Turboliners Move

Man I ran them and I dont have one of those. I can tell you the boys at Super Steel had no clue what they were up against. If you could find an original RTL manual schematics for a rebuild it still would not have help. Albany made a ton of mods, even to the newest stuff.. I remember one night caught a job off the conductor list and spent the entire evening going in and out of Penn trying to find the electrical gremlin in third rail mode. the engineer figured it out not the computer wizard in the back. A make work project that turned into a political football and cost the state of NY millions GOOD RIDDANCE.

Eh, who needs instructions?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uq1KWrT9js" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

mtuandrew wrote:I hadn’t realized how much those coaches just look French/continental rather than Canadian/American. Hard to describe, but the proportions just don’t look right.

If the mods will indulge me, that brings to mind another observation: the Rohr coaches flare out to become normal width (i.e. normal gap with high level platform) but you can see how they're beveled at the ends. They're also the North American standard 85 ft length. As I posted previously, here's a Rohr Turbo coach with an Amfleet. The way the coaches flare out is very apparent in this photo.

I think that the original French RTG coaches were narrower. When three French sets were rebuilt for service in New York and given the Rohr style noses, they were easily identifiable by doors that protruded noticeably from the carbody. (The cafe placement was also different, being at the end rather than the middle of the coach.)

http://www.railpictures.net/photo/491698/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Does anyone know why they held on to them for so long? I mean I guess for a couple of years they were thinking that they might need them but after a while they pretty much just take up space.

I grew up along the hudson and used to see the non-rebuilt and rebuilt RTLs go up and down the river north of the hudson while fishing. Always was fascinated with them. I do remember they were BEYOND loud (as in making F40s sound quiet!)
I've had the privilege of speaking to a few engineers that ran them and the consensus was "bucket of bolts" and from a technical perspective, they just don't make sense anymore with the P32s able to do 110 with amfleets and the chargers able to handle 125.

Gas turbines make sense if you can run them full bore for 100+ miles and we had 125 mph say, from poughkeepsie to hudson, then hudson to albany, and again from hoffmans to syracuse (with the exception of little falls area) but track conditions will never permit that kind of thing.

All that being said, the Paint scheme on them always looked really good, better in my opinion than the straight acela scheme.

Therefore, between the Super Steel rebuild mess and lack of reliability and the fact the sets themselves were effectively functionally obsolete by 2000. Maybe then can put a coach and a power car in a museum and call it a day; otherwise good riddance. Too bad Amtrak and NYS didn't have that foresight and could have saved a lot of $ that could have been invested in track, station and rolling stock projects throughout the state.

andegold wrote:I was lucky enough to ride the Turbo to Albany for the bar exam in April of 1996. I always thought they were really sharp looking trains. Too bad they couldn't have been repowered or repurposed or something.

For a number of years I had a 10:00 a.m. meeting every two weeks in lower Manhattan, so I took the 7:00 a.m. train out of Albany, which was usually a Turbo. There was nothing else like it. The view out the large windows going down the Hudson made the trip a wonderful experience. (For a while that train originated in Schenectady, but that ended long ago.). There was a Turbo going back, around four-ish, also usually a Turbo, which made for a very good day at work. I think it was in 2001 that I rode the cab, my last time in one.

Maybe I'm wrong but they seemed to have the best ride of any of the Empire Service equipment.

Fine memories.

Was there are consideration to for the Turboliner cars to be modified as locomotive hauled coaches, as with VIA's LRC?

R36 Combine Coach wrote:Was there are consideration to for the Turboliner cars to be modified as locomotive hauled coaches, as with VIA's LRC?

Apparently not, though there is earlier precedent for that. The lone RTL-II was hauled by a P32AC-DM in revenue service for at least a few runs after its turbines failed, and Iran's last Turbo was hauled by a diesel until recently, as seen about 2/3 of the way down on this page. On the subject of Iran's turbos, I remember discovering during a photo search that they lost one in a derailment a few years ago.

R36 Combine Coach wrote:Was there are consideration to for the Turboliner cars to be modified as locomotive hauled coaches, as with VIA's LRC?

Very different beasts.

The LRC carriages were always conventional loco-hauled coaches from Day 1 and were always capable of being hauled by any old loco pin-compatible with VIA's HEP output. P42's started pulling them years before they were rebuilt, when they were still in original 1977 factory configuration. Those weird Alco locos they were delivered with were merely the nod to their high-speed capabilities: only when LRC locos were run on both ends and activated to run in a synchronized power car configuration were the sets capable of hitting 125 MPH. For that reason the LRC Alcos were always matched in-practice to LRC carriages, even though the carriages were backwards-compatible with any old power and the locos were HEP-compatible with any other Canadian stock (the last non-revenue runs pre-retirement were hauling Renaissance fleet test trains). When Amtrak passed on ordering them 125 became a moot point, as VIA didn't have track that could go that fast. But VIA already had its LRC loco fleet ordered, so they filled out their lifespan running regular-speed pull-only without the ordering scale south of the border that would've made the Alcos somewhat more useful than the albatrosses they became.

Turboliners were always integrated trainsets. The RTL's adopted North American couplers unlike the earlier RTG's which retained their French couplers, but the design was heavily Euro-imported and never intended for trainlining with conventional stock. Considerations like HEP, auto-door, and PA/communications compatibility with other coaches would've been coincidental at best...and probably very problematic in practice. Fine for a non-revenue move if a lone car had to be separated and lashed up to a few Amfleets on the way to the shop, but not for a production environment in revenue service. With only 35 RTL carriages ever produced, there would've been no point to re-wiring them to be conventional Amfleet & push-pull compatible coaches. Especially after Super Steel screwed up the HVAC nine ways to Sunday on the rebuilds.

R36 Combine Coach wrote:Was there are consideration to for the Turboliner cars to be modified as locomotive hauled coaches, as with VIA's LRC?

Yes, sometime after the aborted Super Steel rebuild program left the three (delivered) sets sitting in storage, Amtrak reportedly evaluated what would be required to return them to service as a locomotive hauled trainset (among other options). Obviously, nothing came of it.

even as locomotive hauled they still face same problems , no manuals for maintenance and a HVAC system that has big air duct removed , reducing HVAC capacity by good 40%

OrangeGrove wrote:
Yes, sometime after the aborted Super Steel rebuild program left the three (delivered) sets sitting in storage, Amtrak reportedly evaluated what would be required to return them to service as a locomotive hauled trainset (among other options). Obviously, nothing came of it.

That's what I was told by someone who claimed to be in the know, and who told me just a couple of years ago that the trainsets had a future. Apparently Amtrak wanted the partially completed coaches and spare parts inventory, but New York opted to auction them off for scrap instead.

Anyone know if the three sets still have their Turbomeca Makila 1600 hp gas turbines? I imagine those would have been worth a lot when new in 2003, not sure about after 15 years of storage.

Thanks, folks, good job keeping it both historical background, and current news. I appreciate it.

Per a fairly reliable source, rumor has it that the 2nd Turboliner set may be moved north this Thursday or Friday. NFI
Ben

The talk about the Turboliner's mechanical layout got me inspired last week, and I was able to locate a copy of Amtrak Car Diagrams of the 1970s over at a used book store in San Jose, CA (which I picked up last Thursday, being in the area at the time). Unfortunately, it excludes the designs for the Turboliners (and RDCs) as being "motive power".

*sigh* Well, it was a shot, but I have other ideas from the book.