Jeff Smith wrote:Jaap's going to kill me for bringing it into this thread, but I'm partially agreeing with what he's said in the past. With diesel sets going to the Hartford line, why not just do what CtDOT does best and pick up some cast-offs that run under the wire, i.e. AEM-7 toasters? As Jaap has pointed out elsewhere, there is now a shortage of coaches to match the power; Comet III's would be a possibility. Forget the M8's; even with the extra ordered, the retirement of the (99%) prior EMU fleet of 2-4-6's didn't leave enough for what I'm now going to call WoNH (west of NH). The M8's may test there, but it seems like there's just not enough to fulfill full SLE service levels, NLN serve notwithstanding.
Speaking of NLN, Comet III's could be a hi platform solution with a center door and end doors, which would work on curves.
Bonus: they can be used for NYP runs when that finally happens. Of course, by then they'll probably be dead, but for now they could work on the relatively short SLE runs rather than the whole NEC runs. And bookend them so if one craps out, you can MU them for motive/HEP, and not worry about push-pull.
CDOT's not going to need to do that.
-- They've got the extra P40's; Amtrak's got 13 more operable P40's in storage that become completely expendable for cheap when the state-sponsored Charger order releases the Midwest P42's back into general circulation as reinforcements for the national fleet. That's way cheaper than getting Toaster remans in there and squaring the service-and-maint agreements. It's one thing if SEPTA and MARC need to borrow some to tide them over until their Siemens locos come in way at the back end of AMTK's order, but SLE is too damn small and too far from one of Amtrak's primary AEM-7 maint shops for a lease deal to have the slightest appeal to anyone.
-- I'm pretty sure there aren't many Comet III's left. NJT has cleaned out a lot of its boneyard(s) for scrap over the past year. All those stored Arrows, Geeps, and F40's have been hauled off the property; the Comet I's & IB's are long gone. Since interest in secondhand flats is almost nil at the moment, there's no compelling reason for them to have kept the III's.
-- Coach shortage isn't quite so acute issue at the moment, as the 33 Mafersas are more than SLE needs right now. The MTA will have done the RFP for its first batch of MultiLevel replacements for the Shoreliners within 2-3 years, and they'll have freer hand to borrow blue-paint Shoreliners to plug gaps at that point.
-- CDOT's going to have lots of fleet mgt. options to chew on around the MTA's MLV order. They can go whole-hog and purge their own flats for MLV's in-tandem with the MTA. Or they can go cheaper and do a swap-a-thon when the back end of the MLV order is arriving and pick up the MTA's Shoreliner III's and put them through light overhaul, ditching their I's/II's and the Mafersas in the process.
-- M8's to New London kind of doesn't make sense until the Connecticut River Bridge gets replaced. Design funding was appropriated, then Amtrak's got an FRA deadline sometime this year to submit its final design to the FRA for approval. Remainder is waiting for construction funds to be appropriated. The Obama Admin. had this one earmarked several years ago (before Congress flipped) for an accelerated design-build, so while it's very unlikely now that the funding will move in timely fashion they would be able to commence quickly--with 2-year construction schedule--whenever it is approved. There's not going to be any NLN service increases until that project happens, because what's the point when they're looking at 2 years of construction-related capacity pinches. An M8 introduction only makes sense to OSB for now. NLN is just too small a share of the schedule to bother with until that bridge is completed and the new span offers new slots for the taking. It'd be such a small drain on the diesel fleet to segment EMU's on the west side of the river and save a couple diesel sets for NLN in the interim that overthinking short-term equipment acquisitions is a waste of energy.
-- It's pretty much established that CDOT's going to need a supplemental EMU order when PSA opens. Malloy's already name-dropped that in the public meetings for his big transpo bill. Even if ESA slips push PSA's debut to 2025, the obligatory 5-year wait from funding + RFP to vehicle delivery means that first action on the M10 supplemental order would have to happen by 2020. That's not very far away, so we'll know in not too many more years whether or not they're in go-for-it mode on relief for the EMU fleet. And in terms of SLE expansion, the South Lyme infill and any talk of Mystic and Westerly is going to time no sooner than that. Because of the bridge construction, and because RIDOT is still chasing TIGER grants to get Westerly ADA'd and expanded before it can bring its own MBTA-mercenary trains down there. That's all a 2020 convergence. So even in the most gung-ho optimistic expansion push...you probably aren't going to see that big increase in service past OSB until CDOT's made up its mind on whether to pursue some M10 reinforcements. Likewise, Hartford Line service ramping up from starter schedule to full-blast follows a 5-7 year plan, so the demands on diesel fleet numbers converges to the same timeframe as thumbs-up/thumbs-down executive decision on the supplemental EMU's.
We're overthinking this. The equipment 'gap' isn't as daunting as it sounds the way events line up. The great big MLV order and glut of Shoreliner surplus serendipitously times with the CT River bridge's likeliest construction window that's a prerequisite for any substantial NLN service increases. Additional expansion on the east end and cresting Hartford Line equipment demands time serendipitously with when they have to make the go/no-go decision on a supplemental EMU buy 4-6 years in advance of PSA. So this situation where they have to triage a thinly-spread M8 fleet and/or thinly spread diesel fleet only has to take into account the next 4-5 years of the static SLE schedule and 3-5 years of a very meager Hartford Line starter schedule before other fleet procurement events grind well into motion (esp. the explosion in new/old coach availability). I don't think the strain on resources is anywhere near as severe as we're making it out to be given the way that sequence of events lines up.
