Diesel is not going the "run out". What the hell kind of concern-trolling nonsense is that???
Yeah...demand is temporarily exceeding supply, and the market does what it does when that happens. That is not the same as "run out".
www.cnbc.com
Russia severely lacks the internal capacity (thanks to their own war) to refine enough to export without creating crippling domestic shortages for themselves. And the Administration damn well knows that (whether the guy in charge retains the faculties to realize it or not before he tweets). It's a desperate ploy to blow some smoke up the market's butt before the midterms, not an action one would take for an actual looming supply shortage. Because Russia does not have the supply to export.How about the Orange One striking a deal with Pooty Poot?
Trump strikes deal with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets
President Donald Trump has few options to reduce diesel prices given the destruction done to refineries by the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
This is the kind of thing you do when there's a severe shortage.
For a while there, European Refiners were getting nothing and US refiners exporting large chunks of what they had to there is a big part of why prices spiked.
Russia has been under a diesel export ban for months at this point, and this deal only creates more incentives for Ukraine to strike Russian export terminals and refineries, especially as the war continues to dive deeper into a civilian infrastructure slugging match. I think it's pretty dubious how much beyond the initial commitment Russia will actually be able to supply, and even if everything comes to pass we're talking about a single digit number of days for US daily consumption.How about the Orange One striking a deal with Pooty Poot?
Trump strikes deal with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets
President Donald Trump has few options to reduce diesel prices given the destruction done to refineries by the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
This is the kind of thing you do when there's a severe shortage.
For a while there, European Refiners were getting nothing and US refiners exporting large chunks of what they had to there is a big part of why prices spiked.
So prices will continue to rise until supply matches demand. Unless the government tries to institute price controls or every diesel refinery in America suddenly explodes, there will continue to be diesel for those who can pay for it.
They're slowly selling the ones that have been languishing in-storage since pre-COVID. 6 200-series trailers and 2 1600-series cab cars are currently listed for-sale, and the number of for-sale units has held steady for awhile. It's mostly enticing tourist railroads to pick up some of the long-stored bodies for next-to-nothing, which is why the process has gone slow as most of these carriers are only looking for a couple units at a time. They'll probably announce a scrapping contract sometime within the new year when it comes time to start mowing down the freshly-retired ranks, as they definitely don't have enough storage spots to keep most of the rosters onsite long-term. Schnitzer Steel at Everett Terminal has already chowed down 18 Bombardier cab cars in the last two years, so they would likely be favored for it. The secondhand market is also nonexistent for other commuter rail carriers as the market is going to be flooded with better-condition single-level retirements from NJ Transit, Metro-North, and ConnDOT for the next decade and nobody on the East Coast has any identified need for more cheap expansion bodies (SEPTA just just bought a bunch of secondhand Montreal push-pull coaches, so they're out). Western U.S. would also have no interest, as they already have a flush aftermarket of 8-inch boarding used cars to choose from. And Amtrak's new cars are already being delivered, so they're now getting close enough that they can tough out the rest of their car shortage rather than risk customer complaints renting some very worn out commuter coaches.
It looks like all trains will be 4 digits starting with the October 26 schedules:
Amtrak Acela trains are 4 digits 2xxx -- but as long as the 2xxx MBTA trains are from North Station only that is not a conflict.
Battery/catenary locomotives seems like a much more appropriate step for the T than BEMU IMO
It's much worse. You get no schedule improvements with battery-electric push-pull vs. diesel push-pull, while BEMU's lop 20-22% off schedule lengths because of the much faster starts/stops. You can forget about trip time savings driving ridership, and forget about schedules having the elasticity to swallow more infill stops without worsening travel times. It's a really shitty proposition cost-per-rider, because the number of riders isn't going to increase with them. Ridership will increase with a switch to BEMU's even if you did nothing else ops-different with the system. The specific BEMU's they leased may be a ripoff on raw costs, but they're definitely going to accomplish the agency's revenue goals the way they're being deployed. You can't say the same for the battery locos running the same-old Providence Line on the same-old schedules.
This seems surprising from an intuitive perspective. I obviously haven't looked into it in any detail, but I would have guessed that the electric locomotive would be able to get some degree of performance increase, even if not to the level of the full (B)EMU set.
I understand the acceleration benefits of BEMU, but looking at the procurement costs for Fairmount, don’t you think the cost benefit weighs towards the locos? At least if you look at the sole benefit of limiting emissions.
Electric push-pull can eke out about a 5% acceleration advantage over diesel push-pull, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things. The extra battery weight and finite cap on tractive effort because the power is being drawn from the limited batteries instead of the more-or-less unlimited overhead (yes...on the Siemens locos the battery is always powering the train even when it's charging on-wire) also imposes a slight penalty on that 5% for the battery-electrics. You might get 2 or 3% improvement over diesel, maybe moreso over the lower-horsepower F40's and GP40's than the zippier HSP-46's...but the degree is not even enough to dent the low-platform dwell padding in the Providence schedule so the practical result is that the schedules won't be refactored at all.
No. If you were looking solely at limiting emissions, you could run electric push-pull on the already wired Providence Line and spend one-third to one-fourth as much per new unit as they're spending on the battery locos. And figure out a way to wire up Stoughton and the FRIP track in Rhode Island with the savings so you can expand that fleet. Or wire up Fairmount for that matter. Hell...Amtrak is going to have spare Sprinters to lease out for way cheaper than buying new in as little as 2 years. The T chose this boondoggle because it absolutely psyched itself out believing that bespoke bleeding-edge technology was "progress" and that "best-practices" were icky, especially when they required wire-ups. It can't be overstated how delusional this purchase is.
Straight-diesel Chargers are averaging $7.5M each in recent/ongoing orders, while Metro-North's price for the B+AC variant was $23.5M per.
