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Discussion related to Amtrak also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp.

Moderators: GirlOnTheTrain, mtuandrew, Tadman

 #1506670  by Tadman
 
mtuandrew wrote:... Amtrak has had decades of broadly dissimilar rolling stock and would love for it to all come from the same factory & drawing board again. One brand of car (and a few V-I and V-II stragglers) means Amtrak can have one maintenance base and use one set of parts.....
It's worth noting that the legacy carriers accomplished this despite having three builders. They did this by specifying things like trucks, brakes, draft gear, and HVAC equipment. For example, all Santa Fe passenger cars had "steam ejector" air conditioning, meaning the steam gen had to run all year. This seems a bit crazy, but it was probably something that worked best in the primitive years of AC and they ran with it. As more car orders came and went at ATSF, they all had this system. By 1950, why bother changing? This was't really a problem until 1971 when each railroad's reasonably homogeneous fleet was mixed into Amtrak, producing a seizure-inducing flashing light of permutations in the fleet. There are stories of the ex-PRR carmen having an awful time at 14th street trying to get ATSF air conditioning to run.

The problem was then exacerbated by Amtrak's procurement model. The procurement model included lots of experimental stuff that didn't pan out, with a poor support mechanism for those experimental cars. The procurement model also included foreign equipment such as AEM7, which is hard to support across the ocean. The procurement model also included much longer intervals between car orders and lower overall volumes, leading to big time attrition in the supplier base and more one-off components.

Over all, this has lead to serious problems in supporting any rolling stock. It boggles the mind that, despite federal money going to most Amtrak and commuter rolling stock purchases, they haven't settled on one truck design, one HEP design, one window size, one disc/tread brake setup, etc... for any federally-funded rolling stock operating below 100mph. Amtrak has at least three truck designs under their cars - GSC, Waggon, Pioneer... This wasn't mandatory, and in fact the Metroliner EMU had a GSC truck but somehow the Amfleet has a Pioneer truck. Then Pullman comes along, after using GSC for decades, and puts Waggon trucks under the Superliners... Makes no sense.
 #1506694  by mtuandrew
 
In response to your last, Tad, I have no idea why Pullman-Standard decided to bid the S-Is with Waggon-Fabrik trucks either, since they were already building Comets with GSC-70s. (Note that prior to the Comet, Pullman was using legacy GSC trucks that have several suspension disadvantages as compared to the 70. There’s a PDF comparison paper of truck designs published in the mid-1980s floating around the Internet - I’m on my phone or I’d go find it.)

Perhaps the issue was that there wasn’t an outside-frame version of the GSC-70 until the 1980s (as Amtrak has insisted upon using?) Maybe it had to do with a weight restriction that the welded German trucks could help meet? I don’t know for certain if either were the case.

———

All: could you point me toward this global bilevel Siemens stock?
 #1506707  by frequentflyer
 
Pullman probably believed the German trucks with their shock absorbers would yield a better ride...............Personally could not stand the incessant "bunny hopping" when the cars first came out. Amtrak later recalibrated the settings, airbag or something, the ride is much improved, though not as good as the SIIs
 #1506782  by Tadman
 
I'll have a look, thanks. I've got an LA flight coming up tomorrow so need something to read.
 #1506921  by daybeers
 
Matt Johnson wrote:Don't think you could do a Duplex with active tilt, especially since the Avelia will tilt more than the Acela does - more along the lines of the Pendolino trains.
I'm sure the Avelias still won't tilt on Metro-North trackage though :/
 #1506924  by Nasadowsk
 
Tilt / non tilt isn't the question, the question is how many inches cant defiency will be allowed.
 #1511866  by ryanov
 
As I reported as the last post in that thread, tilt has been enabled over MN for some time (more than 5 years).
 #1512096  by Arborwayfan
 
I think I'm now for a single-level replacement, probably with one or two car types (sleeper, coach, cafe, whatever) that have lifts included in them. Here's why:

I just finished a Salt Lake City to Mattoon, IL, trip on the CZ and the City of New Orleans. On both trains I noticed people with mobility problems struggling up and down the stairs. On the CZ it was because one passenger who could barely climb stairs slipped passed the extremely organized and helpful coach attendant (best I have ever seen; he figured out seats for boarding passengers before the train even pulled in to Salt Lake City, so we didn't have to blunder around at 4 am looking for them, and did the same at every subsequent stop). He helped her back down to a lower-level seat, where of course she was cut off from other cars. On the City of New Orleans it was because two of the three coaches were coach-baggage and there were more mobility-impaired pax than seats. One passenger had to leave their walker down below, just to give you an idea of how much they should not have had to climb those stairs to sit in a seat with the lav on a different level. (I don't know if there was a shortage of coaches with lower level seating that day, or a shortage of baggage cars (there wasn't one on the train) so they needed two coach-baggages, but either way the real problem wasn't the day's planning but the underlying system.

On the same trip, I noticed the delays and disruptions that come from having the luggage racks down below: the first people toss in all their bags even if they would easily fit in the overhead racks. Then maybe someone comes with a couple of bigger bags and has to leave them in the vestibule so they can get to their seat and let everyone else on, while the conductor restows the luggage afterward.

I also noticed how long it takes when the coach full of Champaign passengers turns over at Champaign--all off down one staircase, and the Chm-south passengers all come back up the same way. Single-level cars might take a couple minutes off that dwell time. (Of course, so might spreading the CHM pax out over all three coaches, but that would create problems of its own in a system of seat assignments based on the crew's memories and a stack of seat checks.)

The upshot: The two-level LD car has a lot of problems that seem to me to outweigh the advantages (somewhat greater capacity, the possibility of the ladies' lounge and the family bedroom, shorter platforms). Add in the coming requirement for elevators, which does not seem unfair, and I think single-level is the way to go.
 #1512102  by bostontrainguy
 
But you still got the full length high-level boarding requirement which will not happen throughout the system. Still not sure about the Caltrans/Midwest debacle and why they aren't screaming about that one.

Now if they also build a new full-length dome diner (tables above and kitchen below) and full-length dome lounge (lounge above and cafe below) that can fit through NYP*, I might get excited.

*Don't need high ceilings in these two cases.
 #1512105  by Tadman
 
I don't know why the Superliner is under fire for "accessibility problems" when nobody says a word about Megabus, A380, 747, et al being double deck. No talk of elevators, no talk of level boarding for buses. You get helped to a seat and you sit down and never leave that seat other than bathroom breaks until arrival. This includes very long bus rides and trans-ocean plane rides. Far longer than many Superliner rides where "we have to have a diner n stuff".
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