"Acela II" to be capable of 180 mph

Matt Johnson wrote: How do they reach that conclusion?

Not sure.

Surely the carbodies are still structurally sound, no?

Oh, even those will eventually start cracking from stresses...

Everything else is basically a wear item that can be replaced.

Sure, but at what cost? The thing supposedly wears a lot of suspension parts out at a pretty good rate, the traction technology's a generation out of date, the overall performance is rather poor.

My guess is Amtrak really wants to replace them, now, but they know it's going to be 5 or 10 years to get a replacement into service, given the eisting FRA situation, plus funding, plus the market for Tier II rail equipment (i.e., everything they buy being a custom, one-off design.)

I think the Alstom AGV looks like the ideal train, except for the lack of active tilt.

Lack of tilt's a deal breaker.

I have to think, though, that the superior acceleration and higher top speed could more than make up for the lack of a tilt mechanism.

Going 150mph isn't going to make up for slowing to 40 or 50 every few miles. And, you're not going to see mixed-use track faster than that - one can argue that even mixed operations at 150 isn't worth the dispatching headaches. Being able to go a sustained 125mph would get you much more, and that's where 9 inch unbalance through curves helps out a lot. Also, that acceleration and top speed's useless on the New Haven line - there's nowhere to go faster, unless you somehow speed up the curves.

I have traveled on the Virgin Pendolino between Carlisle and Glasgow, and on another trip between London and Manchester. I was impressed, and I thought to myself, man this train would perform well on the Northeast Corridor! It's very smooth, and the active tilt works beautifully. The Pendolinos are good for at least 140 mph - Virgin was going to run them at that speed, but planned signaling upgrades were never done on the West Coast Mainline, so they are held to 125.

Matt Johnson wrote:I have traveled on the Virgin Pendolino between Carlisle and Glasgow, and on another trip between London and Manchester. I was impressed, and I thought to myself, man this train would perform well on the Northeast Corridor! It's very smooth, and the active tilt works beautifully. The Pendolinos are good for at least 140 mph - Virgin was going to run them at that speed, but planned signaling upgrades were never done on the West Coast Mainline, so they are held to 125.

A lot of (expensive) work has been done on the track.

There is very little freight on that line. There is an intensive service of passenger trains about one an hour, or more frequent.

Matt Johnson wrote:I have traveled on the Virgin Pendolino between Carlisle and Glasgow, and on another trip between London and Manchester. I was impressed, and I thought to myself, man this train would perform well on the Northeast Corridor! It's very smooth, and the active tilt works beautifully. The Pendolinos are good for at least 140 mph - Virgin was going to run them at that speed, but planned signaling upgrades were never done on the West Coast Mainline, so they are held to 125.

The thing that kills the Pendolino is it's not very powerful - it has a worse power:weight than the Acela, and Acela's near the bottom.

The thing that kills the Pendolino

Its death is an exaggeration. It's very popular.

george matthews wrote: Its death is an exaggeration. It's very popular.

Indeed, and it's also more weighted to first class than Acela, I think. At least three cars in each nine car trainset are first class, as I recall.

Here's a vid that I shot from the Pendolino. Whatever shape "Acela 2.0" takes, I hope it rides as smoothly as that train did!

Greg Moore wrote: Problem is cost. I doubt you can effectively run them at high speeds and charge the same amount as Regional trains and not open up huge holes in your budget.

It's my suspicion that the large majority of costs are incurred before the trains are ready for service. that an extra two to four cars on a given set isn't going to blow the budget. that if the people are going to be moved, they are going to show up as costs either on the acela or regionals or they aren't going to be customers. I'd bet that the acela isn't any more expensive, and probably cheaper, power wise than the regionals. Regarding speed, when the train slows and then speeds up again, it increases power consumption since less power is used to keep the train at speed than to increase the speed. that said, perhaps Boardman is trying to capture the imaginations of citizens and congress. to be sure, that $10 bn is likely to do exactly the things being mentioned here, but he thinks he needs a selling point. he may be right, the last guy got canned for basically saying what's being said here...that we should improve the NEC, add capacity, and speed up other operations. it might be a smart gamble, or a fool's errand. still, for billions in additional tax money, I want more people to see the benefit...of course, I definitely think we should be able to buy off the shelf equipment rather than the tanks we have now.

Why was Washington able to be freed from the FRA for its purchase of Talgos but not Amtrak for its Acelas?

ajl1239 wrote:Why was Washington able to be freed from the FRA for its purchase of Talgos but not Amtrak for its Acelas?

I don't know, but Washington literally puts concrete blocks in its cab cars to meet the "weight" requirements. Which, of course, benefits absolutely nobody -- in a crash, do you really think having a large concrete block in front of you will make you safer or less safe?....

I presume, given the timescales involved, that the new Amtrak order will be after the "crash energy management" regulations come out of the FRA, which will hopefully allow safe modern equipment.

Nasadowsk wrote: Gunning for 180mph is stupid - even the 150mph running with Acela has proven to be pointless. A better goal would be to get 9 inches unbalance and fix the stupid slow portions of the NEC to get as much 125mph running as possible, then look to go higher. Getting rid of crap like Frankford Junction and the Elizabeth curve, and the slow NYC and Baltimore tunels would help more than extending the 150mph portions.

I have to disagree about the 150 mph running being pointless. I bet you'd find if you asked most people what was special about Acela, they'd mention the 150 mph running.

While from a purely practical pov, increasing the amount of 125 and 135 mph running makes more sense, there has to be a certain amount "good publicity". 150 MPH and 180 MPH gives them that.

(Now if we could get 180 MPH running most of the way from WAS-NYP I'd be ecstatic.

Greg Moore wrote:(Now if we could get 180 MPH running most of the way from WAS-NYP I'd be ecstatic.

If we could get 80 mph running throughout most of the rest of the country, I'd be ecstatic.

Seriously, I hope Amtrak is not only looking into an Acela replacement, but trainsets that would be suitable for The Rest Of Us. As for the future Acelas, I like the Talgo double-deck equipment and the TGV Duplex, though the Duplex in particular is becoming old technology. (Perfect for our outdated system!)

ajl1239 wrote:Why was Washington able to be freed from the FRA for its purchase of Talgos but not Amtrak for its Acelas?

The Cascades sets have the Talgos between the locomotive (which is FRA-rated) and the control car (which, because it is an ex-locomotive and has a large concrete block in it, is also FRA-rated), the theory being that if the set has a collision the "FRA-ness" of the locomotive/cab car will protect the Talgos. Why this doesn't also apply to the Acelas, I'm not sure - probably the higher speed operation.

I would hope that Amtrak learned from its previous lesson. Rather than purchase say 20 train sets which inevitably resulted in 20 different problems, have a prototype built FIRST (i.e. 1). Test the mess out of it and make an evaluation. Make the necessary modifications, test it again until it meets Amtrak's satisfaction and then use that as the blue print for the other sets that come off the assembly line. I believe that is generally what was done for the AEM7 which is the current workhorse on the NEC and probably most reliable.

I'm assuming that for PR sake, Amtrak rushed the first Acela sets to have the service ready for the new Century/Millenium (i.e. "have these bad boys ready by 2000) and so they bypassed the testing of a prototype (IMHO The ICE and X2000 don't count).

Matt Johnson wrote:Well, hopefully we'll see some infrastructure upgrades as well. From the same article:

Longer-term, the NEC is due for $10 billion in upgrades, $6 billion of that between Washington and New York. Amtrak is looking to replace all the NEC’s aging variable-tension catenary between Washington and New Haven,Conn., with a modern constant-tension system (like that in place between New Haven and Boston). A $700 million Washington-New York replacement program is already under way. Catenary improvements, along with improvements to curves and tunnel approaches and tie replacement, is expected to decrease trip times initially by 15 minutes. Further improvements should shave another 15 minutes. Boardman said Amtrak’s goal is to increase the Acela Express’s top speed on this segment of the NEC to 150 mph from the current 135 mph.

I read another article that said the plan called for $16 billion in improvements: $6b between WAS and NYP, and $10 billion between NYP and BOS. Which is it? $10b between NYP and BOS would obviously buy a lot more improvements and realignments than $4b.
Read the article here.

Although I suppose it's more likely that Railway Age would get it right when it comes to Amtrak than Fredericksburg.com...

Matt Johnson wrote:

george matthews wrote: Its death is an exaggeration. It's very popular.

Indeed, and it's also more weighted to first class than Acela, I think. At least three cars in each nine car trainset are first class, as I recall.

Here's a vid that I shot from the Pendolino. Whatever shape "Acela 2.0" takes, I hope it rides as smoothly as that train did!

I have read in the current issue of Rail magazine that the whole fleet is about to (in May 2012) get a mid-life refurbishment by Alstom. It was introduced in 2004. Eurostar was introduced in 1994 and, the editorial suggests, rather in need of a refurbishment.

I don't think there have ever been problems with Pendolino trains compared with the recent Eurostar problems, also built by Alstom, and based on their TGV design.