According this broschure the coaches are based on the PRIIA single level coaches with deviations required by customer.
The PRIIA bi-level specifications call for 89 seats plus 1 wheelchair parking location, the single-level specifications for 72 seat plus 1 wheelchair parking location.
From what I understand NS is not able to fullfil its contract.
As said above start in 24 to 36 month.
When I look at the Brightliner coach broschure it state on page 5: Provisions designed in the car body to mount a lower level step assembly and a trap door to allow low level boarding
Again the broschure states (page 3): Fulfill Latest Standards - Standardized coach with flexibility for customer needs, complies with ADA requirements
Regards; Volker
Evidently the release of the statement has been retracted by Illinois DOT. Appears no one noticed the contents of the minutes as being confidential so we will have to wait. Can post the contents from other sites but will wait …
A 17 seat difference between single-level and bi-level is attrocious, they should’ve never gone with a bi-level design from the get-go unless you’re looking at between 110 - 120 seats with space for one wheelchar(that’s all that is needed under ADA requirements). You’re looking at the difference between 11,570 seats for the bi-levels and 9,360 for single-level, that’s a loss of 2,210 seating capacity, which would require an additional 31 cars…that should be easily covered by the difference in price between the bi-level and single-level, unless the Siemens single-level is the same price as the N-S bi-level.
The California bi-levels are 89 and 90 seats. I’m not sure where we’d get 120 seats into them without airline style seat pitch.
As far as I can tell from the sketchy information out there is that there will be no price difference. Siemens had bid considerably higher initially for the bi-level design. On another board someone quoted a Siemens official that the Nippon Shario bid would be impossible to build at that price. Perhaps more truth th
By way of comparison, the gallery bi-levels that C&NW used on the “Peninsula 400” and “Flambeau 400” had 96 seats. Gallery bi-levels in suburban service have 145 to 162 seats.
The distance between draft line and car floor together with the 800,000 lbs cause a moment that has to be carried somehow. If the floor alone is not able to carry load and moment, the side walls have to carry part of it like a monocoque. In this construction you have to fit the CEM elements without compromising the buff strength.
Regards, Volker
I still say the 800,000 lb crash test is an arbitrary number that the FRA came up with, without having any solid background that it’s the minimum needed for survivability. Especially since there are quite a few other factors that go into the equation, such as how well the seats remain attached to the floor, flying suitcases, debris puncturing through the walls/windows, fire, etc., etc… That is probably one regulation that needs to be reviewed, with significat scientific studies done at different levels, from 400k up to 800k in 50k intervals, in my opinion.
In the mean time, if I was in charge of N-S I’d continue to have my engineers work on a design that would meet the existing FRA requirements, whether I had orders in place or not, because if you design it and it’s on the books then the orders might just materialize.
I found that the earliest requirements were PRR passenger cars with a buff load of 200.000 lbs in 1906 followed by RPO cars with 400,000lbs in 1912. It was later doubled to 800,000 lbs.
in 1939 the AAR made the 800,000 lbs a Recommended Practice for passenger cars and a Standard 1949 (S-034: Specifications for the Construction of new Passenger Eqipment Cars).
The American philosophy is to allow as little deformation as possible. The European regulations follow the path of the automobile industry using crumple zones. The FRA and the PRIIA certification follow this now but only partly by allowing/requiring CEM elements. “Partly” because they still require the 800.000 lbs buff load.
The European rules give requirements for the energy absorption limiting the actuation forces in the CEM element. The buff load is a bit higher than the CEM’s actuation forces and depends on type of vehicle. For a passenger coach it is 441,000 lbs. The deceleration is limited to 5g.
My understanding was the Midwest Corridor Cars were based on the California Surf-Liner car type with just a few modifications made to them and they largely followed the Amtrak future standard for corridor cars. Which makes the NS failure to largely apply some reverse engineering to a past car that was already built even more surprising. So not a totally new type of car.
And I am not convinced the Simens single level cars will become the new standard, time will tell. More likely they will become a stand-in expedient as a way to preserve the Federal Grant money.
The Amfleet design is history and I don’t see Amtrak going back to it. It fit a need in the 1970’s and 1980’s for single level car replacements. I don’t see anymore of the Amfleet design being replicated. New single level cars are probably going to look more similar to Viewliners. Unless the design of the single level cars are flipped around once again and Amtrak leaps to another new design.
I don’t have any idea how you come to the conclusion that now folks are going to jump to the Viaggo Comfort design just because they temporarily might have swapped out the Corridor bi-level design for the Simens single level design. No indication that Siemens switch a permanent decision yet and it looks like a decision made for expediency of getting new cars in the field faster more than one that is based on the design being desired for the Midwest.
Also, disagree that Amtrak has moved away from spending money on LD trains. I would say that Amtrak has moved away from spending money on LD trains by itself and outside of any kind of partnership. $100 Million being spent to preserve the SW Chief route is nothing to discard. Niether are Amtraks encouragment of Dallas to Kansas City service. Amtraks partial embrace of New Orleans to Orlando service (with New Orleans to Mobile service as a potential add on). If Amtrak can get a coalition of states to provide funding or add to it’s own funding I would expect them to add more new to the LD equipmen
Because right now, the unmodified Siemens cars are just end vestibule only. Would be nice if they had two sets of sliding double doors on each end but in my view that is a significant car redesign from what they are marketing now and also in my non-engineering view NOT what they are offering the Midwest Consortium. 2 large holes on either side of the carbody (for double sliding doors) would impact a compression test unless done right. Also you expose that much of the car to the outside environment your going to need more powerful HVAC on each car, etc, etc.
Per UMLER the original 8000-series cars range between 154K and 158K lbs. The newer 6000-series cars card between 151K and 154K lbs. Take it for what it’s worth.
At first glance it is surprising but there are changes. We concentrated on the 800,000 lbs buff load that both have to carry.
The California cars were built before the APTA crashworthiness requirements were introduced in 1999. After building the Surfliners were at least three revisions of APTA rules. Last but not least the PRIIA bi-level cars are required to have pushback couplers as one of several CEM elements.
So there are enough changes to get into difficulties. And with all other requirements in the PRIIA specification the weight limit might have been to tight.
I have looked into the board meetine minutes. From the test failure to mid January 2017 the is always the same bi-level procurement update: The carshell is still re-designed. From mid January the updates are tabled.
BTW Siemens stated that there Brightline coaches are based on the PRIIA spec but heavier. That was the reason for their presentation I linked.
If you see that a Siemens Viaggio Comfort coach in Europe weighs about 102,000 lbs compared to the PRIIA limit of 104,000 lbs it might be near impossible to stay within this limit as the American crashworthiness requirements can bring up to 20,000 lbs more weight.
On the other hand a Viaggio bi.level is just 11,000 lbs heavier than the single-level compared to 46,000 in the PRIIA specs.
Regards, Volker
From your point of view it might be nice to have but according the specs not necessary. The bi-level specs require a door width of 52’‘, the single-level specs a width of 32’‘. The Brightline coaches have 34’'. Bi-level cars require wider doors because of the more complicated passenger flows.
American crashworthiness requirement are much easier to achive with single-level than bi-level cars. So a larger door might be possible but not necessary and unlikely as it might cost seating capacity.
Regards, Volker
It would be interesting to find out exactly what they did to make the design fail the test. Though I don’t think we will ever know. Europeans and Japanese both have a far different design philiosophy than we do when it comes to passenger carrying equipment and it is not just rail equipment, it’s automobiles and passenger aircraft as well. Hence you see the bumper stickers like “If it ain’t Boeing, I’m not going”…one of my favorites because the traveling public largely doesn’t care…if it is Boeing or Antonov.
It disturbes me much more that N-S tried for over a year to find a correction to the problem.
I don’t think it has to do with the different design philosophy regarding passenger rail equipment. N-S is used to handle design of CEM element for a long time. And they know stiffness requirements too. The difference is they are lower in Japan than the USA.
Sometimes you can run into problems if the owner defines too many design limits.
As Siemens stated they were not able to keep the PRIIA weight limit for the Brightline car and question if it is possible for the single-level PRIIA cars.
The difference of just 2,000 lbs as posted above between a Siemens European car and the PRIIA single-level coach weight limit seems too low. In the past it was between 10,000 and 20,000 lbs.
Perhaps similar happened with the bi-level cars.
Regards, Volker
OK then. If the PRIIA standards are the issue then why not make the case to the standards body instead of just throwing in the towel on the whole deal. Seems rather strange to walk away instead of resolving the issue.