I was able to ride Acela last Wednesday from Baltimore to New York. It was a great ride, very crowded (I counted two empty seats in our car) and several times during the ride, I felt very uncomfortable due to the speed and not having a seat belt to use – perhaps that’s due to my extensive flying.
I also – and I KNOW this is because I fly so much – kept waiting for the thing to lift off because our speed seemed quite similar to that of an airplane about to lift off the runway.
Finally, the ride was very smooth and we arrived into Penn Station ten minutes ahead of schedule.
Sounds like a nice ride. I’ll have to think about doing either “Accela” or “Amtrak” very soon. Amtrak, I know, is aloud to go about 90 mph on mainlines so I must know how it feels. I only rode Amtrak about twice. The feeling is great.
Not really. But if you want to go much faster, try the TGV in France or the ICE in Germany. Instead of doing 90-100 MPH you’ll be doing 186 MPH… That’s fast…
Interesting, to me at least, that it takes someone not living in the BosWash corridor to think that riding the Acela merits comment. My typical reaction when I ride it is that I get steamed up by the realization that between NYC and Boston it runs crippled, hampered by the lack of necessary track improvements to realize its potential.
eastside: Consider that I live smack dab in the middle of the country. Riding the Acela is as foreign to me as riding the Space Shuttle. It’s just an interest in things that merits my comments.[:)]
The reason it’s interesting is that writing about an Acela ride wouldn’t have occurred to me. Here are the highlights of a train ride from Washington to Boston:
Washington Union Station
The magnificent infrastructure that the Pennsylvania RR built early in the 20th century: the four track “Broad Way,” the tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers and Manhattan, and the Hell Gate Bridge (a great ride in itself). What’s more the PRR did it without taxpayer money.
The ride through the Connecticut countryside. The leisurely pace of the trains enables one to contemplate the scenery. [;)]
my highest speed is 90 in the desert on the southwest cheif but i was only 2 then so i dont remember it, I took the Capitol Limited to DC this year and I think we were doing about 70 or 80 in certain areas, tough to get to sleep in coach though.
Murphy Siding - picking up on your comment in another thread about winning the lottery - if you do (as well as all the other good stuff), take a ride on a Eurostar train from London to Paris. After travelling through the Channel Tunnel at 100mph (although it feels much slower), the feeling of acceleration from 100mph when the train emerges into France and the full 16000hp is unleashed - to take it to 186mph - is something guarenteed to bring a smile to the face of anyone who likes trains!
I understand that there is a section of the NY-Boston segment operating at 150MPH. A relatively short stretch, obviously not in Connecticut. I think that speed is the goal for much of the DC-NYC line, but much work is needed before that comes about.
Yes. There is a stretch of 150 mph in eastern Conn and RI.
But, I believe there are long stretches of 135 mph between Wash DC and Penn - not too shabby!
And much of the route east of NH is 100+ mph, too.
Yes, there are still too many slow spots on the NEC - all of Metro North (is it still all just 80mph?), and even some sharp curves south of NYC (ELizabeth and Frankfort Jct, to name two). Plus, there are too few high speed crossovers. But, all things considered, Acela and the NEC are nothing to be ashamed of - 120 mph is just plain fast! (just ask any of your non-RR friends if they think a 120 mph train is a fast train! Most people have no idea how fast trains go - they often are surprised by a 79 mph top speed)
Oh, boy, have I got my work cut out for me on this one… [:)]
alstom wrote:
Amtrak can go 150mph with the Acela trains, 125 mph with conventional electric equipment, and the old F40PH’s could go up to 105-110 mph on the NEC. All other lines are much slower, however. Probably only 79 mph due to FRA regulations that require a great deal of expensive signaling to operate at speeds 80 mph or higher (instead of forcing the RR’s to improve their signaling, it forced them to slow down).
Murphy Siding wrote:
Actually, yes, it is out of the ordinary. I’ve ridden the Acela a couple times, and the trainsets can give one a serious push into the seat, and the deccel is almost as good. IMHO, only electric MU’s can beat it on this continent. It’s a fun ride, IOW, and far better than one is gonna get on almost anything else.
donclark wrote:
Right, but the Acela does do 150 mph…and that’s fast, too. Not all that far will it do 150 mph, but it does hit it twice.
eastside wrote:
Well, the Acela does merit comment on it’s own. It’s the newest & fastest passenger equipment in t
Thanks for all that neat detail (and corrections) on the north end of the corridor!
The 90 mph in NY - is that just the Amtrak portion from Hell Gate to Shell or does in go all the way to the NY/Conn state line?
It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden up there. Last time was on an F40 hauled Amfleet train. I remember just nicking 100 mph on the southbound leg into Providence. Proir to that, it was on the headend of a 90 mph Amtrak FL9 + 3 Amfleet test train from NH to Providence in the pre-P&W days (That was fun.)
I gotta get back up there someday…
As for 79 being the limit outside the NEC…
There is still some train control territory outside the NEC were higher speeds are allowed. From NY to Schenectady (actually CP-169) there is quite a bit of 90+ mph including a good stretch of 110. On the BNSF across AZ and NM there is still a good bit of 90 mph. The Amtrak Harrisburg line up until about 10 years ago was 90 mph on the west end and may be again once track work is competed. The very south (east?) end of the NJT Atlantic City line is (or at least was) 90 mph, too. Also, a stretch between Kalamazoo and Porter owned by Amtrak is 90 mph, I think.
I looked for a Bullet Train schedule to go from Tokyo to Kyoto, Japan, and they claimed a 2:15 to 2:20 running time for 513 km (320 miles). That works out to about 140 MPH end to end.
The one time I took the Bullet Train, I went Tokyo to Kyoto and back and my recollection was that it was a local that took 3 hours plus. This 2:20 suggests an express train – I also entered Tokyo-Osaka, and the seemed to indicate a change of trains in Kyoto – did they change the routing of the New Tokaido Line and make Kyoto the terminus?
As for our home-grown Acela train, did they “lock out” the tilt on account of loading gauge problems? If they did lock out the tilt, what happened? Don’t they have a loading gauge for the route, and can’t they check that the train fits the loading gauge over the range of the tilt? Can the run with just a little bit of tilt by moving the stops? The newer Bullet Trains have just a wee bit of tilt so they can run over those super-engineered broad curves at full blast instead of at a minor speed restriction.
As to the E-ticket ride aspects of Acela, I bet that is how they get their schedule improvements instead of much of a higher top speed given the various speed restrictions on the NEC. Braking is as important as motive power in schedule keeping in that fashion (gee, d’ya think they may run into some problems someday with stress on the brakes?). It is also costly in terms of energy consumption to frequently speed up and slow down.
And the September issue of trains has a report of a GG-1 going 120 mph with the Washington Section of the National Limited for Amtrak in 1977! I believe the story, too. My fastest rides in the corridor were from Portchester to New Rochelle going westbound on the eastbound express track at 110 in the Tubotrain (I was behind the engineer in the “pod”) as he had to make “his slot” at Shell and get to Penn Station nearly on time to connect with the Metroliner connection (this was after the switch of the Tubro to Penn which happened after the other Boston trains that had been switched over in Penn Central days.); and southbound on an original Metroliner south of Wilmington at 136 mph Both were “illegal;”.
Owl’sroost: I just added that to the “Things to do when I win the lottery list”. I asked about the acceleration because I figured it would have to have some interesting effects on the ride.
That I don’t know. Perhaps you would be best to ask over on the newsgroup misc.transport.rail.americas (which can be accessed via Google.com). There are at least two current northeast passenger engineers on that group, John Albert (Amtrak) and Jaap Van Dorp (M-N, IIRC, and also posts to this one, too). Either that or just try a simple group search on Google. I’m sure it’s been mentioned once or twice on m.t.r.a.
Paul Milenkovic wrote:
Yes, but only from New Haven to the New York. The former NH RoW is quite narrow, considering that it’s still got the circa 1907 catenary towers spanning the four tracks (well, most of it is still four tracks).
Easy. Someone in upper managment at Amtrak wanted two more inches of car width on each side to accommidate wider seats. This person apparently authorized Alstom to make the design change without telling anyone, or at least, the right person. This was not noticed until it was far too late. This would seem to fall under the “too many chefs spoil a meal” category.
From what I’ve heard, the problem is that the clearance gauge will not support a catastrophic failure of the tilt mechanism. For example, say, for whatever reason, the tilt mechanism operated so that instead of tilting inward, it tilted outward to the max. At the same time, it passes an Acela which is normally tilting in. Apparently, these trains would sideswipe each other between New Haven and New York