Acela & Amtrak NEC (HSR BOS-NYP-WAS and branches only)

Arlington

Arlington

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Tallguy said:
I, for one, will miss that sleek, Budd fuselage!
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Understandable. Kinda like Queen Elizabeth, the only British Monarch most have ever known, the Budds (Metroliner/Amfleet I/Amfleet II) are the only NEC intercity train most of us have ever known (the Acela being a different thing altogether)

I will only kinda of miss them, the way I miss the skylight on a 1972 Oldsmobile Vistacruiser. To reveal my age, my first train trip was in 1970 (as a kindergartner) on the Penn Central BAL-PHL partly to ride the then-new Metroliner, and we probably drove to BAL Penn Station in a 1969 Olds Vistacruiser. Vistacruiser was synonymous with Station Wagon and I loved it dearly, but then came the 1978 Mercury Marquis with leather, power windows, and quadraphonic 8-track...

I think we won't miss the Budds once they're fully out of sight.

Railfans have noted that these new windows are about 2x as tall as the Budds' making it a lot easier to look out without making a special effort to do so. Legend has it that the Budds had the slit windows to make it harder for kids throwing rocks at trains to hit a window, which, if true, is a very 1960s reason to do anything.
 
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Jahvon09

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In essence, you can at least FEEL like you're riding on the new Acela, especially in Business Class because the setup looks exactly the same!!!! Coach also! But I'd ride in Business Class to get that little extra elbow & leg room!!!! I'm spoiled!! But notice that these new cars have practically the same shape as the Ventures, except like the Ventures, the will also feature their own locos at each end. Hah!! :)
 
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Jahvon09

Jahvon09

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Also, another question has popped up. Will Business Cass users also get to use the Acela First Class Lounges at the stations that have them? It will be nice to know this when booking a trip on the Airo trains. :)
 
Brattle Loop

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Jahvon09 said:
In essence, you can at least FEEL like you're riding on the new Acela, especially in Business Class because the setup looks exactly the same!!!! Coach also! But I'd ride in Business Class to get that little extra elbow & leg room!!!! I'm spoiled!! But notice that these new cars have practically the same shape as the Ventures, except like the Ventures, the will also feature their own locos at each end. Hah!! :)
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As a clarification, the new trainsets do not have locomotives on each end. One end will have an ALC-42E Charger diesel adjacent to an auxiliary power car with a pantograph, which will feed electricity from the overhead on the NEC to the Charger's traction motors. (I think the auxiliary power car may also have powered trucks.) The other end is just a cab car, not a locomotive, but with a full-width cab that's styled very similarly to the Amtrak Charger's nose end.

Jahvon09 said:
Also, another question has popped up. Will Business Cass users also get to use the Acela First Class Lounges at the stations that have them? It will be nice to know this when booking a trip on the Airo trains. :)
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One imagines not. These are equipment upgrades for the Northeast Regionals. It is interesting that the Business Class configuration appears to have gone to 2-1 (IIRC, only the overnight Regionals have 2-1 business, because they use the half-cafe club cars). That said, while this Business Class represents a better premium option for the Regionals, the Metropolitan Lounges/ClubAcelas have only ever been for First Class travel (with sleepers regarded as equivalent to first class). I think it unlikely that Amtrak would want to open the lounges to the Regional passengers at all.
 
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This has nothing to do with Amtrak infrastructure (at least, in the traditional sense of "infrastructure" that this forum is passionate about), but it's been bugging me for a while, so I feel compelled to note it. Some years ago, walking in downtown Westerly, I noticed the Amtrak bridge had the mileage to Penn Station merely scrawled in chalk on the side of the bridge. (You can see the white label-box thingy where it's scrawled, here)

Then, a few weeks ago, at the Smith St. bridge in Providence, I noticed the same thing--the mileage to Penn Station, again merely scrawled in chalk. (You can see the white label-box thingy where it's scrawled, here)

This is vital information for emergency response apparatus in case some horrible catastrophe occurs--right? So, why are these mileages merely scrawled in chalk, totally unprotected? Or, is the reasoning that, if they WERE encased in some protective structure, then vandals would notice them and attempt to deface them?

OR: maybe, in the era of hyper-sophisticated digital mapping, these chalk scrawls are now purely "ornamental," a relic from the analog age (i.e., pre-1990 or so), since all emergency responders have the mileages of the train bridges encoded in their portable telecomm devices? Curious...
 
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DBM said:
This has nothing to do with Amtrak infrastructure (at least, in the traditional sense of "infrastructure" that this forum is passionate about), but it's been bugging me for a while, so I feel compelled to note it. Some years ago, walking in downtown Westerly, I noticed the Amtrak bridge had the mileage to Penn Station merely scrawled in chalk on the side of the bridge. (You can see the white label-box thingy where it's scrawled, here)

Then, a few weeks ago, at the Smith St. bridge in Providence, I noticed the same thing--the mileage to Penn Station, again merely scrawled in chalk. (You can see the white label-box thingy where it's scrawled, here)

This is vital information for emergency response apparatus in case some horrible catastrophe occurs--right? So, why are these mileages merely scrawled in chalk, totally unprotected? Or, is the reasoning that, if they WERE encased in some protective structure, then vandals would notice them and attempt to deface them?

OR: maybe, in the era of hyper-sophisticated digital mapping, these chalk scrawls are now purely "ornamental," a relic from the analog age (i.e., pre-1990 or so), since all emergency responders have the mileages of the train bridges encoded in their portable telecomm devices? Curious...
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That's the official NEC milepost on Amtrak (retained from the NYNH&H days, so north-of-Penn goes by Penn). Therefore all ROW structures like bridges are number-catalogued by their milepost. Obscure detail, but it's of somewhat importance for Amtrak record-keeping.

As for why it's in chalk...probably some work crew long ago was doing something with the structure and needed to placemark it with the internal reference.
 
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F-Line to Dudley said:
That's the official NEC milepost on Amtrak (retained from the NYNH&H days, so north-of-Penn goes by Penn). Therefore all ROW structures like bridges are number-catalogued by their milepost. Obscure detail, but it's of somewhat importance for Amtrak record-keeping.

As for why it's in chalk...probably some work crew long ago was doing something with the structure and needed to placemark it with the internal reference.
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Yep, that must be it! Thanks as always. I assume, given that I've seen the mileage chalked x2 now on Amtrak bridges in RI, that many of the Amtrak bridges along the I-95 corridor from South Station to Penn Station would also have it... wish I had the time to take a brief trip to document it all. I love how esoteric the mileages are, like ancient graffiti or hieroglyphics--assuming, that is, that 99.9% of the general public is clueless as to what they signify.
 
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Just noticed the mention of mileposts used on Amtrak's NE Corridor. An interesting fact about those mileposts is that it is measured from New York's Grand Central Station. The distance to Penn Station is about five miles longer than those mile monuments.
 
Arlington

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BostonBoy said:
Just noticed the mention of mileposts used on Amtrak's NE Corridor. An interesting fact about those mileposts is that it is measured from New York's Grand Central Station. The distance to Penn Station is about five miles longer than those mile monuments.
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This would make sense because the New Haven RR would have laid down these miles.

It may be that the miles are actually from the NHRR's Harlem River terminal (built at a time when the NY Central had a monopoly on service on the Island of Manhatan).

Later, partnered with both the NY Central and the Pennsy, NHRR served both GCT (just like MNRR still does via New Rochelle and 125th st) and served NYP and points south via the Hell Gate (which could easily be the source of "five miles longer" to New York) as seen in this 1940 map:
 
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B

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Arlington said:
This would make sense because the New Haven RR would have laid down these miles.

It may be that the miles are actually from the NHRR's Harlem River terminal (built at a time when the NY Central had a monopoly on service on the Island of Manhatan).

Later, partnered with both the NY Central and the Pennsy, NHRR served both GCT (just like MNRR still does via New Rochelle and 125th st) and served NYP and points south via the Hell Gate (which could easily be the source of "five miles longer" to New York) as seen in this 1940 map:
Click to expand...
Arlington said:
This would make sense because the New Haven RR would have laid down these miles.

It may be that the miles are actually from the NHRR's Harlem River terminal (built at a time when the NY Central had a monopoly on service on the Island of Manhatan).

Later, partnered with both the NY Central and the Pennsy, NHRR served both GCT (just like MNRR still does via New Rochelle and 125th st) and served NYP and points south via the Hell Gate (which could easily be the source of "five miles longer" to New York) as seen in this 1940 map:
Click to expand...
Arlington said:
This would make sense because the New Haven RR would have laid down these miles.

It may be that the miles are actually from the NHRR's Harlem River terminal (built at a time when the NY Central had a monopoly on service on the Island of Manhatan).

Later, partnered with both the NY Central and the Pennsy, NHRR served both GCT (just like MNRR still does via New Rochelle and 125th st) and served NYP and points south via the Hell Gate (which could easily be the source of "five miles longer" to New York) as seen in this 1940 map:
Click to expand...
 
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