Viewliner II Delivery/Production

I think it depends on how many more cars, if any Amtrak takes the option on.

If it's just say 5-10 then it should be all sleepers or baggage dorms.
If you're talking more than that, start tossing in baggage cars. I think an expansion of baggage service to more trains would be a great idea.

If it's the full 70 cars, then, perhaps 5 more sleepers make sense so that a fully equipped overnight train route can potentially be added.

Of course I still think NYS should take advantage of CAF, in its own state and figure out what options it can add on its own.

If all 70 options our posting group feels the best would be 50 Coaches and 20 sleepers. That would give the single level trains ability to add at least 2 coaches to each present train, 1 additional sleeper. and a daily Cardinal. Unfortunately we feel there are not enough cars in the option to provide the necessary V-2 lounges. Present Am-1 lounges which are long on the tooth then could be converted to Am-1 coaches ?

east point wrote:Present Am-1 lounges which are long on the tooth then could be converted to Am-1 coaches ?

That is a very good point. Not sure if a new design can be executed as an option but it would be nice if they did.

east point wrote:If all 70 options our posting group feels the best would be 50 Coaches and 20 sleepers. That would give the single level trains ability to add at least 2 coaches to each present train, 1 additional sleeper. and a daily Cardinal. Unfortunately we feel there are not enough cars in the option to provide the necessary V-2 lounges. Present Am-1 lounges which are long on the tooth then could be converted to Am-1 coaches ?

I suspect none of the option (if exercised) will be Coaches simply because there is no current coach configuration. I think both CAF and Amtrak would prefer to keep building an existing design.

But again, if other players came into the scene and could make a larger order, I can definitely see some coaches.

V-coach and V-lounge configurations weren't part of the V2 contract to begin with, so it would take a change order of not-insignificant cost on the contract to do up new liveries for those configs and square testing overhead. And that's probably not a prospect AMTK relishes given how long and tortured a trip it's been just to get CAF to deliver the base order. If they're tapping any quantity of those fixed-price 70 options it's going to be bags, sleepers, bag-dorms, and/or diners...nothing else. There's certainly no shortage of prudent padding to be had out of those 4 configs in the contract. And if you do want to future-proof for portability the default sleeper config is the one with most flex to cover future uncertainty, as it doesn't take any structural relocation of door/window placements to change those into some other type of passenger car vs. changing a bag or diner into something else which takes some exterior surgery to where the holes are cut. Beech Grove has already done successful in-house V1 conversions with the American View company conference car and that repaired unit they rigged up as an internal test bed for future coach liveries.



Coaches would not be a good idea even if change orders were possible...and economical...on these options. They won't be RFP'ing for Viewliner packaging when the 600-unit East Coast procurement comes up; the PRIAA specs are already distinctly different. So having no more than a few dozen coach outliers to mechanically maintain as Viewliners in a sea of hundreds of future Brightlines/etc. makes for lousy maintenance scale over time. Satisfying as it would be as a knee-jerk reaction to today's car shortages, it would be stinky value recapture over time.

It was the original goal for the V1 order way back in '87 to have several hundred V-coaches supplementing a full spread of sleepers, diners, and lounges...but Amtrak was a lot more naive about the "any-car" concept back then and wasn't as nuanced about its metrics for quantifying maintenance scale over life-of-product. The V's are way overbuilt to handle a very wide variability in heavy-duty specialty configs within its common modular systems: full baggage and parcel handling, full sleepers and dorms, full-kitchen diners, and (originally envisioned but sadly never ordered) Sightseer-type panoramic lounges. With all the variable weight handling; all the heavy-duty electrical, water/waste, and HVAC capacity; and all the differing window/door cutouts that spread of specialty configs entails. You do get some very nice economy-of-scale being able to commonize what otherwise would've been a lot of small, mechanically-distinct batches of specialty cars and be able to modify them mid-life into another type if needs change. But those heavy-duty "any-car" structural allowances are extreme overkill when you're just buying 500 units of "most every-car" coaches that only differentiate over a much narrower spread of: LD/corridor seating, dinettes, biz cars, and *light-duty* bag/bike storage half-rooms. All of those liveries can be done much cheaper on a uniform carbody with fixed door/window positions, generic lighter-duty utility plant, and great big viewing windows instead of the V's much smaller ones because not nearly as much wall real estate has to be set aside for hooking in side-mount assemblies (bunks, kitchen racks, baggage shelving & tie-downs, etc.) only found in the specialty cars. It thus makes sense, in their quest for fleet hegemony, to consolidate single-level equipment into two makes: a heavy-duty one that can cover a wide spread of highly-specialized functions to max out the economy of scale of a bunch of niche types...and a simpler coach-duty one that hits the mega-quantity seating-centric configs.

It would be way better to go with the Siemens Brightline type product. A modern design , rather than a rehash of a 80's update of a 70's(or older design).

east point wrote:If all 70 options our posting group feels the best would be 50 Coaches and 20 sleepers. That would give the single level trains ability to add at least 2 coaches to each present train, 1 additional sleeper. and a daily Cardinal. Unfortunately we feel there are not enough cars in the option to provide the necessary V-2 lounges. Present Am-1 lounges which are long on the tooth then could be converted to Am-1 coaches ?

What were the orders and plans back in 2010? I can recall....
As a refresher, 130 car order includes
55 (70*) Baggage
25 Diners
25 (10*) Dorm/Baggage
25 Sleepers
The optional 70 cars includes:
30 Baggage
15 Diner
15 Dorm/Baggage
10 Sleepers
Don't forget, there's already 50 Viewliner I sleepers in service.
* Amtrak changed the original order on 8/25/2014, turning 15 Dorm/Baggage cars into 15 more Baggage cars.

If you look at the initial plans, the 70 car options were as listed above. But since Amtrak already received 15 more Baggage cars than planned, the follow up order of Baggage cars will probably be 15 cars less now, resulting with 15 more Dorm/Baggage cars added to their wish list. So the probable order for the optional 70 car order will probably now be:
15 Baggage
15 Diner
30 Dorm/Baggage
10 Sleepers

The initial planning total for all Viewliners, including the original Viewliner Is and the 70 options, would be:
85 Sleepers
85 Baggage
41 Diner
45 Dorm/Baggage
1 Theatre Track Inspection car (10004 American View)
1 Prototype Viewliner I
Of course, everything is subject to change in the future, including whether or not Amtrak picks up the options.

Amtrak will not be exercising any options on this order as the cost overruns that have already incurred for the project have far exceeded the original cost expectations. Which would make it useless to try and go in to the deal further, because it will then cost amtrak even more money that is not budgeted for the project at all.

I think they are going up this weekend to fetch some more diners. I have not really observed too many of them in service on the road. It seems 97/98 gets them all the time now and once in a while the crescent will get one.

Figured that it was time for a few more diners to leave the factory "nest",seems as the diners go online,there's not been too many teething
problems from the factory. (for now)

ApproachMedium wrote:Amtrak will not be exercising any options on this order as the cost overruns that have already incurred for the project have far exceeded the original cost expectations. Which would make it useless to try and go in to the deal further, because it will then cost amtrak even more money that is not budgeted for the project at all.

Seems it's the same deal as in the military - work out all the bugs, then cut production when the unit cost would come down with additional orders. Then when the need arises for more cars, it'll be time to reinvent the wheel, not unlike the situation here.

Whereas I understand the analogy that construction costs decrease as assembly lines production ramps up, I would like to point out why it is not entirely true for Amtrak. Viewliners are never going to be ordered in large numbers. 130 rail cars over 10 years is no where close to 1000s of jets over 10 years.
Let’s review past order numbers:
Amtrak rail cars
Superliners/Surfliners = 479 + 62 = 541 cars
Viewliners = 183 cars
Amfleets = 642 cars
Horizons = 104 cars (We should include the numbers of Comets and Shoreliners built to a very similar design, but I can’t find how many were ordered by everyone over the years quickly at Wiki)
Acela = 120 cars (6 x 20)
Acela 2 = 252 cars (9 x 28)
Sub-total = 1,842 cars
Military jets
F-5s = 2,246 jets
F-15s = 1,198 jets
F-16s = 4,573 jets
F-22s = 195 jets
F-14s = 712 jets
F-18s = 1,480 Hornets + 500 Super Hornets = 1,980 jets
F-35s = 231 jets flying, orders still coming in
Sub total = 11,135 jet fighters

Per a reliable source who has posted here and other places, and has accurately predicted Viewliner departures from the factory previously...dining cars Hartford and Harrisburg will be leaving the factory to do some trick or treating (hint hint on the date) in Albany.

Cheers,

Nick

Wonder what names were used between Augusta and Hartford??? Haven't seen any more shots of new cars in several weeks...

Review your state capitals east of the Mississippi River listed alphabetically, and you’ll have your answer.
You’ll find Baton Rouge, Boston, Charleston, Colombia, Columbus, Concord, Dover, Frankfort, and Harrisburg.

The last three on the list - Concord, Dover, and Frankfort - have yet to be delivered, however; The diners are now coming out of sequence.