djlong wrote:I'll take seeing DMU/EMU combination outside my window any day of the week as preferable to the waste of (mostly empty) 10MPH track I see now. If trains cost less than half the current cost because we'll be able to use off-the-shelf designs instead of all these custom-made jobs, then maybe we'll see, speaking from a local perspective, expansion of commuter rail to serve the couple hundred thousand people in southern NH.
Outside of Japan the MTA's M7/M7a is one of the biggest fleets in the world. I'm gonna assume that many of the people in New Hampshire would be using the trains to get to Boston. Almost all the off-the-shelf stuff is too narrow for North Station. Something that New Hampshire could use would work just as well in Massachusetts. Or Rhode Island. Or Connecticut, Or New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Ontario, Quebec.