Caltrain disposition of diesel fleet = status

https://www.caltrain.com/news/caltrain- ... tion-nears

Caltrain Retires 32 Diesel Passenger Cars as Electrification Nears

Caltrain has shipped 32 of its nearly 40-year-old gallery cars to Sonoma as the agency makes room for its new electric fleet. These cars will travel through Warm Springs, Jack London Square and the Benicia-Martinez Railroad Bridge before being stored in Petaluma with Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) until they will be put up for sale and a buyer is found.

Caltrain currently has eight of the eventual 23 electric trainsets on its property. As additional electric trainsets make their way to Caltrain’s Central Equipment Maintenance and Operations Facility (CEMOF), Caltrain had to begin relocating older vehicles to ensure there was enough room for both the new equipment and standard operations. These gallery cars were not in service, and their retirement will not affect Caltrain service.

The passenger cars were built in San Francisco by Nippon Sharyo and first started rolling down the Caltrain corridor in 1985, when the agency was still operated by Caltrans. They have served millions of riders over their nearly 40 years of service and have supported the growth of Caltrain and the surrounding region over the years. Caltrain hosted a small event for the public and rail fans at the Santa Clara Station Historic Rail Museum to send off the trains. The rest of the Nippon Sharyo passenger cars will be retired at the start of electrified service in fall 2024.

Caltrain’s historic Electrification Project is the first undertaking in North America in a generation in which diesel trains and their infrastructure components are transitioned to an electrified system. Electrification means faster and more frequent service, including doubling the frequency on weekends. The passenger experience will be greatly improved as well with the new trains featuring Wi-Fi, power outlets at every seat, onboard displays with digital trip information, increased storage capacities.

Electrification will also help meet ambitious regional and state climate action goals by lowering greenhouse gas emissions, improving air quality, and relieving traffic congestion. Additionally, electrified service will advance equity along the corridor by reducing noise and air pollution while increasing access for priority equity communities. It will also set the framework for California’s future High Speed Rail network that will run on the Caltrain corridor.

The proposed Electrification service plan would see weekday peak hour trains go to 79 stations per hour, an increase from the current 66. Eleven stations would experience four train arrivals hourly per direction, a notable improvement from seven stations currently. Midday trains would cover 44 stations per hour, up from 34 today.

First the world political situation is not the best and maybe more passenger rail cars will be needed in the future. IMO what should be done with these cars is take the funds needed for scrapping them and use those funds to send the cars to Beech Grove where they can get a full cover. Now Beech will need more storage tracks so as to not congest the present tracks. Amtrak could take the used rail, tie plates, used ties, 7 spikes from the Harrisburg line rehab, use them to add storage tracks on the unused track acreage portion at Beech.

Why Beech Grove? Send them to Metra.

• Metra has overhaul capability
• Their shops already have the tooling and presumably parts for this particular car type
• Their workers know this type of car inside out and would have zero learning curve...
• There's shortage of storage space in Chicago given all the empty UP yards downtown...

If you're thinking a surge fleet for moving troops, keeping them in Chicago makes far more sense than having them in Indianapolis...

Forgot to mention that all specific just to the cars spare parts would go in / with the cars. Right now METRA appears to not need more cars so why park them where they more likely can get vandalized?

The most valuable disposition of these cars would be to sell them to METRA to allow METRA to retire their oldest equipment.

Why would Metra want them? They already have new cars on order that will allow them to retire equipment younger than these cars... assuming Alstom can deliver them.

Maybe they're just better about cleaning it up, but I've never seen a Metra car tagged with graffiti.

Why spend the time and effort building out more storage tracks at Beech Grove when just about every Class 1 has excess yard space available?

These would be perfect as-is for Hiawatha service, which would allow 10 coaches to go other places as needed. This is a shorter run than Gilroy and about equal to Diridon. There is no reason to run Horizon or Siemens cars with seats designed for six hour trips, especially when Amtrak is car-short.

Tadman wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2024 1:05 pm These would be perfect as-is for Hiawatha service, which would allow 10 coaches to go other places as needed. This is a shorter run than Gilroy and about equal to Diridon. There is no reason to run Horizon or Siemens cars with seats designed for six hour trips, especially when Amtrak is car-short.

No, if Caltrain wishes to retire them, why would Amtrak think differently?
Whereas I can visualize Merta purchasing the EMD diesel locomotives, I do not see them buying the Galley cars.
Another commuter rail agency might, and as far as I can see, only VRE and Music City Star might buy them.
Maybe another commuter rail agency introducing a new service on the cheap might, but are there any?

Caltrain wishes to retire them because they're replacing them with emus except for the relatively few needed for Gilroy. If they're OK mechanically they should do for Hiawatha service, and having a shorter run than to Gilroy, as Tadman notes, the transit time, with only three(?) intermediate stops, will shorten the trip even more than the mileage difference would suggest.

ExCon90 wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2024 8:47 pm Caltrain wishes to retire them because they're replacing them with emus except for the relatively few needed for Gilroy. If they're OK mechanically they should do for Hiawatha service, and having a shorter run than to Gilroy, as Tadman notes, the transit time, with only three(?) intermediate stops, will shorten the trip even more than the mileage difference would suggest.

Would Amtrak actually use them?
Wisconsin just spent it's share for three brand new Venture trainsets with cab cars and new locomotives for the Hiawatha service, replacing Horizon cars. The new Borealis train can use these displaced Horizon cars, without Amtrak or Wisconsin buying used Galley cars. If Wisconsin or Amtrak ends up spending more money, it's a great bet they will so so on more new Venture cars.

Oh, I'm not suggesting that Amtrak should do it, just looking at the practicality of the idea -- they might reject it just because they didn't think of .it -- but if there's a big enough difference in cost someone might consider it.

Right now Amtrak's #1 priority is to get more revenue cars on to trains as quickly as possible. These proposals to use these sources for additional cars might slow down the process if personnel would have to drop their work on cars to go for training and differences on a different piece of equipment? Do not forget the learning curve and confidence of a mechanic to doing the job properly. An example of equipment releasing earlier is that the Crescent appears to be getting its diner back June 1st. Believe that a later date was originally announced?

Now when Amtrak finally gets caught up ( who knows when) these proposals need serious consideration by Amtrak. We and much worse Amtrak seems to have no idea what demand there is for seats. The increase in number of riders on the NEC is a surprise but the RPMs are still not known. My question does Amtrak want 2 riders going 226 miles NYP <> WASH or 1 passenger traveling 500 miles or more on any of the LD trains? Amtrak needs the capacity on the LD trains to meet un fulfilled demand.

Regional trains are down slightly but if the California coast had not lost its reliability with a loss of ~ 4M riders regional would have been up.