Saw a New Mexico Rail Runner commuter car Sunday morning on a westbound freight. It was one of those hybrid bilevels like I believe they use in Portland. Nice paint scheme, but where’s it headed? Do they actually have traffic jams in New Mexico?[:)]
Yep, I saw it at Eola on Sunday afternoon and it was part of BRCGAL and was set out by her crew at Eola yard…not sure what happened to the car after that but I will be at Eola at lunch hour today and will look for it and report back.
If it was seen westbound before it was at Eola, I’d think it was headed home (to Albuquerque, 829, where there’s a commuter system already in operation between Belen and Benalillo). My question would be, where’s it been?
Carl, don’t I recall hearing that these cars had been used somewhere up in Canada before being refurbished into their current livery, thus making them (more or less) second hand cars?
Tell me, are the N.M. Roadrunner coaches bi-level galleries, like Chicago’s Metra; or more like twin-levels, a la AT&SF later Amtrak?
Neither–they’re single-level at the ends and bilevel in the middle, like L.A. Metrolink or Toronto’s GO Transit cars, among others. Someone should be able to post a good photograph of something here.
HOPEFULLY THIS PHOTO GIVES EVERYBODY AN IDEA OF WHAT THE CARS LOOK LIKE.
Very handsome units.
Now if they could only develop a horn that makes a “Meep-Meep” sound.
Such a horn seems to exist, however not by design but they seem to be Metra horns on some of the F40 motors that are defective and nobody at Metra ever seems to get around to fixing them. Many times when some of us are railfanning out at Eola we see (hear) them come through and comment to each other on how bad they sound (very hard on the ears and I’m not speaking of the volume, but rather the sour notes).
That paint scheme looks even better with the loco up front - beep… beep…
It was moving when I saw it(~11-11:30 a.m.), but it looked either new or newly refurbished. It was coupled right behind the 2 road locos on a manifest freight that often goes through right around that time with a lot of CN/CP cars and occasionally a CN loco, so the bilevel may have been coming from Canada.
Bombardier built these Bilevel Commuter Cars.
http://www.bombardier.com/index.jsp?id=1_0&lang=en&file=/en/1_0/1_0.jsp
That webpage is what you need to read.
Andrew
Well,they look like all the other GO Transit cars me,The TRE in FW/D has the same ones …
Danny
PS I did like the Railrunner photo ! EXCELLANT