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Schumer: Amtrak will pick Alstom to replace Acela
I have never been able to get up there (from Tennessee) to ride one. Now they are going away. I guess time waits for no man.
How about a “next generation” set of long distance trains?
I didn’t know Schumer was Amtrak’s new spokesman. Wonder how much of a kickback he is receiving?
How does “Chuckie-Say-Cheese” know this? What say, Bombardier, et al? We, out here in “Superline…”, err, “Fly-over Land” don’t get nothing, except for a few smokestack-equipped baggage cars.
The three billion dollars we “invested” in Acela achieved a negative rate of return on the invested capital, so what could possibly go wrong with the three billion in new public dollars being thrown into the Black Hole this time?
Once the phase in of the next generation of high speed trains is completed on the NEC, the current Acela Express trains could be refurbished and assigned to the proposed Southeast Corridor with extended catenary.
This is great news! Amtrak and NEC will benefit greatly from acquiring new train-sets. A requirement for the new trains is 40% increase in seating which perhaps will lead to a 40% increase in ridership, to 6-million annually perhaps getting the NEC to 15 million passengers annually, still a far cry from Virgin Trains 30-million annually on the WCML in the UK.
It seems to me by choosing Alstom that the new EMU train-sets will be Pendolinos like British Class 390 utilized by Virgin Trains. Like the new Airbus factory in Mobile, Alabama many of the car components including body shells will likely be imported from the Pendolino factor in Italy which is an open production line with finally assembly in Hornell, NY. I think about 60% has to be from domestic suppliers to meet the “Made in the USA” requirements.
Financing for the purchase may come from a European “Ex-Im Bank”, Italy and perhaps France. The Acela got financing from Canada’s version of the Ex-Im Bank. It seems possible that these new trainsets will be able to generate enough new revenue to pay for the cost of purchase. This has been true in the UK has some train companies have bought new rolling-stock without public money.
The Pendolinos are very impressive train, decades in development and production (1970s) they are based on technological innovations from British Rail’s APT and Italy’s FIAT ETR 401. The first commercially production version was the 9-car ETR 450 than ran the Rome-Milan line in under four hours, at speeds up to 155-mph (250 km/h). Passenger numbers increased from 220,000 in 1988 to 2.2 million in 1993.
They have been exported in one form or another to over a dozen counties from Poland to China; including Britain where the Pendolino has finally achieved the success that British Rail was pursuing with the APT. The latest version is the “New Pendolino” now in service in Europe, it has a top speed of 155-mph and tilts up to 8-degrees.
Like Siemens City Sprinter there will be changes, but
“Informed Sources” say they will be AGVs (articulated) with Pendolino tilting suspension.
What’s funny is that back in 1987 Bombardier and Alstom created an “industrial and commercial cooperation agreement” where Bomb was responsible for “marketing and manufacturing TGV high-speed train[s] in North America.” We all know how well that worked out. Let’s start laying down bets as to when and how Bombardier sues Alstom for cutting them out.
Where are New Brand Superliners Car orders is at Amtrak?? and Viewliners cars too. NEC get everything and other parts get nothing. Spend this 2.5 Billion Dollars on Superliners& Viewliners, and Engines for LD trains.
BRIAN A HARRIS,
Amtrak has 130 new Viewliners on their way from CAF USA, 130 new bi-level coaches from Nippon Sharyo, and 32 new diesel-electric locomotives from Siemens, with an option to build another 75 more for corridor service and 150 for LD service. Besides, if Amtrak and VIA can keep their Budd “Heritage” cars going for so long, it seems to me with major overhauls the Superliners and Amfleets will likely be with us for a long-time.
Ben T
NEWS LINK: Railway Age “Amtrak’s new wheels hit the rails”
October 07, 2014
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/passenger/intercity/amtraks-new-wheels-hit-the-rails.html
“CAF is expected to deliver all 130 Viewliner II cars by late 2015. “Capable of moving at speeds of up to 125 mph, the Viewliner II cars will be interoperable with the Viewliner I, Amfleet II (long-distance), Horizon, and remaining Heritage cars, as well as all Amtrak electric and diesel-electric road locomotives,” Amtrak emphasizes.”
“California and three Midwest states now plan to acquire an additional 45 bilevel cars from Nippon Sharyo. The states had ordered 130 cars that are being assembled in Rochelle, Ill. That contract provided add-on options at a slightly increased cost, depending upon car type. The order will now include 122 Midwest corridor cars and 175 California cars. The first of these cars are expected to enter service by 2016.”
“The Siemens “Charger™” passenger locomotive, scheduled to debut in 2016, is the company’s first North American diesel-electric locomotive. An initial 32 units have been ordered for Amtrak operations in the states of Illinois, California, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington. The Charger™ is powered by a Cummins 4,400 hp (3,281 kW)-rated 16-cylinder Tier 4-compliant QSK95 and is capable of a top speed of 125 mph. The order is worth $225 million and includes options for another 225 locomotives—75 for use in regional services and another 150 for intercity services. The initial 32 locomotives will be manufactured at the Siemens plant in Sacramento, Calif.”
Can you have a articulated train-set with tilting suspension system? The Advance Passenger Train (APT) did have articulated cars but all the modern tilting trains I have seen from the X2000 to the Pendolino, and all those tilting trains in Japan, each car has it own bogies/trucks. In the end, if it has the Pendolino tilting suspension, to me its still a Pendolino. We’ll see! Soon… I hope!
They seem a tad expensive, but, hey, they should more than pay for themselves. And yeah, tilting articulated trains is a wonderful throwback to the unfairly much maligned APT. What is the relationship between the Pendolino mechanism and the APT one? I recall the rights to the latter were bought by Talgo (IIRC) but I don’t know whether they used it or just developed their own active tilt independently.
(APT history tidbit: the follow-on to the APT was the InterCity 225. The cars for that, designated by BR as Mark 4, were originally supposed to tilt, but weren’t articulated. The tilting mechanism was going to be built into the trucks themselves. At some stage, presumably late in the design because the Mark 4s ended up having a tapered profile in production, they decided to not bother with tilting. So had the APT been followed up with a tilting successor, it appears that it wouldn’t have been articulated, that was one part of the design they weren’t interested in.)
Re: the superliner (etc) complaints:
I think it’s time to recognize that Amtrak is two companies, a profitable operator of express trains in the North East, and a transportation-of-last-resort supplier to the rest of the country. There’s very little point in spending billions upgrading its 40mph fleet until maintenance and refurbishment costs genuinely require it.
I speak as an occasional Silver service rider. I’m glad for the upgrades that are in the pipeline (especially getting rid of the roomette toilets and addition of bathrooms!) but if you want Amtrak to invest in it to make it a useful service for a large number of people, speed (and frequency) improvements and the removal of unnecessary stops should be high on your list of priorities, with new rolling stock being fairly low in the list.
I wouldn’t run the non-NEC part of the Amtrak the way Boardman does. But Boardman runs it that way to ensure it’s funded. The changes I’d make would make Amtrak very useful, but would probably result in Congress ending Amtrak subsidies altogether. And with no form of national transportation in the US being profitable overall, that’d be the deathknell for most passenger train services. So Boardman needs to keep doing what he’s doing.
Awarding this contract to Alstom is a travesty considering that company’s propensity for corporate malfeasance and corruption. They are currently under investigation by the United States Attorney General and justice agencies of other countries for fraud and bribery on a grand international scale. Amtrak should in no way be aligned with this criminal organization, let alone providing them with $2.5 billion in business. Although no domestic companies with capabilities for manufacturing high speed trains there are several other European and Asian companies that can produce this equipment at a US facility.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-23/alstom-s-mr-paris-paid-millions-in-bribes-u-s-says
In addition, Alstom has overcharged Amtrak by adding markups of up to 2400% for materials and repairs over the course of several years according to the Amtrak Inspector General. Congress needs to investigate this activity before consummating this contract for the Acela replacement.
PAUL HARRISON,
You are correct that had the APT been followed by British Rail, it would not had been articulated, in fact the Intercity-225 was the follow up to the APT, minus the tilting. The “Electra” Class 91 locomotives where derived from the APT’s power car. Why British Rail didn’t include tilting is perhaps because focus shifted from improving journey times on the WCML to the electrification of the ECML, which required new trains, and where tilting would save less time then on the more curvy WCML.
BR sold the patents on the tilting mechanism to Fiat Ferroviaria which was already developing its own tilting train including a prototype Pendolino, and had brought the tilting trains into limited service. With the British tech and their own efforts, both of which had taken a decade to develop, they press forward to create a very successful series of high-speed trains.
Pendolino Tilting Train
http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/pendolino-train/
The APT was brought into limited service in the early 1980s and could have been successful if the government had been willing to press on with building more sets and slowly working out the “bugs” in service. But after spending more than a decade on a costly project that seem to have no end, it was axed. The problem was in part organizational, and also how ambitious the project was. Like a more Pentagon project, it tried to include too many new and untested innovations into one project, tilting was just one of them.
As a rail vehicle the APT was far more complex and innovated then either the Shinkansen Series 0 or the TGV. Unable to afford to build new HSR lines, British Rail instead focus on build train-sets that could maximize the potential of existing mainline railway. That was the genius behind the APT.
The spin-off project, the diesel powered Intercity-125 HST however was a great success and was a mixed of new innovated tech from the APT program (wheels and suspens
Observations O T – Coming soon: FIAT locomotives with Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge/DeSoto builder’s plates. Good News Flash – Mr. Turon gets a proofreader or spellcheck.
Insider News: Sen. Schumer a shoe-in for Boardman’s job, after Trump steamrolls New York State.
Rumor: CEO of Bombardier challenges CEO of Alstom to duel. Weapons will be ‘foie gras’ at ten paces. Comments ranged from ‘Tabernac’ to ‘Sacre bleu’.
Bad News – no electrification of Southeast Corridor, as EPA decommissions all nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Rails will be lifted, Richmond-Jacksonville, and subsidized PV “Black Billboards” installed on the ROW.
Suggestion: Lighten up!
Mr. Hays,
" Lighten up! " Good idea !! Maybe by smoking or drinking whatever it is that you are !!!