Bringing back diesel service would mean having to hire a whole new back shop?

Which would be east coast union scale which is why SEPTA probably wont extend there lines beyond the wires.....Conrail working with SEPTA already had the shops..But SEPTA does not

How about a battery electric charger? Or is there a weight limit to the ex reading viaduct?

scratchyX1 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 20, 2022 4:59 pm How about a battery electric charger? Or is there a weight limit to the ex reading viaduct?

Wouldn’t that require an additional shop as well?

Past practice matters. If it's not work SEPTA's that unions did in the past, then it's not guaranteed to be their work tomorrow.

Since Conrail did the diesel work before at the Reading Shops, it was already an accepted carve-out for outsourcing. Presumably it could be outsourced again. But... a lot could have changed in the contracts over 40 years.

eolesen wrote: ↑Sun Nov 20, 2022 11:45 pm Past practice matters. If it's not work SEPTA's that unions did in the past, then it's not guaranteed to be their work tomorrow.

Since Conrail did the diesel work before at the Reading Shops, it was already an accepted carve-out for outsourcing. Presumably it could be outsourced again. But... a lot could have changed in the contracts over 40 years.

The work done at Reading was not outsourced. It was done on Conrail equipment, by Conrail (union) employees in the regular course of business, the same way MU equipment was maintained at Paoli or Wayne Electric by Conrail (union) employees. Additionally, there were service tracks at the outlying points, which allowed diesels to be fueled, sanded, and watered, again by local Conrail (union) employees. In short, other than the type of equipment maintained (and Reading did do quite a bit of MU work as well if it couldn't be done at Paoli or Wayne), there was not a separate entity caring for the equipment. Conrail was still running the show when diesel service ended (except the Newtown debacle) and like all other equipment maintenance, SEPTA took their diesel work in house when Conrail pulled out. (except the Newtown debacle)

SEPTA, other than owning the equipment in title only, did not have any railroad presence until 1/1/83. In fact there are numerous stories of SEPTA management being sent to the Railroad Division and not actually knowing anything about the railroad, including one Rules examiner who was bringing new hire ACs around to Wayne for equipment class and spent almost an hour looking for the third rail shoes on a Reading Blue car.

The exception to this was major refurbishment of wreck damaged cars, where Conrail was a competitive bidder because it was beyond the normal scope of work provided at Reading shop. To wit, they won every contract until 1983 when they washed their hands of the passenger operations.

So the roadmap here is to contract with Herzog, Keolis or someone else as an owner/operator for any hypothetical new diesel equipment.

Seems like plenty of precedent for that approach if Conrail was operating the diesel services.

I'd still guess they're not likely to bring any of that back under the SEPTA umbrella, so its nothing more than an academic discussion. The State could sponsor something as a corridor, though.

I would go with Amtrak as a contractor and use there Wilmington DE shops