Acela150
Super Buff
603 Reported in Penn Coach yard hooked to 6 cars and 513.
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Nathanael
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FWIW I think most major stations, and even a lot of minor ones, have platforms long enough to handle 11 or 12 cars without difficulty. 18 cars is another matter, which is why I reacted to the original comment about 18-car trains. We may see more 12-car or even 14 car trains, but 18-car trains would be hampered by platform lengths.
(By "major stations", I mean stations which have enough on-offs coming from and going to enough different destinations that you will generally have to load or unload nearly every car, no matter how the conductor has arranged the passengers. Syracuse is major by this definition. I suppose you could manage 18-car trains pretty easily if 6 of the cars were sealed "end-to-end" cars, and didn't need to platform -- but apart from the Auto Train, most routes are filled with end-to-middle and middle-to-middle passengers.)
NE933
Conductor
I've read about the logistic problems of running longer consists, the biggest one is double stopping, which slows the schedule and blocks grade crossing roads for longer amount of time. But longer consist is going to be the only service expansion, if any, on the Long Distance plate. A train with more cars carries more passengers which enables it to cover its fixed expenses. I don't think we'll see a second Empire Builder, California Zephyr, or Coast Startlight right away. Here on the East Coast, the Palmetto will likely convert back into an overnight Silver Palm to make for a 3rd frequency, but that's because new Viewliners are around the corner (we hope).
I remember riding these 18 car behemoths back in the day, and not all stations were double stopped. It will have to be an accepted jagged pill, until ridership goes up enough to justify an additional frequency.
And about 603 being in Philly, they should move it to Strasburg for a photo shoot next to the E60 #603 at the railroad museum.
I remember riding these 18 car behemoths back in the day, and not all stations were double stopped. It will have to be an accepted jagged pill, until ridership goes up enough to justify an additional frequency.
And about 603 being in Philly, they should move it to Strasburg for a photo shoot next to the E60 #603 at the railroad museum.
Crescent ATN & TCL
OBS Chief
You could do longer trains in the 18 car range if WAS, NYP, BOS etc can handle 18, just have the cars that don't platform at the other stations be only for those stations as a destination. i.e. separate passengers by destination so their car will platform at their destination. If Amtrak can setup the train so that only certain doors open at certain stations automatically. If it could be set up where the conductor could open the first half of the train from the front end and the AC open the back half from the back end of the train. So along the route the conductor only operate the doors and at WAS, NYP and BOS both the conductor and AC open the whole train.
battalion51
Engineer
AFAIK, cutting out the automatic doors requires each car to be cut out individually by flipping a switch in the electrical locker. Not impossible to do even with today's equipment. I don't believe there is a way you can separate the doors from being trainlined by two different locations, could be wrong though.
You would have to "key open" the doors from the middle, ie you can key in one direction only if you wish, to open just front of keyed door or behind the keyed door.
You can isolate individual doors with switch in electrical locker, but it has been my casual experience that the switches don't work properly about 15-20% of the time.
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battalion51
Engineer
You're right. I always forget about that option, don't see that many Amfleet Is...
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Nathanael
Guest
Unfortunately most routes have lots of middle-to-end traffic, making it impossible to run more than one, maybe two, "express cars" successfully. Critical stations like Syracuse can't handle 18 cars and would require double stops (actually, I suspect 18 would block the switches at Syracuse and CSX would probably prohibit it).
At some point the double stops start really wreaking havoc on the timetable. In peak season, I've seen the Lake Shore Limited stop twice at Bryan, Ohio and twice at Erie, PA (*not* popular stations), presumably because there were passengers from both NY and Boston. It is not good for the timetable to stop twice at nearly every single station west of Albany and east of Chicago.
On the NEC 18-car *Acelas* may be viable by simply skipping the shorter-platform stations and letting people connect to a Regional. Outside the NEC, that's not an option.
As a result, outside the NEC, I expect most trains to max out at 11-14 cars before Amtrak starts seriously considering "second sections". For the Florida trains, there already are three trains. Within a few years we may reach the point where the Lake Shore Limited really needs to be two trains (perhaps simply one to Boston and one to NY, perhaps something else).
Now, there are probably some situations where you could run a few "express cars" successfully -- but only a few. If you review the Performance Improvement Plans for the long-distance trains, you'll see the breakdown of most popular city pairs. A number of the trains can support, maybe, one or two "sealed" sleeper cars which only open at the endpoints or a few critical middle points. Even there the critical stations may not have long enough platforms. For instance, the California Zephyr can probably support one "sealed" Chicago-Denver sleeper (no more!). If Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester had long enough platforms, the Lake Shore Limited might support several "express cars" -- but they don't!
For this reason I think the typical 10- to 12-car platform is going to provide a practical limit to train lengths -- trains may get a couple of cars longer than that by squeezing on a couple of "express" cars, but we're not going to see 18-car trains unless we see 16-car platforms at most stations. And we won't see that because Amtrak isn't asking for platforms that long to be built when stations are renovated.
Fan Railer
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Another case against lengthening the NEC trains on a regular basis (like outside of the holiday rush periods) is the lack of existing rolling stock to lengthen trains with. Also, it doesn't look like Amtrak is going to get funding to "grow" its fleet in the foreseeable future; only enough to replace it on a one to one basis, so we're not really going to see any train lengthening outside of the holiday rush anytime soon.
Acela150
Super Buff
Why are we even talking about an 18 car train.. The longest you see now a days is about 11 cars and that's during the Thanksgiving rush. No need to even think about an 18 car train.
jis
Permanent Way Inspector
Staff member
Administator
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Fearless prediction..... The only place where there will be lots of 18 car passenger trains in the US is in the AU pages full of fertile fantasies, at least for the foreseeable future. If you want to see 18 or more car passenger trains go to India or somewhere like that.
Meanwhile let's get bak to ACS-64s and their current dispositions.
Meanwhile let's get bak to ACS-64s and their current dispositions.
I don't know. The standard for the newer stations and future upgraded stations on the NEC that Amtrak stops at appear to be 12 car platforms. BWI, Newark Airport have 12 car long platforms. Trenton has 12 car long platforms. The 2010 plan for the Newark DE station calls for 800' long high level platforms, but where the platform could be lengthened to 1000'+, ie 12 cars. Even 30th St station has 14 car long platforms and I seriously doubt that there are any plans to lengthen those.
By all signs, it appears that Amtrak has no plans to ever run Regionals or future HSR trainsets longer than 12 cars on the NEC with 10 cars as a practical current constraint because of the stations with 9-10 car long platforms. The exceptions would be some LD trains which only stop at the "legacy" major city stations with very long platforms and special trains. They are not going to doublestop on the NEC except on rare occasions. Ok, maybe the combined LSL is rather long, but the LSL is not going to be pulled by an ACS-64 anytime soon so it is not relevant to this thread.
So, yes, let's get this conversation back to the ACS-64. Which will be used to pull 9-10 car long Regionals with 12 car long Regionals as a future option if Amtrak ever has enough coach cars to go around. So, on the ACS-64, if Siemens has ramped up to a twice a month schedule, any word on when will #606 be shipped east?
Is 606 even built yet?
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Nathanael
Guest
Thanks for the tidbit of information about Philadelphia station. That puts a pretty hard limit on train length, since no train is going to skip Philadelphia. Off the NEC, information from the fiasco with the Miami station and Amtrak's requests for platform length in Denver and St. Paul (~1200-1300 ft) indicate that Amtrak expects to see, at a maximum, trains which are 15 cars with locomotives (or 13 without), and that's including private car and seasonal traffic. I'm not sure how this turned into a topic on train and platform length, but I'd kind of like a topic on train and platform lengths... it's interesting... seems like nobody has made a database of platform lengths, and it would be terribly interesting.
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Nathanael
Guest
To keep going off topic, after the ACS-64s have replaced all the AEM-7s and HHP-8, the oldest locomotives in Amtrak's fleet apart from switchers will be the NY-Albany dual-modes. The fleet of 18 is barely enough to support the existing service, and so I expect they will be the next priority for replacement.
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Andrew
Guest
Is the ALP45DP Locomotive a sufficient replacement?
Looking back in this thread, #605 was in Emeryville, ready to be moved east on the CZ on October 3. It was probably moved from the Siemens plant, a day or two before that. Depending on where Siemens is in ramping up to the 2 a month projected production rate, I would expect that #606 is mostly built or nearly completed. If #606 ships this week, then we know that Siemens is getting close to delivering 2 a month and the testing has been going very smoothly.
Fan Railer
OBS Chief
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From a technical standpoint, if you replace the pantograph system with a third rail pickup system on the ALP-45DP, then yes, it would, in theory work. However, for a dual mode replacement of the P32AC-DM, I'm expecting something that comes out of either EMD or Siemens engineering. Amtrak isn't going to be playing around with Bombardier for a while.
battalion51
Engineer
Not so much. The P-32-8s are older having been introduced in 1991 IIRC. While there are some that act primarily as switchers in places like Sanford and Miami, there are others that are working regularly on the road out of places like Philadelphia and Chicago. The P-40s are also older having been introduced in 1993. Now, the P-40s did spend a few years in storage, but I'd be willing to guess that the P-40s still probably have more miles on them since they work on long haul trains, whereas the P-32 AC-DMs are pretty much captive to short haul service.
It wouldn't be as simple as just adding third rail shoes, you need different transformers and converters. You're going from thousands of AC kilovots with a pantograph to 750 volts DC with a third rail.
However, all of that is academic, since there is nothing in place that currently would stop an ALP45DP from operating on the Empire Corridor. The Empire connection tunnel into Penn is also wired with catenary. Besides, even in diesel mode with the current P32's, they don't switch from diesel to third rail until they're out in the light of day between 9th & 10th Avenues. And going to ALB, they turn on the diesel in that same area, most engineers don't seem to operate using third rail power in the EC Tunnel.
I never quite understood that. Why did Amtrak even electrify the tunnel with both catenary and 3rd rail if the engineers just move right along under diesel power anyway?
To give them the more time to make the cutover, plus I'm sure that they hoped it would keep the smoke down in the tunnel. But I think that the engineers don't quite like the performance of the P32 when operating off the third rail, so they try to stay on diesel for as long as possible.
Short video of #603 going through Downingtown PA on October 20. The video was taken from the platform where the train passes so close by the camera, you have to freeze frame the video to confirm that there was an ACS-64 in the consist. Anyway, confirms that ACS-64 test runs have been on the eastern Keystone, not just the NEC.
Acela150
Super Buff
EMD has been out of the passenger locomotive business for quite a while. They wanted to focus on the competition with GE in the Freight Locomotive industry.
Keep in mind that the P32AC-DM runs mostly between NYP and ALB. With one or two going to BFX and one going to RUT on a daily basis. No idea how many of the 18 are in use on a daily basis. They aren't stretched mileage wise such as the AEM-7's are. The only real thing Amtrak should be worried about right now as far as Road Power goes is the ACS. Since the past two major diesel locomotives have come out for Amtrak have been GE's. Surprisingly I don't see that changing any time soon. I don't think MPI can produce a Diesel capable of pulling a 10-12 car train for two days straight. Laying over for a few hours, then going back east. The only problem GE has is the engines turbo chargers are known for spitting fire and catching fire. I believe an NS Dash 9 had a Turbo Charger fire a couple days ago in Ohio. Engine failures happen quite a bit now as well. Which is something Amtrak should consider as well as GE.
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