The answer to why Talgo was in the article link to JSO from "Blues Bros.’ It said:
"Gov. Jim Doyle announced last month that the state would buy the trains for Amtrak’s Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha line, with an option to buy two more trains if the state wins federal funding to extend the route with a 110-mph line from Milwaukee to Madison." [The next governor, Walker, canceled the Talgo purchase and thus also lost the federal funding which was approved. He wanted to use the Federal funding for highways, but USDOT said a loud NO, as I recall]
“Among Wisconsin’s planned high-speed rail routes, transportation officials count 17 curves of 2 degrees or more in the 86 miles between Chicago and Milwaukee; 20 such curves in the 79 miles between Milwaukee and Madison; Jambois wrote in a May 11 memo to Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi. If the state has to straighten out those curves, track upgrades for high-speed rail would cost $60 million a mile, Jambois said in an interview. But using tilt-train technology cuts the cost to $5 million a mile, he said.”
You have the right to call former Gov. Doyle a man of poor judgement, but unless you have clear evidence, you have zero right to call him a crook. That is plane and simiple.
I can understand his idea that the Talgo deal would get him trains at reasonable cost and the plant would benefit the Wisconsin economy. A ccombination not available from other manufacturers.
I think Gov. Walker is the man with poor judgement. Any state with a capitol and its major educational institution in a sizlble city a two hour drive from a large city that is the main commercial center can benefit hugely from a passenger rail link between them, Albany - New York City, Sacrameneto - San Francisco. Milwaukee really needs a three-pronged commuter rail network, to Madison, Kenosha, and Green Bay.
I won’t call Walker a crook just because I think his transportaton priorities are lousy.
The problem with that is they had a competing company in Milwaukee (Super Steel) which was ready to compete but was not allowed to compete due to the no bid contract terms. Further you can write a RFP so that only one Manufacturer or Supplier can respond to it. That does not make it right, even though it is commonly done in DoD contracts to keep the same supplier for decades without competition.
The whole purpose of buying a transportation system is to select the one that makes the most sense for the environment for a given price. It’s not for politicians to pick and choose based on how the supplier can assist them with the next election.
Michigan is going to use the Illinois built cars. It might use the Talgo as a short-term stand in but long-term it also sees the stupidity of using that particular trainset for HSR.
Actually, that does not answer much as Talgo was not the only train THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN in the competition IF ALLOWED with tilt technology further there is no fixed speed limit in that analysis. I have a hard time believing those costs for a 30 mph increase in speed over what is in place for most of the route currently. Further where are the timing differences between not super-elevating the curve and slowing for it. Also does not
BTW, I remember when the Turbo-Liners from ROHR industries were running Chicago - Milwaukee. Heard the same exclamations from the railfan community on how great they were. I thought they were nicer than regular conventional equipment on the inside as well but…
They were fuel hogs.
Fixed Consist Amtrak did not like BUT hey now suddenly with the Talgo this is a great feature. Nor did Amtrak like the lack of flexibility or interchangeabilty of equipment.
Unique equipment increased Amtraks maintence and training costs over more standardized selection would have.
They did not handle extreme cold weather all that well…Do the Talgos? Nobody knows and my bets are they will not handle the Midwestern extremes that well.
I am also pretty confident the Talgos will suck in crashworthiness with a conventional train although we keep getting assurances otherwise. I don’t want to be in the first wreck where the Talgo is crushed like a soda can.
The Talgos were purchased in order to have trainsets on hand when the Hiawatha was extended from Madison through to St. Paul – something opponents never seemed to grasp. The tilt mechanism would’ve come in handy when going along between La Crosse and St. Paul.
You may well be right about the Talgos, but they have been quite good performers in the Pacific NW. Turboliners are apples and oranges. You do not advance the credibility of your argument, however, by politicizing it. You may well be a Walker devotee, but using facts is far more effective than making unsupported criminal allegations against his predecessor. As to his proposed use of the money for highways, the Assembly woman was merely following his orders.
Quid pro quo for selecting them but of course your also incorrect. Super Steel is in Milwaukee and also stated it wanted the contract and would assemble the cars in Wisconsin. As you may or may not know, Super Steel already has railroad assembly experience in that it assembles hoods for EMD or used to.
Additionially, Milwaukee already had resident and some residual railcar building experience there as thats where the Milwaukee Road built and rebuilt the Hiawatha Passenger Cars. Significant tooling from that operation was purchased by Northern Railcar Co. Not sure if they are still in business or if they were a bidder. Milwaukee was not however, virgin territory for rail car building as presented.
Milwaukee is also home to only one of two Army Reserve Railway Bn, which also have experience in railcar maintenence / rebuild they used to train at the Milwaukee Shops not sure if Canadian Pacific extended the same deal.
Point is, Wisconsin already had rail car building jobs.
No the assemblywoman was acting independently. Walker would have used a Senator if he wanted a sponsor. Anyways, just because I defend Walker on what I think was a smart decision for Wisconsin does not mean I am a Walker devotee. Doyle was a classic Democratic Hack and IMO, in how he operated the state…crook. Wisconsin has had much more ethical Democrats (Herb Kohl is one), Doyle is way out of what I would classify as ethical.
The BNSF line in the Pacific Northwest does, IMO have sharp curves and it does make logical sense to use tilt train technology there. Not convinced the Talgo is the best but the Spanish have the most experience with the design and thats why they were initially selected. I do not personally like the design because.
Sits too low to the rails.
Cars are two short and only have two axles each, to me I think this puts a maximum speed on it’s use but I am not an engineer.
Not confident they fully meet crash standards or have been tested fully in that respect.
German and French designs I think are superior. Frankly I would like to see an American design and I don’t think we are that far away from one.
Sorry, but you are really grasping at straws there. The fact is that Talgo manufactures passenger rail cars now, not 50+ years ago. And assembling an EMD diesel hood sometime is hardly the same. And you know it.
There is a substantial difference in assembling cars from somebody else’s design (St. Louis Car with PCC’s) and building from your own design (Bombardier/Alstom with Acela). I’m not sure that Super Steel has a design and engineering staff that could have bid on Wisconsin’s offer with its own design proposal.
OK, I guess it is time for me to weight in on this (and then duck).
There were a total of 4 Wisconsin Talgo trainsets. A train set is not something you set up as a not-permanent model train layout but rather a synonym for a fixed consist of passenger equipment, especially since the Talgo is articulated and requires shop work to add or remove cars.
Of these Talgos, 2 trainsets were ordered by then Governor Doyle, yeah, yeah, on a no-bid contract on Administrative authority without a special action of the Legislature. 2 more trainsets were ordered as part of the 840 million ARRA grant to Wisconsin (the Federal Stimulus for job creation) that was part of extending passenger service to Madison.
The reasoning behind Talgo, and no Jim Doyle didn’t just select Talgo because of a “deal”, there was a lot of deliberation on this “down in the trenches” of WisDOT on the best choice. The reasoning was that there was going to be a kind of passenger train renaissance for mid-speed service outside of high-level platform territory, the 110 MPH thing, for the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative and perhaps for similar multi-state regional passenger networks.
The idea was that with its (modest amount of passive tilt), platform-level boarding, suitability for 110 MPH operation, light weight and potential fuel saving, that Talgo was what everyone was going to want. To the extent that Governor Doyle jumped the gun ordering the first two Talgos out of WisDOT money, it was kind of like General Rommel exploiting the breach in the British l
See I know you were not trying to be funny but the Talgos were delievered as modular kits and were assembled on the bare factory floor of Tower Automotive. Maybe you saw some skills there I missed.
I’ll bet you good money there are more passenger car building skills at Northern Railcar than at any Talgo Plant in the United States. No way would I call a Talgo factory worker from Milwaukee “skilled”.
Also, I try not to politicize but you bought the political line in this story from one side, hook, line and sinker. Then apparently get angry when I point it out. I’m trying to be fair in looking at the other side of the argument.
Anti-Train vs Pro-Train, I buy into that somewhat since Lowell Jackson was probably the biggest anti-rail bigot in Wisconsins History. I am not convinced the Walker administration was anti-train, rather I think they were more “make a business case for the spending and we will look at it”. Thats what was done with the Chicago Milwaukee service and why the Walker administration has spent money there. It was not done with the Madison service. Not sure why they did not go with a scaled down proposal and use Wisconsin and Southern train to Milwaukee once or twice a day. They can operate Madison - Milwaukee on this HSR route with current operating agreements and trackage rights. Just need to rebuild the tracks.
These cars (other than the doors) were actually completely based on the Superliner design, itself based on the 1950s El Capitan cars, right?: " Amtrak’s Superliner was used as the design baseline for the California Car, but several changes were made to the design to make the car more suitable for corridor services with frequent stops." I have looked around but there seems to be no evidence the cars were ever tested above 90mph up to 125mph. Talgos, the TGV, ICE etc. are low slung on purpose for a variety of reasons (among them that the tilt doesn’t work well on tall cars, and the tilt is meant to overcome the nausea that comes with the car leaning outside of a curve), and I doubt the bi-level cars would be suitable above 90mph for that reason, though I have seen no evidence either way.
They protested the result with a pretty strong implication it was rigged to the Talgo company selection. I guess I am one of the few that followed the story closely on this Forum and the rest of you just went along with wherever it is you get your information from exactly or followed your preconcieved ideas. Whatever happened to the search for the truth in this country. And wow, the messenger waking you guys out of your hypnosis… gets potshots repeatedly.
Oh well, justice was done in the end and the Talgos are history. Thats the important thing.