Omfg bro happiest news of 2025 so far!!I am travelling on Acela from NYP to BOS on March 31. I just got a "change of seat configuration" notice from Amtrak -- on airlines this means change of equipment!
I believe that means Acela II is moving into service by then!
See message above -- not quite yet -- this is operational prep-work only, but seems real for late this Spring.
Still the happiest news of 2025 so far because it was also a joke about how shitty the year's been
www.nbcboston.com
I just rode on Acela yesterday. The configuration had a set of facing seats (and table) at each end of the car. In the middle, there was a row of back to back seats, and the forward facing were from there to the front of the car.
Don't look a gift Magic Fingers in the mouth
www.cbsnews.com
Out of curiosity, is it know what is stopping Amtrak from taking advantage of the same signal improvements? A stopping service really shouldn't be beating Acelas or even Regionals.
Old trains not worth upgrading since we are months away from Acela II?
My somewhat baseless guess is that it might also be a dispatching issue. Since Metro-North controls dispatching on the ROW, one can imagine Amtrak getting the short end of the stick whenever something screws up, thus affecting runtimes and meaning Amtrak needs to pad the schedules more than Metro-North does.
Amazing! I assume this will be a gradual rollout as the old rolling stock is retired? Do we know how many new trainsets Amtrak already has on hand for day 1 service?
I think @Teban54 is right that this is a problem with Metro North controlling the track. Here's an interesting post on some of the problems on the line: bad timetabling practices, bad maintenance practices, massive time padding. The new signaling system might be good, but they don't help Acelas if the Acelas still get stuck behind local trains.
Metro North always gave their trains priority over Amtrak; especially when the Acelas were introduced. Amtrak essentially doubled their frequencies with the Acela introduction at the same time Metro North was making significant expansion of their own schedules. This all took place in the middle of the upgrade of the catenary system to constant tension wire. There was always a track out of service over significant portions of Metro North at the time. I still remember waiting many minutes at Stamford for our scheduled departure time when working an Acela on the weekend, when there were fewer Local trains to deal with . It has been a decade since I left Amtrak but now I believe that Metro North will have track outages due to the re-construction of their movable bridge. It never ends .
My anecdotal observation is that this is still true. It still seems to be a frequent occurrence that my Acela is held in favor of a Metro North train, regardless of whether we're on time or not. The magnitude of the impact doesn't seem to be too large though.
My additional anecdotal evidence is that, Norwalk Bridge work notwithstanding, there are far fewer track outages than 10 years ago. It seemed at the time like only three tracks were in service for a big chunk of the property. Now we have delays due to only 2 tracks in service west of Norwalk, but I haven't experienced much more than a few minutes' delay due to that on any one trip. Bigger factors recently have been things literally on fire in Boston or a signal outage or two east of Stamford.
