Amtrak's non roadworthy cars

Trains Magazine Passenger
1

It is puzzling that no poster here has picked up on trains newswire reasons for parked cars. See paragraphs 3 - 5.

Short consists constrain Capitol Limited while empty Superliners run on Midwest route: Analysis - TrainsShort consists constrain Capitol Limited while empty Superliners run on Midwest route: Analysis - Trains

What it comes down to is that during 2020 management decided to not budget the 4 year interval of " clean oil test and stensil" (COT&S ). No provision in following budgets was not included. ( A clear cost cutting idea). Now CMO George Hull says it will take 2 years to get all rolling stock up to date on COT&S. What the heck? As I understand it the procedure only takes 4 days. Is that 4 - 8 hour days or 4 24 hour days? As well procedure is only being done at Beech Grove. Several months ago it was posted that Amtrak was shutting down repair line 2 and consolidating to just line 1 at BEECH.

The procedure seems to take a drop table. So why doesn’t Amtrak temporary take mechanics and send them to Beech to make thru put faster? Make it 24/7 at Beech. My answer “No will reduce bonus”.

Where else could this rather simple work be done? Miami? Sanford auto train? WASH / Wilmington? SSY? BOS? Albany ? CHI ? Seattle? Oakland ? LAX?

Then there are other operators. Brightline Sanford has drop table, UP, BNSF passenger fleets ? All RRs have to do the same for all their freight cars as well and private freight cars as well. So there is a lot of qualified persons doing this every day

2

Classic Amtrak thinking, they could cut the catch-up time via purchase and install of another drop table or two…which they will definitely need with an expanded fleet at some point but why spend the money there now since it is not a crises yet. Stumble along with one drop table and just tell everyone it is a constraint and will take two years because it takes each car 4 day min on a drop table.

See you flood Amtrak with taxpayer money and you still get massively bad decision making by management.

3

PSR thinking at Amtrak.

4

The first question is how many drop tables does Amtrak have or did it have more at one time?. Just one sounds suspicious. 2nd is, are any other of its locations able to jack up cars to roll trucks out. Then we can get some answers.

5

Isn’t Bear, DE the Amtrak maintenance facility for single level equipment on the NEC?