment exterior: Paint scheme is great! Not so great - cabbage at north end of train. On return trip, had P42 for power - not a pretty combination. Low floors made entry and exit fast and simple. Passive tilt seemed to work very nicely. I never noticed any strange behavior entering or exiting curves.
The route: It’s a great trip. As scenic as the trip up the Hudson River. It’s not particularly fast, though. Lots of curves in sections and some really slow connections and bridges hammer the running time pretty hard. No shortage of riders. The Sunday evening train was pretty close to full. The Tues evening return was about 1/2 full.
Customs: Going north, the Canadians do “one stop shopping” at the station in Vancouver. It included a “nosy” dog. Y
I do remember the outbound summer-length Super Chief/El Capitan in the pre-Amtrak era barely fit into Dearborn Station but the inbound run had to be doubled. An ATSF RS1 would remove the last three or four sleeping cars and put them on the next track.
Yes, I was in the King Street Station a few months ago. The friend that picked me up from an Amtrak train revealed the on-going restoration project, albeit very little progress noted. There was a display of the project in the main waiting room.
Distressingly, there was no on-street parking in downtown Seattle. We drove around forever, and still could not find anywhere to park. Wound up temporarily parking at the downtown McDonald’s, and of course had to buy something (cheap) there. Downtown is certainly a “jumping place,” socially.
I don’t know of any other place (Amtrak trains are not long enough to need such, so far as I know) today where doubling is necessary. In February of 1970, I took the Silver Meteor out of Miami; it was doubled in the station (stub station). This may have been standard practice with winter season trains, at least.
The inbound Canadian is also doubled in Vancouver.
I rode a Cascade last week from Portland to Seattle. It’s comfortable, and very sleek on the inside. However, I thought the single axles between the cars were very noisy, and a bit rough - seems like it would be better to have 4 wheel trucks.
In Spain Found the same ride conditions and when riding over less than perfect track much better on 2 axle trucks. If track is perfect with no freight traffic single axle rides great otherwise…
There was some noise when the end doors were open, and on some the conductor locked them open because they were working poorly. But it really wasn’t too bad. The ride on on BNSF was fine. Some of it was concrete ties, some wood, all welded rail.
I guess this is the third try at single-axle trucks.
The first generation was in the mid to late 1950’s. The railroads had already invested heavily in a “lightweight streamliner” replacement passenger fleet in the late 1940’s based on two-axle trucks, and they were losing money and fighting high costs of operation. There were three attempts at single-axle ultra lightweight trains. One was the Train-X, put into service on the NYC and on the New Haven. A second was an earlier version of the Talgo. A third was the GM bus-bodied Aerotrain – single axle trucks, but not articulated like the others.
My impression was that the GM Aerotrain hunted badly above a “critical speed” and hence was a naive design that didn’t take into account the dynamics of the wheel-rail interface. The conventional two-axle truck is also a naive design, and the British are said to have had such ride problems with their “Mark I” coaches, but it is probably more forgiving in its design parameters.
In discussions of the GM Aerotrain, it often comes down to “oh, yeah, well ol’ GM thought they could just stick some bus bodies on rail wheels, and they were no more than buses and they were no good.” One could say that “ol’ GM thought they could just stick some submarine Diesel engines in a locomotive”, but that one actually worked and revolutionized railroading. I think the real answer comes down to the “steering” of cone-tapered wheels connected with solid axles as is railroad practice works out much differently than the steering of rubber tires on cement, and that the GM Aerotrain was maybe 10-20 years ahead of its time in terms of there being a scientific understanding of how to develop railroad suspensions for high speed operation.
The GM Aerotrain had “compliant axle steering” instead of guided axles, and the guided-axle Talgos and Train-X should have worked out much better. I s
Another thing to take note is that Don reported that the TV monitors were broken on one train set and that conductors had to stow some doors in the open position because the mechanisms had problems.
There are a number of people in the advocacy community who fancy themselves as latter-day Lucius Beebe’s or E. M. Frimbo’s, scoffing at anything less than a heavyweight parlor car on 3-axle trucks with Middle Eastern hand woven rugs and walnut wood paneling. There are a number of such in our local advocacy group who are looking forward to the Talgo as being more plush than the Horizon Cars, which are scoffed at as “mere commuter equipment adapted for Amtrak service – we need something nicer.” Whether Talgo will meet those expectations remains to be seen – maybe when they still have the ‘new train smell’ and haven’t acquired 10 years of that baked-in grime on wall surfaces.
On the other hand, when stuff is visibly broken (and when bathrooms are let to get all messed up, probably the combined efforts of sloppy passengers along with low effort of onboard personnel), and problems with doors has also been a knock on the Horizon cars in Hiawatha service, it creates a kind of “low rent” and “Greyhound bus terminal” ambiance.
The average travel, who is trying the train but has other options, probably has no reference of comparison regarding a bumpy ride in places. But the broken TV’s, the out-of-service doors, and the sloppy bathrooms, however, could be off-putting.
I agree. It would be better if these train sets didn’t have TVs at all versus having some working. Given this is short to medium haul equipment, it would be better to take them out and contract with a DVD player rental company in the high volume stations for those who don’t want to read or look out the window.
King Street station has to come up a notch to feel as good as a bus station. It’s a mess. But, if they ever finish the renovation, it’ll be a gem.