Dang these are nice looking! Amtrak should buy these for their Surfliners, look a darn lot better than those cinderblock cabcars they use now.
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_15011142?source=rss
Full Story above
IMO… Bombardier bi-leves looks better.
or this… 
As slick as the cab cars look they are not functional. The shovel nose Cab car has no way to be an intermediate car and the other one does not either. I can not tell you how often you see cab cars in the middle of a train on commuter services so the un needed cars are not run empty during non rush hour times. Looks great but not very economical!
In this case, Economics is not at all important while safety is.
I don’t think they add that much of a safety factor while eliminating flexibility. There isn’t much of a crush zone ahead of the cab. They don’t look that good, either.
Well to each there own, but I think they look a fair lot nicer than these flatfaced aerobricks
And after the Chatsworth crash I’m pretty sure the engineers feel a whole lot safer with that ‘crumple zone’ in front of them.
Final repot not in on Chatsworth crashworthyness but suspect would have been same results due to speeds and happening on a curve.
Well, the intention of these cars is to improve crash worthiness. Whether they are adequate to that task is a question I can’t answer. One would hope that Metrolink bought something of some value. The goal wasn’t aerodynamics. Of course, If the goal were crashworthiness, I would think some gutted F40s would provide even more safety…in particular for the passengers and probably would have been cheaper.
Given that they ordered 117 cars (coaches and cab ends) I think the long term goal is to replace their aging coach fleet with newer “state of the art” cars, only time will tell how well they work out.
Chatsworth was such an unusual combination of events its hard to say if anything different on the head end would have resulted differently, certainly an F40 cabbage unit results would likely have been no different than with the F59, God only knows how much worse if it had been a cab end car. Better some sort of crumple zone than nothing at all. Which would you rather be in during a head on crash, a brand new Mercedes or an old Ford van?
How old are those coaches? I don’t think of them as old. I think of Metra’s old fleet which within the last 10 years included cars from the pre-RTA era (I think in the last 10 years) as old.
I like these cars 
Maybe but AMC sold alot of Pacers and Gremlins too. [:P][;)][:-,][swg]
AMC?
AMC was American Motors Corp, formerly Nash-Kelvinator. The main assembly plant was in Kenosha. They acquired Jeep from the remnants of Kaiser Industries sometime in the 1970’s, I think. AMC was later absorbed by Chrysler, mostly for the Jeep division.
They look cool, but I wouldn’t want to drive one. Now, a nice Alco “PA” nose would work, a true SUV destroyer! BTW, are all the controls/instructions bi-lingual? Didn’t Eleanor Roosevelt buy AMC from George Romney? Questions, questions…
Hays, without a comment on “Mother’s Day”.
Can us railfans look out the front in push mode?
Rgds IGN
I don’t know about Alcos, but have you ever seen photos of F units in wrecks? The nose was mostly sheet metal and bondo. They did not fare well in crashes.
Interesting design. Of course it doesn’t lend well to being in the middle of a consist, but if it increases visibility and safety for the train and her crew, I am all for it!
I’d really want to see one in person though… that makes all the difference. A cab ride would be even better!! [:)]
Sort of looks like a giant P42.
I don’t know about the rest of the Southern California residents who frequent this board, but I really hate the new Metrolink paint scheme. Some have dubbed it the “tampon” scheme.
I’m also wondering how well these new bare metal finish cars will look with the white painted Bombardier coaches.