Amtrak Empire Service (New York State)

While I, too, would love to see food and drinks available again on these trains I remember well when they had them in the past and it did not really work that well. Get on a train at either Albany or New York and first thing you would hear often was that the cafe car was closed. Get to Rhinecliff or maybe closer to Hudson and again you would hear that the cafe car was closed. I remember more than once heading for the cafe car only to find the attendant sitting comfortably in a seat and not anxious to get off his butt to get me a cold soda or whatever. I think there is more important things than restoring this operation. Food is available both at Albany as well as Penn Station, New York. In Albany there is a Dunkin Donuts as well as a Stewarts close by as well as food in the station itself while in Penn Station there are numerous concessions located throughout the station. Indifferent and lazy attendants did as much as anything to kill this service and bring it back today and I think things would just return to what they were when they had food service before, no thanks.
Noel Weaver

Noel Weaver wrote:Indifferent and lazy attendants did as much as anything to kill this service and bring it back today and I think things would just return to what they were when they had food service before, no thanks.

And then they wonder why unions get a bad reputation! Too bad the Subway employees were scared/intimidated out of business within like a week of that food service experiment...

Matt Johnson wrote:

Noel Weaver wrote:Indifferent and lazy attendants did as much as anything to kill this service and bring it back today and I think things would just return to what they were when they had food service before, no thanks.

And then they wonder why unions get a bad reputation! Too bad the Subway employees were scared/intimidated out of business within like a week of that food service experiment...

During my years on the railroad my observation was that the leadership of the unions did NOT support bad behavior on the part of their members. After all every time one stubs his or her toe and there is an investigation it cost the union money to represent these people and they are required by union by-laws and company agreements to represent these people whether they are right or wrong. I worked with a lot of local union leaders and to a man they were very good railroaders and very good to work with as well. The vast majority of railroaders whom I have either worked with or had contact with were good people in every respect, unfortunately some of the snack bar attendants were simply "dead wood".
Noel Weaver

Looking at the Rensellaer station track layout this past weekend , it seems like a major interlocking project would have to be done to route trains from track 1 and 2 to the Boston main and reverse. It appears only the "main" track connects to that line at the moment from the south end.

What is the track thats along the fence at the west side of the station used for? The track that has no station platform on it. It has a small passing siding on it and looks to small for a locomotive runaround.

BobLI wrote:Looking at the Rensellaer station track layout this past weekend , it seems like a major interlocking project would have to be done to route trains from track 1 and 2 to the Boston main and reverse. It appears only the "main" track connects to that line at the moment from the south end.

What is the track thats along the fence at the west side of the station used for? The track that has no station platform on it. It has a small passing siding on it and looks to small for a locomotive runaround.

You are correct. Only the easternmost station track is directly connected to the Boston track used by 448/449. Here are a few current photos of that interlocking http://wikimapia.org/17413494/CP-142-Hudson-Line-R-LAB" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Reconfiguring that interlocking will provide more operational flexibility.

I'm told that the track on the far west side of the station is a freight bypass track which is used by CSX.

NH2060 wrote:

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:I don't know what Siemens has in design for mass-market diesel competition. If they're making a bid they haven't released any info on what they're cooking up. So I would definitely say the EMD F125 has the inside track right now. But I wasn't suggesting a Siemens diesel for future duals...I was saying an ACS-64-based dual Siemens would offer as head-to-head competition for the Bombardier ALP-45DP. An equal-capable on/off-wire vehicle instead of another round of shoed diesels. And that has less to do with Amtrak trying to invent new routes to use duals on (which is not a high-priority when engine switches are efficient) than maintenance commonality. The whither P32 rebuild is going to be an ambivalent decision because if the rest of the Gennies go they become fleet outliers, and Amtrak is totally obsessive-compulsive about fleet uniformity. So logic would dictate it's a binary choice: either repeat the Gennie order by taking their default uniform diesel fleet and throwing shoes on it...or take their default uniform electric fleet and throw an internal combustion engine in it.

-- A Sprinter dual is going to be as much similar ground-up to a Sprinter electric as an ALP-45DP is to its ALP-46A platform. Maybe moreso if Siemens' offering can improve on Bombardier's ALP-45/46 modularity between electric and diesel halves. So that fits the maintenance economy of scale if parts and labor are totally similar to the all-electrics on the electric half and all mode-common systems (traction motors, etc.). If that's what they value most they may not care that the engine is overkill for the tiny amount of wire the Empire runs through. I could also see them valuing the equal capability for being able to roam system-wide to all East Coast shops instead of being pinned to Albany. And the resiliency aspect of being able to pull one on-demand to pinch hit on a Regional for those odd service screwed-up days on the NEC when they find themselves short one too many units at Sunnyside.

-- If it's a shoed diesel, it's obviously no change from the current setup and the safe known-known choice. Except that EMD's got to prove it can do a shoed diesel a whole lot better than the flambé DM30's, There's justifiable angst about whether EMD can redeem itself here. Plus for a modern order they probably are going to value the backup capability of doing some longer-duration shoe running like the DM30 was supposed to enable. Saves the Hudson from getting as FUBAR'ed in an engine failure event if it can switch to E mode between Croton-Harmon and Yonkers to keep moving and give the rescue engine enough time to get into position for a fluid handoff. If EMD was supposed to be able to perfected that cabability 15 years ago, they better be able to do it in 2018 two full decades after the DM30's were supposed to have this figured out.

-- Also...one point in favor of going full-dual...California may want a modern platform it can buy future options on for the state-sponsored routes that will share some of the first tendrils of CAHSR electrification. Like the San Joaquin re-route on that first Bakersfield-Fresno segment. Or the Cap Corridor. Amtrak writ-large may not care about this, but if Cali is going to be motivated to offer immediate justification for using the wires it's going to be looking for an excuse to equip itself. And that does future-proof the scale of this order beyond the Penn-Albany shoed niche and play into the calculus of what works best for OCD fleet commonality. Because I bet they'd be real pissed if CA crossed enemy lines with Bombardier and bought some ALP-45DP's to run under the Amtrak logo with fed money supporting the purchase.



So, yeah, lot of speculation...but also a lot more thinking they have to do on their end for the best way to proceed. Which is probably why it was wise to defer the whither-P32's decision till later while setting up the trajectory of their diesel future now. It seems like it would be better to pin a plan in FY2015-2016 than now--despite nervousness of how the P32's are going to hold up in as-is shape by '18-20. So much is converging all at once by decade's end like: NY State-owned vehicle needs + potential shoed combo orders for post-ESA and the very much politically TBD fate of Hudson-Penn, fleet management/hegemony and whether their current electric manufacturer or their would-be diesel manufacturer is more up-to-task for creating a reliable new dual, and that potential California wildcard. It'll be interesting to watch unfold, even if it's waaaaaaaaaayyyyyy too early to start placing bets.

Well with the CHSRA and Amtrak already teaming up for a joint order for NextGen HSR/Acela II trainsets, a joint catenary capable electro-diesel order doesn't sound impossible. Who knows if there's even discussion about it, but someone should try to bring that to their attention. Those points made about shoed vs. pantographed diesels really build the case for eliminating the former in the event if the possibility is there for them to become the odd ducks of the fleet.

Now not to get off topic, but since this pertains to NYP-ALB motive power, can a diesel/overhead wire dual mode still have sufficient fuel storage compared to a diesel/3rd rail dual mode or a straight diesel-electric?

Siemens has announced it's competing design:
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/mec ... channel=35" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Siemens Rail Systems and Cummins jointly announced a partnership on Dec. 3, 2013 that they said "will bring one of the most modern and efficient passenger rail, diesel-electric locomotives in the world to the U.S. marketplace."

The companies said Cummins QSK95 diesel engines will be used in Siemens' diesel-electric locomotives in the U.S., "resulting in one of the most energy-efficient, lightweight, smart, diesel-electric locomotives available today in North America...

...The locomotives will be built and assembled at Siemens' solar-powered transportation manufacturing facility in Sacramento, Calif. Cummins diesel QSK95 engines will be made in Seymour, Ind. The 95-liter prime mover is the most powerful high-speed 16-cylinder diesel to be installed in a locomotive generating more than 4,000 hp (2,983 kW), the companies said.

No dual mode announcement, but I expect the engineers at Siemens to be cooking something up.

When I was a more frequent rider of Empire Service, I once heard there was support for an automat type service for food/drink on more Empire Service trains....

Fan Railer wrote: No dual mode announcement, but I expect the engineers at Siemens to be cooking something up.

I wonder why it's so hard these days to come up with a decent looking cab. That rendering, eh. I thought the Turboliner in RTL-III form had a nice looking cab - I like designs that are sleek enough to warrant a coupler shroud.

Or better yet, how about this sleeker fictitious CGI version of the Acela Express from a recent ad?

Just curious, what is special about Amsterdam that made it the cutoff for high speed operation? (vs New York just installing cab signals and high speed track as far as Albany, for instance). Looks like the track is still at least Class 5 between Schenectady and Amsterdam, which is cool.

Not sure I follow your question.

Could you expand upon it?

Greg Moore wrote:Not sure I follow your question.

Could you expand upon it?

As I understand it, the Empire Corridor was limited to 79 mph until the state of New York paid for high speed upgrades soon after the Rohr Turboliner acquisition. (See the description here.) I just wonder what led to investing in speed upgrades to Amsterdam rather than merely to Albany or Schenectady.

Matt Johnson wrote:

Greg Moore wrote:Not sure I follow your question.

Could you expand upon it?

As I understand it, the Empire Corridor was limited to 79 mph until the state of New York paid for high speed upgrades soon after the Rohr Turboliner acquisition. (See the description here.) I just wonder what led to investing in speed upgrades to Amsterdam rather than merely to Albany or Schenectady.

That's not quite accurate. AFAICT, south of ALB had 110MPH for years before the Turboliner fiasco. The goal was to get that up to 125mph. Same for the section between ALB-SDY I believe.

My guess as to "why to Amsterdam is partly "why not". I think that's the limit of CSX's active freight trains, so east of there it's pretty much all Amtrak. Might as well make it fast.

Amsterdam isn't the cut off for high speed its actually CP169 Hoffmans were the CSX main goes off towards Selkirk. There hasn't been any freight traffic between CP169 and Albany since the early 70s. PC saw to that when the bridge between Schenectady and Scotia somehow had a fire. The line was restored in the 80s by NYS.

Growing up I went to nursery school that I could watch the trains come into and out of the "sandbank". The teachers would send home notes about me not wanting to do anything but hang around by the fence and watch trains.

Thanks, makes sense. It'd be nice if they could extend this to more places around the country! Probably a better way to go than controversial new 220 mph systems, given the way things are going in California.