Now that the Turboliners sitting behind what used to be Super Steel in Scotia NY are sold, does anyone who bought them? I’m interesting in knowing the details on the move, I plan to film it.
Trevor
If you are talking about the new ones, they are on their way to Pueblo AAR/TTC lashed to flatcars.
I think he’s talking about the sets that ran in NY some years ago. Two are in NY, having been rehabbed but hardly, if ever used, and two more are in Delaware, rotting away.
It was reported in the media that NH Kelman Incorperated, a local scrap recycling business from Cohoes, NY bought eight engines for $16,000 each. To Time Warner YNN News the company’s owner Jason Kelman stated that he bought the cars… “For the recyclable material. Simply put. This is not rocket science. You buy the weight, you sell by the weight. The train sold at a value that was worth recycling,”
The twelve coaches went for $7000 apiece to another party. Overall the auction on Thursday brought in $212,000 for the eight power cars and twelve coaches. The biding lasted only 40 minutes, compared to the day long auction two days before in Rotterdam.
An auctioneer employee said that the man who bought the one hundred surplus spare steel wheels at the Tuesday auction intended to scrap them. A purchasing agent from NYSDOT added that the wheels had been bought from Spain specifically for the rebuilt Turboliners, and where not compatible with any other North American railroad rolling-stock. The auction company employee also said that the man who had bought the large steel turbo transmissions on Tuesday was going to try to sell the rebuilt units as spares, while scraping the un-rebuilt ones.
Times Union Story
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Trains-final-destination-Scrap-4116188.php
Schenectady Daily Gazette Turbo Photos
http://www.dailygazette.com/photos/galleries/2012/dec/13/taking-turboliners/20397/
Lion,
The phrase “sleeping with the fishes” comes to mind.
John
I was kinda disappointing that the engines are going to scrap, but as I was thinking about it, it’s isn’t that great of a loss. The only think I’m worried about is where those P5a horns are, does anyone know? And, who bought the coaches? They seem useless without the engines if you ask me
Trevor
I wish one trainset could have been saved for antiquity in a museum someplace. Economically and technically, they are worthless with no usable parts with a chance of other uses. So, better to be the fender of my next car than sit in a warehouse collecting rust…
$100 million for NOTHING.
This is the dark side of government operation.
As far as one going to a Museum, doesn’t Amtrak still have two or more at Bear (Wilmington) that they moved there from Renssalair because they own the two?
Government has no monopoly on this sort of stuff: consider the Edsel, New Coke, Betamax, BL2, etc.
The coaches will be scrapped too, Metro Metal Recycling of Watervliet, NY bought the 12 cars for $7,000 each.
NH Kelman Scrap Recycling of Cohoes, NY bought the 8 power cars for $16,000 each. In total the auctions brought in $420,000. But the failed program cost $70 million, and the state had for years been paying $153,000 for years to store the infamous and forgotten trains at the industrial parks in Rotterdam and Glenville,
I want to know what they will do with the bells, each power car right under the cab had a big steel bell, I reached under and rang one while at the auction, it sounded just like a train coming to a grade crossing. I would hope that they are worth more as is, than as scrap to be melted down. As for the horns, who knows, seems that they might bring in more on ebay than at the scrap yard.
The Turboliners did good service for two decades, then age sidelined them, and then a poorly manage program made them a joke. It was high-speed rail on the cheap, the state spent many times more its own money 1975-85 uprgading tracks and stations of the Empire Service.
May they rest in peace… or pieces.
As far as I know, Amtrak has 3 rebuilt units somewhere, they where at Bear in Delaware, but are they still?
“Government has no monopoly on this sort of stuff: consider the Edsel, New Coke, Betamax, BL2, etc.”
Yes, but it wasn’t taxpayer money that was put at risk.
John Timm
The Pataki Era program was likely to fail from the start, they where expecting too much for too little money, and they where expecting Amtrak to pay a large portion of it, despite the Adminstration of George W.ush tring to kill Amtrak.
There are piles of studies on bring High-Speed Rail service NYC to Albany, including a big imdepth one by the SNCF from the 1980s. The SNCF ran experimental runs to gather important infomation, they detailed every switch and curve along the line.
The 1974 bond issue for passenger rail brought $250 million, or $1.2 billion in today’s dollars. Tens of millions of more came in from several other transport/energy bond issues. The money was well spent, tracks where repaired, new singaling installed, new stations built, and travel times reduced by 30 to 45 minutes, NYC to Albany. Passenger numbers when from 700,000 in the early 1970s to 1.3 million by 1985, when our high-speed rail investment program stopped.
Had Pataki had the same experience DOT Rail Division as NYS had in the 1970-80s, and had he been willing to spend the same amount of money as the $1.3 billion spent on the Luther Forest Technology Park in Saratoga County, the program would have likely succeeded and we today wouldn’t be talking about a waste of the tax payers money, but of NYS being a leader in passenger rail.
For some perspective, a billion dollars only buys you one large skyscaper in NYC, the new Tappan Zee Bride will cost $5 billion, so spending $1 billion on intercity rail is a reasonable investment, compariable to large highway and airport projects.
I haven’t been able to confirm this but I believe these were included in the sale. The whole lot, the completed refurbs, the incomplete refurbs, and the unrefurbs, are all sold to the scrapper plus overland shipment costs.
Everything was sold. I just drove down to Glenville today, the scrappers have done a fast job, the cars have been split into thirds and quarters and hauled away by flatbed truck. Their machines where crushing and ripping apart the cars, it looked like the world’s worse train crash.
ESPA Express: Jan-Feb 2013
Turboliners Meet Their Sad End: Sold for Scrap
The State of New York finally rid itself of the four infamous RTL Turboliner train-sets from the failed high-speed rail program of the Pataki Administration, on December 13th, 2012.
The Office of General Services had discovered them earlier in 2012, and at a May 31st press conference Howard Glaser the Director of State Operations told the assembled state capitol press corps that the government was going to sell the four train-sets and a warehouse of parts and machinery sooner rather than later.
The state government had been paying the Rotterdam Industrial Park and the Glenville Business and Technology Park $153,000 annually to store the trains and their associated parts since 2005.
There were actually seven Turboliner sets in total, but three fully rebuilt train-sets have been held by Amtrak at their Bear Maintenance Facility in Delaware since 2004, their fate is up to Amtrak as agreed to in a 2007 lawsuit settlement between Amtrak and New York State.
The high-speed rail program announced in a 1998 press conference by Gov. George Pataki and Amtrak officials started to fall apart in December 2003. Amtrak under the leadership of its new president David L. Gunn reneged on its promise of undertaking the $140 million in track work necessary for 125-mph running between Schenectady and New York City.
Amtrak under siege from the Bush Administration was in desperate financial straits and simply did not have the money.
Meanwhile Super Steel Schenectady, the rail manufacturer that had won the $74 million contract to rebuild the seven RTL Turboliners sets into “RTL-III” sets had fallen far behind schedule. A report by the New York State Comptroller faulted both Super Steel and NYSDOT for mismanagement of the project.
Amtrak in June 2004 removed from revenue service the two operating of the three rebuilt RTL-III sets citing poor air conditi
Thanks for all the updates. I’m glad the news piece mentioned that before the rebuilding program they had already logged twenty years of high-speed service.