Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

Siemens also released VIA Rail's first pilot unit into the wild within the last week or two. . .

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Arlington said:
VIA doesn't skimp on headlights.
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The third one in the triangular pattern right below the windows is an experimental narrow-focus HID beam for long-distance viewing. They trialed it on their mid-2000's F40PH rebuilds, liked it, and decided to apply fleet-wide. Their GE Genesis fleet has now got the same thing. Apparently nobody else does this anywhere except for VIA. I dunno...do their trackside deer not adequately scatter at the sight of normal-intensity train headlights like our deer???:unsure:

I thought they were supposed to be ordering Brightline-clone SCB-40 Chargers with the retractable nose cover over the coupler, but looks like it got switched (right down to the model number Wikipedia refs) to stock cover-less SC-44's.


The fact that their Corridor fleets are going to be identical Siemens power+coaches as Amtrak's Chicago Hub fleet and East Coast Amfleet replacements certainly ups the chances of the Chicago-Toronto International Ltd. being restored in our lifetimes, since that '04-suspended route used to mix and run-thru each RR's fleets with crew changes at the Port Huron-Sarnia border crossing. Longer-odds possibilities for the Wolverine's former continuation to Toronto via Windsor border crossing on the Windsor Corridor fork (Penn Central to '71, chopped from Amtrak on "A-Day"), as well as restoration of the '79-chopped NYC-DET via Windsor Niagara Rainbow.
 
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Considering one of their lines goes to "the polar bear capital of the world" maybe its not deer theyre trying to spot
 
jass said:
Considering one of their lines goes to "the polar bear capital of the world" maybe its not deer theyre trying to spot
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Winnipeg-Churchill only runs twice a week, usually with the oldest falling-apartest pieces of shit on VIA's roster leaking interior heat into the tundra. TOR-MTL Corridor is where they want to blind every creature a mile up track. Maybe if they ran fast enough to actually sneak up on someone the perk would help them, but the Corridor doesn't even sniff 80+ MPH.


VIA is stuck in this Amtrak-in-1985 time warp. Right down to the mainstay F40 fleet and having half their cars rostered out of non-accessible garbage Amtrak either retired or rejected by 1985 for being too unreliable. It's more likely they thought custom-ordering hi-beam headlights was their home-cooked self-perception of "innovation" rather than anything informed by known best-practice (since literally no one else practices that). At least as unicorn customizations go it's a cheap one.
 
www.railwayage.com

Caltrain: Electrification Delayed to ’24, Costs Rise 17% - Railway Age

Caltrain’s launch of electrified service will be delayed two years, until late 2024, due to “complications in the installation of signal systems, unforeseen conditions under Caltrain’s tracks, and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which severely disrupted supply chains necessary to the project.”
www.railwayage.com www.railwayage.com

I'm not the first to observe this by a longshot, but it's entirely possible that Caltrain might be little more than an elaborate troll to discourage U.S. Regional Rail-ification by choosing the wrongest, most hilariously mis-executed means imaginable of enacting electrified Regional Rail. First it was the vehicular Frankenmods and the world-unicorn signal system that had to be scrapped at the last possible second because it didn't bloody work. Now construction of the lineside electrification has risen yet another fifth. In large part because they forgot things like "Return current goes through the running rails so make sure your signal system track circuits use some differing electrical frequency, m'kay!" that everybody running on the NEC figured out 90 years ago. Durr-dur-durrrrrrrrrrr!
 

Amtrak and State of Maryland finalize $4B replacement for the 148-year-old Baltimore & Potomac tunnels, to be called the Frederick Douglass Tunnel.

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Triple the speed limit, and one wide banking curve instead of the B&P's razor-sharp S-curve that restricts it to an excruciating 30 MPH. 2 tracks, same as the tunnel it replaces...but several times more capacity because the trains can move faster and be signaled tighter on the way more favorable geometry. Decrepit West Baltimore MARC station will also be rebuilt, finally making all commuter platforms between D.C.-Baltimore on the Penn Line completely full-high. The deal also mandates that all Penn Line commuter trains using the new tunnel be fully electric, as they're VE'ing out some of the diesel ventilation to damp down the costs. It'll vent for a couple widely-spaced daily Norfolk Southern intermodal freights to Port of Baltimore who need the new tunnel's tall clearances, but the ventilation won't be powerful enough to clear the air for regularly-spaced commuter diesel service. MARC had let its Penn Line electric fleet atrophy significantly enough that a portion of the service is now being held down by less efficient diesel trains. Either they'll have to buy some new Sprinter locos, or they might be a candidate for slushing off NJ Transit's Bomardier MultiLevel EMU's (MARC has a 54-car incumbent fleet of MLV coaches, so could go self-propelled rather easily by slushing some NJT-option power packs and extra cab cars).

The old tunnel is expected to go disused. Original plans called for rehabbing it as a relief valve for pulsing up MARC frequencies to true Regional Rail levels and handling any non-tall clearance freights, but that's been tabled because the structure needs a shitload of very expensive rehab to stay usable in any form. It'll be idled in-situ for purposes of future revisiting the relief-valve idea at MDOT's leisure, but it'll come off Amtrak's books.
 
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And they’ve preserved the option of 3rd and 4th bore on the new alignment (the original design was 4 single track tunnels, but they’ve only funded 1&2 for now)
 
Arlington said:
And they’ve preserved the option of 3rd and 4th bore on the new alignment (the original design was 4 single track tunnels, but they’ve only funded 1&2 for now)
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Bores 3 & 4 reserved probably the likelier outcome for the relief valve than trying to rehab the B&P. The B&P takes on a lot of water leakage, so the cost in waterproofing and refinishing the surfaces for all the accrued water damage is manifold. It might legit be easier to just pour +2 new bores in the soft fill next to the first 2 so long as the original project relocated all utilities out of the way beforehand.
 
Apparently Bores 3 & 4 only add 20% cost to the project. I hope they're angling for a negotiation to get that included, because they probably will only get it at such a deal if the extra bores are poured simultaneously rather than coming back after the fact. I get that it's a lot of money in the absolute, but comparatively if you're already spending $4B on 2 bores then rounding up to $4.8B to net 4 bores really isn't that much extra.
 
$66B in the compromise infrastructure bill for Amtrak. '

I can imagine about $50B worth of projects in states with traditions of taking federal $ and supporting state service
($48B are listed below). Where will the other $16B go? (guesses in next post)

$8B North of NEC
$4B for Albany-Buffalo 79 to 110mph service (federal share of $8B?)
$3B for BOS-SPG (federal share of $6B?)
$1B Downeaster to Rockport, signals, double-track

$10B NEC
$6B Hudson River Tunnels (half of 11B plus slush)
$1B Portal Bridge (rounded up from .77B)
$2B Baltimore Frederick Douglass Tunnel (half of $4B)
$2B bridges & SOGR

$10B South of NEC
$3B Misc federal Share from Long Bridge to Norfolk
$4B Petersburg VA to Raleigh NC restored S-Line (110mph)
$3B to upgrade Atlanta - Charlotte

$10B Chicago Hub
$7B scattered across 6 states (CHI-MKE, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa)
$1B to unclog CHI-to-Mich
$1B to complete Wolverine @ 110
$1B to start towards Toronto (payoffs for tunnel use)

$10B Pacific Coast
$5B to for Canada to Oregon
$5B to California
 
Here's my answer to "where the other $16B might go"

$2B Ohio for 3C+D route (CIN, DAY, COL, CLE) (assumes RR want bigger payoffs)
$2B to Wisconsin & Minnesota for service to chicago
$2B to restore Amtrak to Phoenix (bridges need rebuilding;PHX is largest metro without Amtrak service)
$2B for something Louisiana & Mississippi
$2B for Oklahoma - Kansas?

Still $6B left in the pot.

And then the real holdouts look like
Not Georgia
Not South Carolina
Not Tenn (Koch has success killing transit)
Not Kentucky
Not Florida (favoring private Brightline)
Not Las Vegas (favoring private Brightline)
Not Texas (reputation for killing Texas HSR Houston - Dallas given AA & SW's opposition)
(maybe Brightline & Texas end up getting infrastructure loans instead--they show no sign of wanting to be part of Amtrak system)

Not NH (assumes $ somehow gets reprogrammed as MBTA? OR MBTA gets named PRIIA operator?)

So I hope they come back to:
$2B Maryland's NEC bridges
$1B NH actually takes "Amtrak" money but chooses MBTA as operator under PRIIA?
 
Arlington said:
$66B in the compromise infrastructure bill for Amtrak. '

I can imagine about $50B worth of projects in states with traditions of taking federal $ and supporting state service
($48B are listed below). Where will the other $16B go? (guesses in next post)
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I think that we won't know specifics until we see the new proposed text of the bill, which as yet doesn't appear to have made it to congress.gov, but these things tend to include specific dollar amounts for specific projects, not just "here's $66 billion, do with it what you will". Either way, I hope and expect that the bulk of the funding goes towards NEC improvements, Gateway, and SOGR (the latest Amtrak asset report says they have about $34B in national backlog)

I also suspect that capital corridor would be funded through the $49B in additional transit funding.
 
Amtrak is never going to be the Cap Corridor operator. New Hampshire has no state-level funding mechanism for a PRIIA corridor; they don't pay a cent for the Downeaster or Vermonter and thus have no involvement with other states (VTrans, MassDOT, NNEPRA/MEDOT). Per the PRIIA law they'd have to come up with their own governance mechanism and cost/revenue-sharing entity for managing the bi-state corridor...something the Legislature and Governor's Council resolutely refuse to do. Amtrak also has no operating agreements past the Wilmington split on the Lowell Line; it's a totally fresh negotiation with the MBTA, Pan Am/future-CSX, and NHDOT over that. The MBTA already have "lifetime and irrevocable" trackage rights on Pan Am to Concord, and NHDOT is already a revenue/cost-sharing party to the same Pilgrim Agreement that RIDOT abides by for Purple Line service (Pilgrim Agreement membership was a prerequisite for doing the Haverhill-Plaistow extension study, so is still on-the-books inclusive of Nashua-Concord). No new laws have to get passed in the wildly unreliable NH Legislature to take the Purple Line across the border; the money splits accrue according to the stock Pilgrim Agreement they already agreed to. And because the Pilgrim Agreement + pre-existing MBTA trackage rights cover any/all mercenary Purple Line service, MA has zero motivation to spin off a NNEPRA-like corridor manager to launder money around unwilling NH like Maine did.

It's set-it-and-forget-it to run as a Purple Line joint. All you need to do is the physical construction. It takes mobilizing a lot of state-level bureaucracy to re-create the same experience under the Amtrak/PRIIA badge, with an extremely unwilling/unreliable state for bureaucracy in the direct crosshairs. Why would anyone think for one second to go against the grain here?


The *only* reason this appears on an Amtrak-branded map is because of the fed infrastructure politics making it more convenient to brand it so. For now...unless the "transit"-bucket funding becomes an easier line item. And this is not the only such corridor on that national Amtrak priorities map that's likely to opt in the end for a commuter rail operator over Amtrak, so it isn't unique in that regard. The only time you will ever see Amtrak trawling the Cap Corridor is in a post-NSRL universe when stock Northeast Regionals get a portion of their service forked to Portland or Concord in templating of Virginia's parasitic pay-in to the national service. And that won't be for a very long time, obviously, because NSRL is such an enormous (and still-undeveloped) undertaking.
 
I'll wager that the AK RR gets some quantity of fun-bucks. Murkowski's got the political clout to demand it and is likely one of the required (R) votes to pass the bill.

Perhaps either finishing their Northern Rail Extension to Delta Jct or finishing their Port MacKenzie extension.
 
Update: sadly, the $66B is not Amtrak only (as the $80B was) but includes freight spending. So we don’t know what share is passenger.

It would be nice if the freight $ (such as congestion mitigation around Chicago or help to CSX ) was made contingent on supporting better Amtrak service
 
Arlington said:
Update: sadly, the $66B is not Amtrak only (as the $80B was) but includes freight spending. So we don’t know what share is passenger.

It would be nice if the freight $ (such as congestion mitigation around Chicago or help to CSX ) was made contingent on supporting better Amtrak service
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That is reasonably disappointing. I feel like $66B could be spent on the NEC alone if we were really serious about HSR.
 
I wonder what they do in Phoenix on the light rail to avoid heat issues
 
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