Turboliners

Last week went to visit some freinds in Scotia and took a spin by SSI, saw the oldest set (the last running set in ALB before the rebuilds showed up) in back and had not been touched. From what I could see of the fourth set it looked no closer to being done than it did last time I saw it in the late winter early spring. As for the three sets in DE, the third set was used for parts to keep the first couple of sets running.

If I remember correctly, they were supposed to be equiped with a version of the Sikorsky chopper motor which would have been more powerful and have better fuel consumption. I thought NYS was supposed to cover the entire bill. CRengineer could help with this one...

On the railroad believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear.

Railjunkie wrote: From what I could see of the fourth set it looked no closer to being done than it did last time I saw it in the late winter early spring.

How close to being done does it appear to be?

It has not moved from that same spot in 5-6 months the only addition is a tarp that covers one of the power cars.

Has it been painted into the new scheme yet?

The two sets I saw were still in the old scheme, one in the red/grey and the other was white with the pointless arrow.

Here are the two "power cars" of what was to become trainset #7 languishing outside of Super Steel:

http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?20040 ... 916182.jpg

http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?20040 ... 508220.jpg

The fact that Amtrak's Empire Service trains are typically quite short seems to undermine the argument that the Turboliners lack sufficient capacity.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=80573

And of course, it's easy to expand the Turboliners to run with four intermediate cars, as was done routinely in the past:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=80715

Look what went "thump' against my storm door this morning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/nyregion/10train.html

A typical Empire Corridor train is one cafe car plus 4 coaches, so that's roughly 320+ passengers.

The turboliners seat about 260. That's at least a 60 person difference.

And I don't believe it's very easy to add a car to a turboliner since I think they're held together with drawbars, not couplers, so it's not switching work.

Greg Moore wrote:A typical Empire Corridor train is one cafe car plus 4 coaches, so that's roughly 320+ passengers.

The turboliners seat about 260. That's at least a 60 person difference.

And I don't believe it's very easy to add a car to a turboliner since I think they're held together with drawbars, not couplers, so it's not switching work.

I believe the Turboliners use standard knuckle couplers. In any case, they used to change the consist length all the time, running with either two, three, or four intermediate cars. Adding an additional coach to each Turboliner set would be no problem, and would increase capacity from 264 to 340. David Gunn recently said that the plan was to put four Turboliner sets into service, each with an additional coach.

http://www.trainweb.org/espa/espa404.htm

"As he left the March 6th ESPA/NARP annual meeting, Amtrak President David Gunn told reporters he expected an agreement soon with the New York State Department of Transportation to complete rehabilitation of four of the seven turboliner trainsets. Three would operate at any one time with one held in reserve. All four sets would include 6 cars instead of the original 5-car format, with the extra cars taken from the three remaining sets."

Regarding the New York Times article, is it correct that the Turboliners don't use diesel fuel? I think the turbines actually do run on diesel.

Open Letter to Mr. Bill Keller--

Please restore Matt Wald to his role as your transportation reporter.

Your current reporter does not have her facts straight; Turbos run on plain old diesel fuel.

Your faithful reader of 56 years standing

GBN

Well, another busy holiday travel season has hit us with these trains wasting away in storage. Have there been any developments regarding the Turboliner fiasco? How long is Amtrak going to keep these trains in storage? Months? Years? If they don't want to run them, wouldn't it make more sense to send them back to Super Steel for the necessary repairs, rather than having them sit idle in Delaware?

hsr_fan wrote:Well, another busy holiday travel season has hit us with these trains wasting away in storage. Have there been any developments regarding the Turboliner fiasco? How long is Amtrak going to keep these trains in storage? Months? Years? If they don't want to run them, wouldn't it make more sense to send them back to Super Steel for the necessary repairs, rather than having them sit idle in Delaware?

Yes that's what I would do instead of letting them sit.

AmtrakFan

AmtrakFan wrote:[Yes that's what I would do instead of letting them sit.

And who exactly is going to pay for them?

Turbo's are paid for by State of New York, Supersteel has offered to fix the AC units as part of warranty, but Amtrak still send the units for storage.