Boardman interview

OK, it was asking a lot to have folks understand metal fatique, cost of maintenence / rebuild, spare parts availability, etc I guess. So yeah if your willing to spend millions on a old baggage car you can keep rebuilding it over and over again. Personally, if I am riding on the train or airplane. I would like to see it out of service past what the industry considers is it’s normal useful life.

Steel, kept below the yield limit, as it is in rail car design, has no fatigue life. You should be able to rebuild the existing baggage car fleet for 1/2 to 3/4 the price of new. The costs to maintain a rebuilt fleet over a new fleet are similar. There is no new technology driving the need for new.

Most of this car order is about getting the car building business in the US going again.

You ride in baggage cars? The normal useful life for rail equipment is driven by technology. Locomotives, by replacement ratio, fuel consumption (and now, emissions). Never, has a freight RR purchase new locomotives simply because the existing fleet was “old”. Freight cars, by commercial requirements (like roofs that don’t leak), and higher axle loadings. What defines the useful commercial life of a baggage car? Or, for that matter, a coach. What technology is driving the need for new?

There are several problems with the idea of refurbishing old equipment and not using newer equipment.

1. If an Amtrak train derailment happens that can be attributed to an old defective car a jury would probably award additional damages because the car was not kept in a state of good repair even if it was.

2. The September trains mag had a short article on page 14 about Truck performance detectors. This article noted how hard it is to detect problems in lateral-to-verticle ratios; truck guage forces; standardized truck guage spread forces; warp index – meaning the truck is not rectangular.

All these items are getting more difficult to repair on Heritage cars as lack of reliable parts and non standard cars (anyone know how many different lineages?) becomes more of a problem thereby increasing operating costs instead of adding to new capital costs that will decrease future operating costs.

3. Amtrak requested for FY 2011 $592M for operations. The House Subcommittee on Transportation only approved $563M (same as 2010) so there may be no way to add additional trains or even cars to existing trains and once again have cars paked at Bear and Beech Grove awaiting funds for repairs.

4. The same subcmte also cut Amtrak’s General capital and Fleet plan from $1,471M to $767M (almost 50%) which presently requires Amtrak to not

All the more reason to spend the money you do get for cars wisely … for revenue cars. And I dispute that there is anything in the above that precludes Amtrak from adding cars to existing trains. More space, for customers Amtrak has often had to turn away, has been the crying need for years.

Nobody is talking additional trains on long-distance routes except as the states are willing to ante up for them, including equipment.

Agreed but Amtrak has been starved for operating funds for years by both Dems and Republicans. That caused Amtrak not to be able to repair and/or overhaul many cars that are now being refurbished by ARRA funds. (probably one reason for the demise of Heritage sleepers) If operating funds are again shortchanged in FY 2011 and 2012 there will be more revenue cars once again sidelined and how can you then add cars?? That is especially true of the Heritage cars and what happens if several Heritage Dinners go down for some reason and are not replaced?? IMHO a quick loss of revenue passengers?? Another way to kill Amtrak.

But again we do not know the delivery schedule of this order so some one get us a copy of the contract !!.

EDIT: Since I wrote the above it has come to my attention that NARP’s latest newsletter states “service cuts are possible if Amtrak must park cars for safety reasons because it can’t perform certain capital funded overhauls”

Note: The fleet strategy ;plan that was released last fall stated the order of car replacements and that is what Amtrak is following. That was the time to argue the car building !! I believed Amtrack was going to follow that plan.

I don’t think so. A defect is a defect is a defect. Old or new.

Only applies to 3 piece frt trucks. Locomotive and passenger car trucks cannot get “stuck”. You tram truck frame as the time of rebuild - about every two years for Amtrak loco and passenger car trucks. Defects are not due to age, but collisions and wrecks.

There are not that many variants of passenger car trucks under the heritage equipment - most of that was taken car of at the HEP conversion in the 1980s. Most passenger car truck components are reclaimed by welding, grinding and normalizing -not by purchasing new.

Capital for a rebuild or capital for new should come out of the same appropriation, not the operating appropriation, I would think.

[quote user=“blue streak 1”]
4. The same

Don it continously amazes me why you did not apply for Boardmans job.

You are a wealth of information and Im sure Amtrak would be much better if you ran it.

How do you know I didn’t? :wink:

Amtrak board announced that they re appointed Boardman into 2013. See Amtrak web site!

I Know , I know , but with Don’s wealth of information they could have gotten one person to do CEO, Chief Mechaical officer, Head of engineering and Financial officer.

look at how much they could have saved.

I work for cookies.

The long term direction that Amtrak appears to be heading towards is for more speed capabilities for all of its rolling stock. The retirement of GG-1s (100MPH?), the E-60s (80 MPH), Heritage sleepers (85 MPH),. We do not know the speed capabilities of this new equipment order but from what was in the Fleet Strategy plan all that equipment will be 160 MPH capable. And now:

Heritage baggage (90 & 110 MPH) to be retired. Heritage Dinners but speeds not stated howeverthere are only 2 spare and last fall’s CSX tearing of one dinner really placed Amtrak in a squeeze until car was repaired. Minimum required to cover schedule 15 (?) and it is desired to put one on Palmetto if returns to Florida and maybe Cardinal? (3 - 4 more?)

HHP-8s were designated as 135 MPH to replace AEM-7s 125 but they have not worked out due to reliability problems so additional were not purchased. Replacement motors will be least 160+ MPH.

Acelas – 150 with New Acelas ?+ MPH.

Amfleets, Horizon, Cab cars, Surfliners, Cascades, all 125 MPH capable.

Older purchases were at 110 MPH – Viewliners, P-42s, P-32DMs. 100MPH slated for replacement are SL coaches and sleepers, Cal train converted SLs, F-40 Cabbage, P-40s, GP-38s.

All this purchasing of higher speed equipment denotes 1. Increased Fluidity in the NEC especially on the 2 track sections from PHL –

While I would not expect Amtrak to make public the contract for the new passenger cars, I am surprised that neither Amtrak nor CFA have released any artwork depicting what will be produced. Since CFA has produced the types of cars ordered in Europe already,they must have submitted at least some concept artwork with the original bid last year or during contract negotiations during the past six months. Why the secrecy?? Could Amtrak have signed a contract without any idea of what its purchases will look like?

The new viewliner will be just that, Amtrak owns the Viewliner design, and despite some differences with original, the body shape is same, Amtrak has worked on this design for nearly 5 years.

a few Differences bigger windows like ACELA cars

Two Airconditioners on roof, like ACELA cars

Trucks with both tread and 3x disk brakes.

There may not be a second row of windows, due to bigger base windows.

[quote user=“blue streak 1”]

The long term direction that Amtrak appears to be heading towards is for more speed capabilities for all of its rolling stock. The retirement of GG-1s (100MPH?), the E-60s (80 MPH), Heritage sleepers (85 MPH),. We do not know the speed capabilities of this new equipment order but from what was in the Fleet Strategy plan all that equipment will be 160 MPH capable. And now:

Heritage baggage (90 & 110 MPH) to be retired. Heritage Dinners but speeds not stated howeverthere are only 2 spare and last fall’s CSX tearing of one dinner really placed Amtrak in a squeeze until car was repaired. Minimum required to cover schedule 15 (?) and it is desired to put one on Palmetto if returns to Florida and maybe Cardinal? (3 - 4 more?)

HHP-8s were designated as 135 MPH to replace AEM-7s 125 but they have not worked out due to reliability problems so additional were not purchased. Replacement motors will be least 160+ MPH.

Acelas – 150 with New Acelas ?+ MPH.

Amfleets, Horizon, Cab cars, Surfliners, Cascades, all 125 MPH capable.

Older purchases were at 110 MPH – Viewliners, P-42s, P-32DMs. 100MPH slated for replacement are SL coaches and sleepers, Cal train converted SLs, F-40 Cabbage, P-40s, GP-38s.

All this purchasing of higher speed equipment denotes 1. Increa

How d’ya get 160 MPH outa an equalizer-and-swing-hanger-truck that Amtrak loves so much but the rest of the world, yes that “rest of the world” that is “shaming us” for our backwardness in HSR, which has pretty much gone to a “radius link” type truck, like on the Genesis and the Superliner I’s?

Metroliner Classic MU cars had swing hanger trucks in place of the Pioneer III design, according to my poppa, at the insistence of the Pennsylvania (later Penn Central) Railroad. Those cars were rated at 160 MPH, but the ride was like on a school bus.

The New York Central did that famous test with a jet powered RDC. The test is often misunderstood that someone thought there was a future of jet propelled rail cars or that this was some kind of “stunt.” Rather, it was a valid piece of engineering research into whether “conventional” railroad equipment could stay on the rails beyond 150 MPH or whether something exotic – perhaps air cushion vehicles was the “tech” of the day, now we talk about maglev – would be required. Story I read is that yes, these were equalized swing-hanger trucks, but they went to some kind of “cylindrical wheel profile” (a way to suppress “hunting” at speed, but it relies on a special tapered flange instead of wheel coning for guidance, and in service would require much maintenance to counteract the effect of wear to hollow out that profile and make the trucks hunt like crazy).

Is there any plan to do away with nose-suspended traction motors, or is the plan to simply hammer away at the tracks and do more track maintenance? Again, those other major industrial countries that are putting us to shame use just about anything but nose-suspended traction motors, even to the point of bringing back “quill drive.”

So yes, you could operate all of these classes of equipment at 160 MPH plus – I guess you could run my Camry at 160 MPH plus if you pu

It’s hard to know what to do if you don’t know where you’re headed. Amtrak’s dilemma is exactly that. They own the NEC which has a some solid stretches of >110 mph and then they have the rest of the country that’s mostly 79mph with a little bit of 90, 95 and 110. Most of the new corridor money is for upgrading to 110 mph.

Toss in the current regs which mandate massive collision posts and strong underframe/carbody structure which pile on the weight and you have …a mess.

If all you need is 110 mph and you don’t even think about trying to have the current FRA regs amended, or improving passenger miles/gal, you wind up with slightly updated Budd 1950s cars. Center sills and equalized, swing hanger trucks. Kinda like an old body on frame Cadillac.

But, you are definitely thinking about how to speed up the NEC and have laid out a plan to do it. Big bucks. Not likely happening soon - or ever - the eventual answer might be new ROW for much of the route. You just don’t know… So, maybe, big, old designs are OK for this generation.

But, all those states are out there pushing their emerging corridor plans, some of which are not integrated into the national network, with the ability to pile the pass miles/gal and gobble up up all those “green” credits. Can’t get there with the Cadillac, even with speed rated tires and pushing it off the cliff. (which is what Acela is…) You need light and fast for this - like that unibody Camry. No massive center sills and swing hangers allowed! But, trying to figure out how to purchase this would require going outside your comfort zone and negotiating with the FRA. Lots of new mechanical and political skills to be employed.

That’s sounds hard. Why bother.

Cookie, please!

Just for information collision post are only required on locomotives and MU cars.

trailing vehicles only need complying with buff strenght, and have anti climber type protection.

With PTC being mandatory in 2015 one of biggest obstacles to higher speed will be gone.

no need to keep railroad only good for 79 mph when now speed can be dramaticly increased.

This business of wait-for-PTC-2015 sounds to me like waiting for the arrival of the Rail Fairy – poof, one touch of the Magic Wand and the 79 MPH barrier is broken.

Don was filling us in on the drawbacks, make that insurmountable obstacles, to PTC in 2015, mainly, that the freight railroads will have to give up all of their line capacity for the factor-of-safety of the PTC system in deciding when to apply brakes based on an automatic process rather than on the skill of an intelligent and experienced human engine driver.

Is this PTC thing really, really going to happen, or is this a case of wishful thinking? Yeah, its written into law, but 2015 is some time away, and maybe the law will get changed to pull the railroads from the brink of clogging up their operations. And remember, the freight railroads keep truck traffic off the roads, so freight railroading is “green” too.

PTC, for most current Amtrak routes, is a red herring. Two reasons. Many routes are currently class IV track (60 frt, 80 passenger), so PTC gets you one mph gain. (Those that aren’t are Class V (70/90))

Second, is that PTC as an overlay on existing systems - which is how it is going in - will reduce max line capacity. Speeding up passenger trains will further reduce capacity. Frt. RRs aren’t going to do it for free - and Amtrak doesn’t have the extra $$ to pay.