Acela Express Questions

95% of Europes railroads are only 160 km/h or 100 mph max. yes they have more high speed rail but they also have proportionaly more railroad.
As for European rail standards a X2000 works nice on railroads with 80 ton max freight cars and 80 ton locomotives, we however run 150 ton freight cars and 190 ton locomotives on our passenger railroads.

hsr_fan wrote:
I wish they had retained the Metroliner name. I still think "Acela" is incredibly stupid, although I'm used to it by now.

They did.

http://www.subwayspot.com/gallery/album57/04_07_24_03

I have found the Acela Expresses to be very comfortable and they have been full or close to full for each of the 20 or so times I've been a passenger. I like them.

Thanx for all the Info, Pans means Pantographs, right?

How often does an electric powered train to loose it Pans?

Besides ice and bad wire, what other conditions could cause the loss of a pantograph, also, what is "bad wire" mean exactly, as I don't really know.

GBN wrote:The solution would have been to build 120 'Acela styled" (but otherwise conventional) cars for the "premium service" that simply would have retained the "household word" brand name "Metroliner" (OK Metroliner II). Cars would have been hauled, by existing locomotives (20 additional HHP-8's would have been ordered) 2'45" WAS-NYP 3'45" NYP-BOS. Max speed 125.

The new dedicated rolling-stock expenditure was/is the problem IMHO. What should have happened was that the expenditure for the most part go into the infrastructure (i.e. finally get the catenary on the old PRR into constant-tension format at the very least, worry about the 25kV/60Hz problem at a later date as always :-\ ), then gradually upgrade the Amfleet Is to be Tier II compliant (with some single-vestibule Amfleet IIs adjacent to the power cars) plus with the vaunted active-tilt suspension, then all you'd have to worry about are the 150-mph power cars, and there would be time and money available to get it right (hopefully, i.e. if Congress had not cut the $2.2 billion down further). Not to mention being able to have 9-car lengths and ability to use low platforms...

(Anyone think that tilting Heritage cars would have been impractical?)

Three or four years ago I spoke with an Amtrak high level professional engineering manager at an IEEE meeting. He mentioned that the conversion of the PRR to constant tension cat would be done simultaneously with the move to 25kV and 60Hz, highly cost efficient that way since insulators and other clearances would have to be changed anyway. The project was estimated to take about ten (10) years in the actual construction phase because of the necessity of keeping the high density NYP-WAS segment trains running on or close to schedule. The cost was estimated to be in the billions. (Don't recall precisely the figure)