Acela II (Alstom Avelia Liberty): Design, Production, Delivery, Acceptance

Wil the trains be owned by Amtrak ore leased?

Knowing Amtrak's past history, they'll be leased to Kraft or something dumb like that...

I don't usually do railfan videos, but this guy has captured some unusually fine views (both wideshots and closeups) of the Acela II in transit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIDXi-cbOWU

Forgive me if this is already known, but do we know what horn these are getting?

Will there be a new Geometry car for the Acela-2s or will the old one be useable ? Find it hard to imagine that the old one can continue !

Geometry gear has become automated and rather small , these days one or two autonomous Geometry gears could be mounted under the New Acela II and run automatically during each and every trip, no attendant needed. and inside gear fits under a seat. Amtrak has several units deployed already.
Ensco is one of major suppliers .
Autonomous Inspection Systems can be installed on passenger or freight cars in revenue service to offer a cost-effective approach for maintenance planning and railway standards compliance.

Vehicle/Track Interaction (V/TI) Monitor: continuous safety monitoring of track conditions without impacting revenue service. Risk conditions are transmitted via cellular network and are received as email alerts and viewed in TrackIT®.
Autonomous Track Geometry Measurement System (ATGM)
Overhead Wire Measurement System

That makes a whole lot of sense-- to have revenue HSR trainsets do their own geometry inspections as they go, particularly since most HSR (France, Germany, Japan) is crazy busy during the day and then needs nightly tweaking.

It makes a lot of sense to have had the whole line scanned (and maybe even more than once) by 7 p.m. each day, and already be working on deploying work trains to trouble spots that have been identified.

Frankly I'd put it on the cafe car on every train if it got cheap enough.

for example Metro north has 4 of such units , one installed on phoebe Snow cars one on a bombardier car , one on a M-8 and one on a M-7. it pretty much guarantees a geometry reading on just about entire railroad once a week.
the units are not cheap but the 4 units are probably still cheaper than a actual Geometry car

If the equipment shown can do all the required that will be great. However it is amazing the new ways of inspecting rails that keep coming up. It might take some detection equipment to be mounted on a regional if max allowed speed is somewhat limited ? Thinking of x ray and ultrasound ?
One car equipped would be impossible to cover all 4 main tracks south of NYP in one day. Would be hard to cover outside tracks and maintain schedule. Now wonder if Amtrak passes on any info gained when on MNRR ?

no need for daily scan , FRA requires once a year , so anything above is gravy.
geometry does not check rail itself, a sperry car does that with magnetic scanning.

Some cars from Phoebe Snow consists still exist (even for what you described) in MN? I can think of a museum that would love to get those cars - Steamtown (and the historic groups that work with it). Fairly good odds that my dad probably had a number of trips on that very famous train.

bit off topic but several treads in Metro North forum about those cars.

Word from the CSX Albany Division Sightings Facebook page is that apparently on Tuesday 3/17/20 at around 8AM, the Alstom plant at Hornell NY is shipping out its 2nd Avelia train set with this one heading for Amtrak at Philadelphia routed on NS as a special train pulled by Amtrak equipment via Binghamton, Scranton, Sunbury, to Harrisburg. May be a good opportunity to photograph an Avelia on Tunkhannock Viaduct!

This is the 1st Avelia to be delivered to Amtrak and I'm guessing Amtrak will be testing it perhaps on the Harrisburg line?

WOW Mr. Barlow-'

Easily the most impressive railroad structure in the Northeast!!

https://www.google.com/search?q=photo+t ... IFegQIARAW

Interesting to learn that the NS uses it to route freight and isn't part of some Short Line letting it go to pot.

Amtrak can only static test and get Mofe and T&E familiar with the train , it is not allowed to operate untill all testing of brakes /power / tracking have been tested on first set in Pueblo .
in other words, It has to be type certified first by AAR