by F-line to Dudley via Park
electricron wrote:Let's look at some data..32 is just the base Charger order. There are options for 225 more AMTK Chargers to exercise past the base.
The States have order 32 Siemens Charger locomotives for Amtrak regional trains
All Aboard Florida has order 10 Siemens Charger locomotives.
That makes a total of 42 new Siemens Charger locomotives being ordered.
Amtrak has 14 P40 diesel locomotives in service today
Amtrak has 197 P42 diesel locomotives in service today
Amtrak has 6 F59PH diesel locomotives in service today for Piedmont trains
Amtrak has 23 F59PHI diesel locomotives in service today for California and Cascade trains
32 new Chargers aren't going to free up that many older diesel locomotives. I would suggest it's more likely the lower horsepower F59PHI locomotives (3,000 hp) are more likely to be let go than the higher horsepower refurbished P40s and P42 locomotives (4,200 hp).
NCDOT's Piedmont equipment is "off-roster" for Amtrak's accounting because of the unique arrangement that has NC owning/maintaining its own equipment. So the adjusted math on the current straight-diesel roster ends up with theoretical maximums of:
197 P42DC's
14 P40DC's + 15 stored/operable P40DC's
21 F59PHI's
18 "Dash 8" P32-8WH's (some in revenue service, some work-only)
. . .for 265 total AMTK and AMTK California diesel units. And then take a % off the top since I'm sure real-world operable units for revenue service are much lower than this.
The Chargers come in 2 configurations. The corridor configuration, which is the whole of the base order and Option #1, and an LD configuration with a larger fuel tank and greater HEP output that's the whole of Option #2. Those numbers break down as:
32 base-order + 75 option-order corridor Chargers
150 option-order long-distance Chargers
. . .for 257 total AMTK and AMTK California diesel units. And then NCDOT can continue to be weird with the Piedmont all by its lonesome.
^^That's where every diesel--except for the dual-mode P32AC-DM's that are on a wholly separate/unrelated replacement cycle--gets wiped clean off the revenue roster. And sends all of it onto the aftermarket for resale, repower, scrap, or some other fate that doesn't involve carrying Amtrak passengers. Since in the real world today's roster is far from 265 with the Dash 8's part-timers and half the P40's in storage, 250+ is a very substantial fleet increase over today. The restructuring around a state-sponsored base order has a lot to do with legal/$$$ tricks and the technical change of speccing separate corridor and LD configurations this time around.
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Right now the 32-unit base order is structured for:
5 to Pacific Northwest corridor services.
6 to California corridor services.
21 to Chicago-pool corridor services.
-- Cali is using their base order strictly to plug their equipment shortage and allow for some service increases, so there's no change to what they use other than ever-so-slightly less borrowed equipment. However, Caltrans already stated explicit intent to pick up their alloted share of Option #2 at earliest convenience so they can replace all F59PHI's and revenue-service Dash 8's. So unless some epic disaster upends the Chargers to point where all parties have to decline the options, AMTK California will be a uniform Charger operation and the final *minimum* tally will be somewhat higher than 32.
-- Not sure why 5 was the number chosen for for Pac Northwest. Cascades is the only corridor route involved, and 8 Talgo trainsets (obviously not all in-service at any one time) gives them a finite upper limit on power they need. So wouldn't be for increases, and this is probably a trade-in for their F59's. Except that 5 units isn't much for protecting their margins. Maybe they're still planning on continuing to borrow P42's as occasional protect units until the Charger options let them buff it out with a couple more?
-- Chicago pool's 21 units is mainly to plug the power shortage that's been exposed through years of frequency increases out there, and to backstop overall fleet attrition rates by freeing up more P42's to send elsewhere. That's where East and LD's get real relief for freed-up P42's. As well as relief to pull some ailing P42's in for shop time instead of having to run them dead. I imagine this may trigger a round of scrappings of some of the very very dead P42's in storage; they'll no longer have to hang onto those worst cases at Beech Grove as a contingency in case a new power order got canceled and another expensive stimulus remanufacture was the only way to survive.
Short of a technological debacle, the only way the Charger options are getting shorted on numbers is if the Chicago-pool governors band together and decline them. But I don't know how many they get in the +75 of state options to begin with, because California's share of the pie in Round 2 (the F59 replacements) gets way bigger than in Round 1 (the 6 gap-filler units). Also don't know if other states get to put dibs on any units that Illinois and Michigan pass up before the number of options gets formally cut back. There may be wiggle room or other trickery to pull around reassignments.
