Nippon Sharyo bilevels for Amtrak corridor trains

Maker of Japan's bullet train chosen for U.S. rail cars

CHICAGO — The company that makes cars for Japan's bullet train has been picked to build a fleet of next generation passenger cars for rail corridors in the Midwest and California.

Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and California teamed up to buy the 130 bi-level cars at a lower cost.

The cars will be made at a new plant opened up by Nippon-Sharyo's U.S. subsidiary in Rochelle, Ill. It submitted a bid of $352 million with partner Sumitomo Corporation of America.

http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x178477216 ... -rail-cars

Rock. On.

This is great news. We've had Sumitomo cars running on the South Shore since 1983 and they're just about bullet-proof (and with service through Gary, that's actually a good thing). Since then, we've had two subsequent orders of identical cars, a large Metra order for unpowered gallery cars, and three orders of EMU gallery cars (two for Metra and one for South Shore).

That's 300 gallery cars running, 40 EMU gallery cars running, and 68 single-level EMUs in Chicago. Add to that 93 identical bilevel gallery cars in SFO, 60 at VRE, and 60 single-level cars, and you get a total of about 620 cars in service across the US. And I almost never hear of the kind of problems surrounding most passenger car introductions. There were minor teething problems with the 300s at South Shore, but I'm curious what the root cause was, as the exact same cars went into service at Metra two years prior with no trouble.

Congrats to a good company based near home.

Good news that the contract has been awarded and that the bid came in so low. It should be pointed that the bi-level cars will not be an existing Nippon Sharyo design, but will have to meet the bi-level design specifications spelled out in the PRIIA documents. The cars will be similar to the Surfliners, although we will have to wait for renderings and actual cars to see how similar.

If the bid came in that low, adding options to the order to buy more bi-level cars is almost a certainty. California has state funding to draw on to buy more cars and it would be no surprise to see CA to order 20-30 more cars to provide bi-levels for all trains and for the Coast Daylight.

Would WI get on-board to order bi-levels for a CHI - Twin Cities corridor train?

afiggatt wrote:Would WI get on-board to order bi-levels for a CHI - Twin Cities corridor train?

I hope so! I may have to write my MN state legislators to convince them to get in on that order too.

Also, I think it would be great for Nippon Sharyo to demo their DMUs in the Midwest, but that is neither here nor there with the coach order.

kaitoku wrote:

Maker of Japan's bullet train chosen for U.S. rail cars

CHICAGO — The company that makes cars for Japan's bullet train has been picked to build a fleet of next generation passenger cars for rail corridors in the Midwest and California.

Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and California teamed up to buy the 130 bi-level cars at a lower cost.

The cars will be made at a new plant opened up by Nippon-Sharyo's U.S. subsidiary in Rochelle, Ill. It submitted a bid of $352 million with partner Sumitomo Corporation of America.

http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x178477216 ... -rail-cars

OK...where does it say "Amtrak" in that article?

amtrakowitz wrote:

kaitoku wrote:

Maker of Japan's bullet train chosen for U.S. rail cars

CHICAGO — The company that makes cars for Japan's bullet train has been picked to build a fleet of next generation passenger cars for rail corridors in the Midwest and California.

Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and California teamed up to buy the 130 bi-level cars at a lower cost.

The cars will be made at a new plant opened up by Nippon-Sharyo's U.S. subsidiary in Rochelle, Ill. It submitted a bid of $352 million with partner Sumitomo Corporation of America.

http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x178477216 ... -rail-cars

OK...where does it say "Amtrak" in that article?

This was an order bought by the states for rail operations that they fund that are operated by Amtrak (Illinois Services, Amtrak California, etc). This should free up cars in the Chicago pool and bump them to the NEC or long distance trains.

I see no no order just intend to order and not kinki but Sumitomo.
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/pas ... order.html

DutchRailnut wrote:I see no no order just intend to order and not kinki but Sumitomo.
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/pas ... order.html

1) You're right about your link with intent.
2) You're wrong confusing Kinki Sharyo and Nippon Sharyo, they are two different manufacturing companies. While Nippon Sharyo is closely linked with Sumitomo, Kinki Sharyo is not.

Metra is supposedly very happy with how the new Highliner order is going; I hope that translates to a good railcar at the conclusion of this corridor car order.

Only thing I wonder about is how specialized the midwest vs California cars will be for their given environment. I understand a joint order was placed, to cut costs, which is a good idea. But the cars running in the midwest are probably going to need a little more "winterization" for reliable use in the colder months.

Here's the best part - given that Metra EMUs are being assembled now at Sumitomo, a skilled workforce is ready to work on the corridor order next. Don't discount that, finding and organizing a skilled workforce is tough. You wouldn't want the first auto off the line, nor would you want the first railcar.

Not a bad choice. The backbone of MARC's fleet since the early 90's has been their 60 Sumitomo/Nippon-Sharyo railcars (based on the South Shore EMU's). In addition, VRE (and I'm guessing Metra and Caltrain as well) is pretty pleased with their new gallery cars. Like everything else from the Land of the Rising Sun the new cars should have solid reliability/durability.

Looks like Bombardier is getting no love from Amtrak with recent orders going to CAF, Siemens, and now Nippon-Sharyo. It'll be interesting to see who gets the order for the next gen single level Corridor cars.

Amtrak had nothing to do with order, its state only.

DutchRailnut wrote:Amtrak had nothing to do with order, its state only.

Oops just realized that. Rest of the comment still applies. Good decision.

CAF is building the 2nd gen Viewliners (Sleepers,Diners,Dorm-Bag,and Baggage) for Amtrak

Delivery of the 160 Highliner cars to Metra begins this fall and is scheduled to be complete in May 2015. http://metrarail.com/content/dam/metra/ ... 162012.pdf (page 5) Delivery of the bi-level corridor cars for California and the Midwest should follow.