Wisconsin Talgos Disposition - MI and now Pacific Surfliner

It seems to me that Michigan (Detroit/Pontiac) service is an ideal place for "oddball" equipment because each set assigned to the service makes one round-trip a day. The equipment that starts the day in Chicago ends the day in Chicago. The two that start in Pontiac end up back in Chicago unless a different set is swapped in during the Chicago layover. So using Talgos for the two sets that overnight in Pontiac is ideal as they will be there for maintenance every night. Chicago need do nothing except routine turn servicing.
Talgos on the two Pontiac overnights and something out of the Chicago pool for the Chicago overnight. Actually makes it quite simple as Chicago no longer needs to worry about bringing the Pontiac based sets to the yard during the turn to swap out cars, etc..

Michigan will probably get the Talgos almost for free, I'm thinking. So maintenance costs won't be a big concern until some way down the line.

Yeah, there'll be an announced price so they appear to be "paid for". But they were terribly costly to Talgo sitting in Wisconsin. Never mind the storage fees.

The parked train sets were a huge embarrassment, a marketing disaster. The tendency in life to blame the victim -- "He's unemployed, must be something wrong with him", for example -- meant an image of failure for Talgo, not just in the US but around the world. The company can't afford that. Better to eat some costs and get the trains in service, where the appearances will be positive.

And you don't need to hire the expert accountants from Enron to hide $20 or $30 or $40 million worth of train costs. The freshman accounting class at the U of Mich Business School could do it, no problem. Maintenance. Spare parts. Costs of repainting and interior renovations (or recoloring) if sold. Talgo to "contribute" millions to advertise and market its new trains in service. A nice donation endows a Talgo Professorship at the School of Engineering. I think I've buried a few bodies myself already.

So I'm betting Michigan is gonna get almost-free trains. They can work with that.

The state has plenty of potential routes to use them for a decade ahead.

And then there's Oregon, Washington -- and British Columbia.

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O.K., suppose British Columbia buys a third new Talgo train set or even just a few add-on cars. Then BC contributes them to the Cascades pool. Would "Buy America" rules apply to Canadian-owned trains running Vancouver-Seattle-Portland-Eugene?

Or could British Columbia buy spares and extra cars direct from Spain?

If VIA crews can take a Maple Leaf set from Buffalo-Toronto, I don't see why an Amtrak crew couldn't take a BC-badged Cascades set around. That idea might founder on BC/Canada contributing any more than the bare minimum to the service - though it only serves Vancouver itself.

Woody wrote:

byte wrote:The two Talgo sets are in CUS right now, in the south side of the terminal. . . .

Wonderful! At least they have escaped from Wisconsin.
I hope they can get refugee status in Michigan and
lead productive lives there . . . or somewhere.

Let's see how productive it will be in its new temporary home:

Talgo trains have officially left the station

Please allow a brief fair use quote:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/ ... 55611.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Two high-speed trains at Talgo Inc.'s Milwaukee headquarters left the city Wednesday evening, and are currently in Chicago awaiting a final journey to Beech Grove, Ind.

Talgo is moving the trains to Amtrak's heavy maintenance facility, the Beech Grove Shops, in order to save money on storage. The trains reached Chicago about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, and will likely leave for Indiana Thursday evening, according to Talgo spokeswoman Nora Friend.

The subjects of a fraught history in Milwaukee, Wisconsin taxpayers paid $52 million for the new trains before the state halted payments a few years ago. Talgo says it needs to relocate the trains out of their Century City factory in order to mitigate damages.

I saw an extra platypus NPCU, an extra Bistro car (with the 2 high windows) and the 3rd car is a bit of a mystery--it looks like it's a baggage car with windows, but I'm not sure WI ordered baggage cars for their trainsets. It's definitely the car that runs right behind the locomotive, however. The baggage cars on Oregon's trainsets have a different looking window arrangement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP0ed4bIfBk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Gilbert B Norman wrote:Look what is already posted on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqqiePiSnGo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Of interest, this is my first knowledge that there is one protect 'duckbill platypus' NPCU and one Coach.

From the video, there's three spare cars; one cab/aux power car, one bistro car, and one coach/baggage end car that couples to the locomotive.
To identity the various cars in the video, count the windows......
5 windows > coach without restroom - 37 seats plus wheelchair plus wheelchair space
4 windows > coach with restroom - 29 seats plus wheelchair space (has wheelchair lift)
2 windows > coach/baggage end car - 18 seats plus wheelchair space
2 raised windows > bistro car with restroom - 0 seats (has wheelchair lift)

From the video, here's the car order in the consist starting with the cab car:
Cab with auxiliary power
Coach without restroom
Coach with restroom
Coach without restroom
Coach with restroom
Coach without restroom
Coach with restroom
Coach without restroom
Bistro with restroom
Coach without restroom
Coach with restroom
Coach without restroom
Coach with restroom
Coach/Baggage without restroom
Note: the Wisconsin order does not include the diner car, first or business class cars, nor the full end baggage car the Oregon sets have.
The Wisconsin Talgo train sets have 385 total seats with 12 wheelchair spaces, since each Horizon coach car has 68 seats, that's the equivalent of 5.66 Horizon coaches, plus dinette car on the existing trains, if there are any Horizons trains that long.

So long shiny new equipment! If only this weren't so sad it would be comical. Could it be that it's Wisconsin that's the kiss of death for fancy new equipment?!

Woody wrote: O.K., suppose British Columbia buys a third new Talgo train set or even just a few add-on cars. Then BC contributes them to the Cascades pool. Would "Buy America" rules apply to Canadian-owned trains running Vancouver-Seattle-Portland-Eugene?

Or could British Columbia buy spares and extra cars direct from Spain?

Not a problem. NAFTA amended the Buy American Act a bit for transportation purchases Its why the Crown Victoria PI and the Dodge Charger can be purchased by the feds even though their VIN starts with a 2.

dowlingm wrote:If VIA crews can take a Maple Leaf set from Buffalo-Toronto, I don't see why an Amtrak crew couldn't take a BC-badged Cascades set around. That idea might founder on BC/Canada contributing any more than the bare minimum to the service - though it only serves Vancouver itself.

The precedent you cite is very encouraging. I didn't know that the VIA crew took over at Buffalo. I would have guessed at the bridge at Niagara Falls.

I don't know British Columbia politics at all; they may have their crazies too. But the Chamber of Commerce types should surely recognize the tourism and business benefits to Vancouver (and the rest of the province by spillover effect) from having more Cascades trains and more riders coming into their city.

A little help from BC could have a lot of impact. The train sets built for Wisconsin don't quite match the consists used on the Cascades. So each one might need a handful of additional cars to recombine and match the other train sets. If BC could buy a dozen cars in whole or in part direct from Spain, Talgo wouldn't need to build another new factory here to build them. Otherwise, sort of hand-assembling almost a dozen cars could make the recombination too expensive to be practical.

I've said elsewhere that the actual price of these formerly Wisconsin train sets will be extremely low, because the current situation is a marketing disaster for Talgo. So by the time Michigan is finished with them, it might be very very very cheap for the Canadians to buy them to expand Cascades capacity and frequencies.

AgentSkelly wrote:

Woody wrote: O.K., suppose British Columbia buys a third new Talgo train set or even just a few add-on cars. Then BC contributes them to the Cascades pool. Would "Buy America" rules apply to Canadian-owned trains running Vancouver-Seattle-Portland-Eugene?

Or could British Columbia buy spares and extra cars direct from Spain?

Not a problem. NAFTA amended the Buy American Act a bit for transportation purchases Its why the Crown Victoria PI and the Dodge Charger can be purchased by the feds even though their VIN starts with a 2.

More encouraging info. Now if I can just interest the government of British Columbia in adding more frequencies to its Cascades service.

I do believe the BC govt dropped some custom facilities charges in order to have the 2nd cascade service remain .
I don't think it is a marketing disaster for Talgo, anyone looking to buy a trainset would be aware of what happened, and as far as I can see, Talgo did nothing wrong. The court case will soon tell us if that is correct or not.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:Of interest, this is my first knowledge that there is one protect 'duckbill platypus' NPCU and one Coach.

I've looked around and haven't yet found a detailed explanation-What was the thought behind the design of the series 8 NPCU's anyway? Why didn't Talgo opt for a more streamlined look, similar to what the early series 8 renderings showed? I know some people have mentioned they needed to meet crash standards, and perhaps I'm not knowledgeable enough to understand it, but couldn't they still have opted for a better design than this?

I know this whole post seems trivial, but I'm just curious if anyone knows the reasoning.

The original design was a sleek European style.
I understand the new design was to allow a two person crew to both be able to see both sides of the train .Or something like that .

Some of the changes were done to make the FRA happy.