I found some proposed new commuter cars from Colorado Railcar. (www.coloradorailcar.com/dmuproposed.htm) I read what is on the site, but was wondering if any of you knew anything about these.
Here are a couple of examples:
My reading of the site suggests that Colorado Railcar has developed a fairly complete catalog of car designs for sale to various suburban carriers. I’m not sure if any actual sales have been made but it appears that they are positioning themselves to be a major player in the suburban transit market.
I believe that the DMU’s would probably do better in new operations where they wouldn’t be oddballs in an existing fleet.
I could see the new Metra “Star” line using something like that, but not BNSF.
Sorry, I’m always a little skeptical about those Colorado Railcar folks.
Back in 2002 they did a test on the WSOR at Madison for a proposed commuter operation, but outside of Middleton building a spur for it’s western terminus, nothing has happened.
It was a pretty interesting car, I got to be a part of the test runs, but my engineer and I nit-picked it to death with things they could have done differently.
Randy
It sounds like a success mechanically… I’m not sure how realistic it would be for a suburban application like Metra. Though they ARE talking about using something like this when they get the Star line going. But for normal commuter lines, it doesn’t seem beefy enough to me. You can imagine what hitting a truck would be like.
Dave
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I was told during the tests that these railcars meet all the FRA requirements in terms of buff strength, though I would not want to be the guy in the control compartment if it does happen.
Where would DART need a DMU? Or the Trinity Railway Express? They already have nice equipment. Unless they’re not going to electrify one of their new corrirors they’re building…but that would be stupid. It would be more expensive to electrify everything than to run diesel, but it would be much LESS expensive once everything is up and running. They should just stick with their KinkiSharyo cars. DART’s one of the most succesfull light rail systems…they might be getting the big head. They need to get their other corridors up and running before they think about buying extra equipment or ESPECIALLY different equipment they’ve never tried before.
I think that Colorado Railcar just did some nice artwork with those for marketing purposes. I doubt that many of the RR’s listed will actaully buy any.
Interesting… My guess is, like the diesel builders of years past who painted “demonstrators” in the colors of the company they expected to sell to, Colorado Railcar is “painting” up DMU’s in the colors of potential buyers! It’s a lot cheaper, naturally, to do it electronically. [;)]
-Mark
www.fuzzyworld3.com
I saw one of the Colorado railcars at Ft.Lauderdale on the Tri-rail
test runs several years ago, and from the reports I read, Tri-rail
was quite impressed. Did Tri-rail buy any units?
Also I believe the Rocky Mountaineer was also in the process
of buying some power units or cars ???
What’s the story on these two operations??
You are much closer to the truth than you may realize. The DMU prototype units were actually tested on the EJ&E, which is the actual line the STAR service will run on when completed. Naperville has actually purchased the land at the NE corner of the EJ&E and BNSF interchange for a new Metra station to serve the Metra BNSF and EJ&E Star line interchange.