More trains, heavier trains, longer trains, faster trains all increase the wear of the tracks. The main causes of track defects are wear, corrosion, manufacturing and material defects (metal fatigue fractures in the rails, ties, etc. that grow slowly worse until something breaks), derailments, erosion undermining the tracks and time. Longer trains will aggravate all of these issue, but there is nothing unique about Airo sets.
I think Mr. Gardner has said eight cars will be the standard Airo Northeast Regional consist. I know that the Cascades are supposed to have six.
The question becomes will the Airo train sets at 8 cars have the same capacity as a present regional with 8 cars?
I believe they'll actually have a higher capacity due to more space in the coaches being available for passengers. And that's assuming the cafe cars don't have extra revenue seating.
I'm curious to know if the Northeast Regionals fill 8 o9 9 cars south of DC and north of, say, New Haven. Just wondering how many empty seats are being dragged around in this now mostly fixed-consist era.
Airo is an Amtrak branding of the Siemens Venture sets; however, these cars are also modified to Amtrak's requested standards rather than being in an "off-the-shelf" configuration like the Midwest and San Joaquins Venture cars. Aside from that, the Airo sets consist of Venture cars and Charger locomotives.
As @Goldspike_Railfanning said. Ventures are the coach’s. Airo is the whole train set.
My experiences south of DC to Richmond Staples Mill is the train is practically empty, perhaps 100-150 onboard spread out among the 8-9 cars. Going North, the Conductor usually blocks off the majority of the cars to save for DC boarding. A bit more crowded going North, especially with the 50/50 forward/rearward facing seats now in fashion with most opting for the forward facing seats.
As far as I know, the only difference on the Amtrak Cascades Airo coaches is that they'll come in Cascades interior and exterior colors, much the same as the colors the Oregon Talgos have. The Horizon coaches we currently have replacing the old Talgo Series 6s are not being redone in Cascades colors, green, latte (that's a brownish color) and cream. They're just standard Amtrak Phase Whatever, inside and out.
I understand Washington is not going with fixed consists, mechanically anyway. It will probably operate its Airos largely as fixed, as is being done now with our six Horizon sets. Sometimes they do let a set go one coach short, but they really can only get away with that on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Thursdays through Sundays not so much.
