Wisconsin Talgos Disposition - MI and now Pacific Surfliner

Suburban Station: true enough, but on some level, every government contract produced in Wisconsin has to do business with Wisconsin.

Suburban Station wrote:The problem wasn't doing business IN Wisconsin but WITH Wisconsin

No, you identified the wrong reason. It's not Wisconsin being the main problem, it was the first governor, who I will not name, pushing the state's DOT to purchase/lease the Talgo equipment bypassing the normal RFP processes without finalizing the deal to include maintaining the Talgo equipment by Talgo.
Without completing the deal with Talgo, he left a legal, but expensive, way for the next governor to kill the project entirely. The first governor assumed no one following would bite the bullet to kill the project after it was started. How wrong he was!
The main lesson to be learned here is to fully fund your pet projects, don't leave that task half completed.

Exactly.

A Bob Johnston report appearing in December TRAINS states that the California acquisition of the surplus Talgo equipment is "not exactly" a done deal:

To summarize the copyrighted material not available at the web - even to subscribers - the significant logistical and cost details to be negotiated (Fair Use paraphrase) are adequate maintenance facilities, maintenance agreements, route-specific testing, color, café, and Business Class changes.

So there is a way to go; even if as reported here at the Forum, that a successful stress test has been completed on the Nippon Shayro bi-level cars, California needs additional equipment as like "yesterday".

I'm not surprised the maintenance facility is a problem. Disappointed nonetheless.

Lets just hope they don't use those seats that the newer Cascade Talgos have as well as the refub'ed business class LRC's have. Suck-o! I'd rather sit on a toilet. Classic railroad seats are the best part of the ride. They're big and comfy. Newer Talgo biz class seats are like Delta Coach. They suck.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:A Bob Johnston report appearing in December TRAINS states that the California acquisition of the surplus Talgo equipment is "not exactly" a done deal:

To summarize the copyrighted material not available at the web - even to subscribers - the significant logistical and cost details to be negotiated (Fair Use paraphrase) are adequate maintenance facilities, maintenance agreements, route-specific testing, color, café, and Business Class changes.

So there is a way to go; even if as reported here at the Forum, that a successful stress test has been completed on the Nippon Shayro bi-level cars, California needs additional equipment as like "yesterday".

As far as I know, the N-S bilevels have not passed the compression test. The car shell redesign is still underway and is not expected to be completed until early 2017. Testing of the shell would have to await the redesign.

From the October 6 minutes of the NGEC Technical Subcommittee:

Carshell –We continue to have regular updates from NS to review the progress of the carshell re-design issues, and the schedule for the design activities.  Carshell design activities are proceeding in accordance with the schedule requirements of the supplemental design review scheduled in January 2017. The last update meeting took place on September 8. We are in the middle of the face to face pre-supplemental design review meeting with NS today.  We will report the progress on the design at the next conference call.

Minutes
Note: link downloads an MS Word doc file.

So almost a year has passed. We have not heard anything more about California or Michigan getting Talgos. We have not heard anything more about Nippon Sharyo deliveries. There are two new Talgo trains rotting in Indianapolis. Bueller... Bueller... Anybody?

Yep. Meanwhile, California is still broke, Illinois is even more broke, and Wisconsin and the old style Hiawatha service are both doing pretty darn well...

Tadman wrote:So almost a year has passed. We have not heard anything more about California or Michigan getting Talgos. We have not heard anything more about Nippon Sharyo deliveries. There are two new Talgo trains rotting in Indianapolis. Bueller... Bueller... Anybody?

Point well made ... Now that the bi-level order is on life support (at best) one would wonder what's going to happen with the Talgo sets. I think California is committed to buying trail cars one way or another ... Michigan got stopped by their Legislature, nothing has changed in Wisconsin, Illinois doesn't have the money and Missouri doesn't have the interest. North Carolina is the only real option that comes to mind but I think it's just too pricey for them.

Beyond that everything else is basically high level territory. The only other "maybe" I can think of is if Nevada were to decide they want to run service to Las Vegas and operate it themselves. Unlikely and even if they did UP would probably require more infrastructure work

They'd be great for a CHI-MSP line over CP ex-MILW, and could make a huge schedule improvement between LSE and RDW if dispatch allows. Otherwise, I dunno... regauge them for the Cumbres & Toltec?

Minnesota ... Hmm. Interesting suggestion.

MSP-Duluth? Is that route curvy? It's a boring drive, maybe 2.5 hours. The sticking point over there is the dang bridge between Superior and Duluth. It's hard to time the train to the ships, as that's a very busy shipping route. You could stop the train in Superior and run a connecting bus over the high bridge, but it's politically tough to end a MN-sponsored train in Wisconsin.

Not particularly curvy, no. Maybe a bit up on the ex-GN past Sandstone, but nothing like the River Sub, and the BNSF bridge across the St. Louis River (and also the CN ex-DMIR bridge) is above nearly all of the shipping traffic. No more NP bridge right at the mouth of the harbor. Superior's station won't be in downtown, and it'll be the second to last stop before Duluth. You're right, no MN politician would allow that to happen, especially with the Iron Range such a political prize to both DFL and GOP.

Also, no MN politician would be caught dead buying Wisconsin's rejects

(I still think it'd be fun for MN, IA, and IL to collaborate on a MSP-CHI Regional on CP, ex-ICE, nee MILW via Savanna, IL and entirely misses Wisconsin, just for spite THAT is a route that would intensely benefit from Talgos.)