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Partly because building cars that match all together makes production easier, so requiring something else would be reflected in the final price. Partly because the Midwest has gotten a year or more of use out of their coach cars, while California waited quite a while with nearly complete...

There were also recent VA ROW purchases that might help get a second Charlotte - Greensboro - Lynchburg Regional going. I don't think VA would be ready for that before the fifth Piedmont is in action, but at what point does the NCRR from Greensboro to Charlotte run short of capacity in NS's eyes?

The business cars have been in revenue service but not sold as business class seats. Assuming all 17 business coaches are delivered and accepted I don't know why some wouldn't be in service yet. Cafe cars and cab cars IIRC were last in the build queue.

Agreed, but once the track work wraps up for good, ridership should jump from the better schedule.

Per OpenRailwayMap there's quite a bit of single track starting adjacent to Zachary Taylor Highway to just after the Rapidan River crossing, over nine miles. Then you have over four miles of double track, then at Orange you drop back to single for maybe seven miles (I'm guessing they use the...

Alstom is having trouble even on European orders right now, though.

I would expect Alstom to have a tougher time given their recent performance, compared to Stadler executing several EMU and DMU orders relatively smoothly.

Does this mean slow orders for that entire time, or might some portions of construction not require them? Awning installation or electrical and landscaping might not encroach on the active tracks, for example.

A FB group indicated there was some kind of delay between Pinehurst and Spring Lake but the Raleigh Cary Spring Lake section was close to on time.

I hadn't heard about additional Roanoke round trips, but I'm in favor. I thought there was a Charlotte Lynchburg DC trip waiting on Charlotte Gateway and the Long Bridge (and equipment availability).

Raleigh and Charlotte have new (Charlotte isn't open yet but the platforms exist) stations with platforms that aren't on the main freight tracks, that were built expecting to handle ten or more daily round trips, all using single level equipment. At that point you see a decent bit of operational...

And NC has been putting new high level platforms up, on top of everything else. Superliners aren't very welcome there (or at least in Raleigh and Charlotte).

Here's hoping the next iteration of the California Car also shakes out of this LD bid process.

That may be absorbed by the aging Amfleet fleet and at best is one more coach on a couple of trains.

Besides the Long Bridge bottleneck, there's likely to be an Amfleet bottleneck for a couple of years. This will make it harder to expand any particular trainset if it's consistently selling out. Also, congratulations to Virginia and the folks involved with this - it's an accomplishment.

How does this impact Airo consists if Charlotte Gateway isn't finished when the Carolinian Airo sets are ready? IIRC there are six car and eight car sets but no seven car sets. While there's nothing stopping Amtrak from adjusting a trainset length, that's a nonstandard trainset when the whole...

If there's other services using the track that would be used for testing, you have to have clear track and presumably a plan to remove a broken down/badly failed test train from the main line. If they essentially need to run an additional round trip for testing (e.g. pull into every station...

Airo APV is based on Vectron, and Vectron supports 1.5 KV DC. I don't mean to suggest the Airo APV sets could interchange with NEC equipment - they'd need to be quad mode capable [25 kV AC at 60 Hz (Boston–New Haven), 12.5 kV AC at 60 Hz (New Haven–New York), 12 kV AC at 25 Hz (New...

One has to wonder if Amtrak wants to see the first Battery APVs in service before deciding what Airo consist to go for in the Midwest - in magical Christmas land, having a couple thousand additional horsepower when pulling out of a station, plus having more dynamic brake available, plus cutting...

I agree that a temporary station in Sanford would be an excellent way to show community interest, but there's no good way to park a seven car car consist downtown without blocking at least one and probably two intersections. The test train picked up the AC&W in Aberdeen/on that end of the run...