ACS-64 Heads Up

[ACL]

I can't get over how shiny they are. :wub:

And they still have that "new engine smell".

 

[Fan Railer]

Image from Jim Kleeman. Shot at at the Halethorpe MARC station. ACS-64 600 on Train 152:

 

[SarahZ]

It already has a dent. This was on the trailing end.

IMG_4456.JPG

That's from Ryan's camera when he missed the shot at his station. :giggle:

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Nathanael, what is impressive?

Would annual budgeting drop below $2Bn?

The estimate of $15 million in energy savings per year got me

thinking and adding things up.

Amtrak has a rough 2014 to get through, but there's a lot of things

coming down the pike which will improve Amtrak's bottom line.

Paying off the Penn Station Mortgage in 2017 is a notable one,

as are the great mass of ARRA projects which have a 2017 deadline.

...of course the much-delayed Viewliner IIs ... the "corridor bilevels".

...vaguer things like the various new stations and development of

urban rail systems which connect to Amtrak or the general "trend"

towards train travel, but they all seem to be good. ... the financial

numbers which Congress looks at should look very impressive in 2018.

Nathanael, here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Does it

make sense to you? Others may comment, too, please.

The ACS-64s are huge for Amtrak. HUGE. Figure each one

of these engines is cash-flow positive on its first day!

Boardman said the new locomotives would pay for themselves

in about 6 years iirc. The loan to buy them has to be

repaid over what, 20 years?

Look at it this way: Total price, $466 million. Call it $480

for simple round numbers. Assume 20-year loan repayment,

makes it $24 million yearly payment. But "They'll pay for

themselves in about 6 years." So that's $80 million per year

total savings (the $15 million savings on the electric bill

is one part of that) to "pay for itself". That's $80 million

a year real savings, minus $24 million loan repayment,

gives free cash flow of $56 million a year! Am I right?

Wow. No wonder Joe Boardman was smiling all the way

from Philly to Boston. Soon Amtrak can start using those

funds to improve the infrastructure on the NEC (a little

something in the pot to pay for the Portal Bridge?), or

maybe even to buy more Viewliner IIs for the LD trains

that use the NEC. Both. For $50 million a year you could

buy 70 more cars from CAF over three or four years.

Couldn't spend $50 million a year on the Portal Bridge

without commitments for the rest of $1 billion anyway,

and that's a few years off.

And this deal is front-loaded. The biggest savings in

maintenance will be from retiring the worst of the old,

worn-out, trouble-prone locomotives. First the worst

one will go, then the next-worst, etc. The last handful

of older locomotives may not be all so bad and can be

sold, but even then removing them from Amtrak's fleet

will produce savings from fleet commonality, energy

efficiency, better operations from faster acceleration, etc.

It's all good.

-----------

PS. Don't know why I'm seeing a pale blue background on

this reply, (I did cut and paste most of it), but there you go.

 

[ronkstevens]

Train 152 this morning (2/8) north of Philadelphia:

 

[engr08]

These motors complement the amfleet cars so well, Amtrak purchased a nice one.

 

[Barciur]

Any idea when we might see one on the Keystone?

 

[SarahZ]

I love the red bits up on top. I have no idea what they are called. I'm talking about those oblong, T-shaped things near the ends of the top and the hook-y thing that connects to the caternary. They complement the red stripes.

 

[PerRock]

The pantograph?

peter

 

[Fan Railer]

From CSXTrainBoy815: 600 on 152 @ Metropark

 

[BK]

171 had to hold for a slightly delayed Acela at Philly and its departure was delayed by 4 mins or so. All that is built into the padding.

No wonder why we caught the Acela leave 30th Street before 171. I was quite surprised!

 

[SarahZ]

The pantograph?

peter

Yeah, that's the hooky-thing. Thanks!

 

[edjbox]

According to reports on Trainorders:

1. 600 will operate on 171 on Friday

2. On Saturday and Sunday 600 will be on 152 and 159

3. During the week it will be on 184 and 129 (WAS - NYP and back)

4. 601 will be accepted on Feb 20 and will be assigned to 184/93 or 129. What does 600 do during the week then, don't know)

5. Starting March 1, until order completion Siemens will release 3 new locomotives per month.

Anyone know when the 601-606 will come on-line and what trains they will pull?

Also anyone know the detailed timeline for the AEM-7s to retire? (Last train # and date any particular AEM-7 will make its final run)

 

[Josh]

When should it be back in the Boston area?

 

[MattW]

Image from Jim Kleeman. Shot at at the Halethorpe MARC station. ACS-64 600 on Train 152:

This is off-topic, but does anyone know what those 100 signs are on the wire? My first guess would be speed limit, but I thought there were no permanent speed signs on the NEC.

 

[Woody]

Image from Jim Kleeman. Shot at at the Halethorpe MARC station. ACS-64 600 on Train 152:

No big thing, but in a more perfect world, I'd have liked for

the sides of the engine to curve out like the sides of the coaches.

But I guess that would be like matching liveries on a train. :wacko:

 

[Ryan]

This is off-topic, but does anyone know what those 100 signs are on the wire? My first guess would be speed limit, but I thought there were no permanent speed signs on the NEC.

Speed limits.

 

[engr08]

Image from Jim Kleeman. Shot at at the Halethorpe MARC station. ACS-64 600 on Train 152:

This is off-topic, but does anyone know what those 100 signs are on the wire? My first guess would be speed limit, but I thought there were no permanent speed signs on the NEC.

That's a sspeed sign, the curve south of Halthrope station is 100mph on all 3 tracks.

 

[Ziv]

Is there a noticeable change in acceleration with the new locomotives? Going from 5100 to 6400 max kilowatts and from 4300 to 5000 kW continuous (ACS-64 vs. AEM-7's) it seems like you might be able to feel the difference leaving the station. Or do the engineers not use anywhere near full power so the acceleration stays about the same?

 

[jis]

This is off-topic, but does anyone know what those 100 signs are on the wire? My first guess would be speed limit, but I thought there were no permanent speed signs on the NEC.

That's a sspeed sign, the curve south of Halthrope station is 100mph on all 3 tracks.

But since now there are five classes of trains on the NEC with potentially different speed limits, I assume that this is the speed limit for what is essentially the Amtrak Regional type train?
Is it true that these were originally installed to help managers substituting for striking engineers to be able to operate at proper speed during a PRR strike? And they have stayed put since then?

Of course these days I suppose one gets to read the actual speed limit that applies that specific train on the Cab Signal/ACSES display unit?

 

[Nathanael]

Nathanael, what is impressive? Would annual budgeting drop below $2Bn?

Hard to tell because of capital expenditures.
There's a huge amount of "deferred maintenance" in the passenger railroad system -- stuff where it should have been repaired or replaced back in the 1960s but wasn't -- and as a result you can basically sink arbitrarily large amounts of money into that just in order to catch up. You can throw a billion at building ADA-compliant platforms, easily. And of course there's lots of upgrades which really need to be done. The backlog of capital costs is enormous. Luckily, they're often funded through separate budget line items.

This is why I have been looking mostly at Amtrak's operating budget, and to a lesser extent the debt service. That gives some vague sense of the *recurring* expenditures. As someone else here said, we will likely see Amtrak with an overall operating profit when the Acela IIs arrive.

But in the meantime, I predicted that the (operating / debt service) numbers would look a lot better in 2018. It's very hard to put exact numbers on that, because it's hard to estimate things like increased revenues from improved speeds, and without inside information it's hard to estimate things like reduced maintenance costs. But I'll make an attempt to do a back-of-envelope estimate.

Interest expense should shrink from $41 million to less than $10 million by 2018 due to paying off old Warrington-era debt (the Penn Station mortgage interest alone is most of the difference).

"Adjusted loss" (roughly, Federal operating support need -- not including debt service) was $355 million in 2013, but that includes $161 million allocated to the "corridor trains", and from 2014 onward, most of that is paid for by the states. Call that a boost of $150 million (since Amtrak is still going to pick up "some" of it) giving us a federal number of $205 million.

- Subtract $80 million in savings for energy efficiency and other improvements which Amtrak anticipates from the ACS-64s (thanks, Woody, for that quote) to get $125 million.

- I may conservatively estimate that revenues from the NEC will go up by $100 million, without significant increases in costs (this is a 2% growth rate estimate), getting us to $25 million.

- I don't know how to estimate the reduced equipment maintenance costs from retiring the Heritage cars, but let's call it $5 million (probably WAY too small an estimate), getting us down to $20 million.

- Sleeper capacity on the eastern routes should increase by a bit over 50%, without increasing costs much; let's say that revenues increase by 40%, to account for costs and potentially-lowered prices, and that's another $15 million, bringing the federal operating support requirement down to $5 million.

- It's hard to assess the value of new stations in a dozen different locations (Denver, Miami, St. Paul, Grand Rapids, Dearborn, Troy, Rochester, Schenectady, etc.), but with the better local-transit integration, I have to expect that this is worth maybe 1% in revenue on the affected LD routes -- call it another $1.5 million

- Removal of the worst Chicago bottleneck (Englewood) has to be worth 1% in revenue on the affected LD routes (should be more, but don't underestimate the ability of Class Is to delay trains) -- call that another $500K

- Distribution of fixed overhead over more routes (as Illinois and Virginia, and maybe Vermont, start more routes) should trim the federal number down a bit more -- it's so hard to tell how much, but my very rough guesses would make it at least $2 million.

This gives me a federal operating support level of $1 million in 2018, and I think I've estimated conservatively.

Amtrak could be making an "operating profit" in 2018 based purely on what we already know about, before the Acela IIs arrive. Amtrak would still need large amounts of capital funding, of course, and some debt service funding, and a large recurring allocation of sort-of-capital funding to keep up with depreciation (which is very roughly estimated as $600-700 million / year in the balance sheets).

This is without including any meaningful estimate for network effects (apart from the cities with new stations) -- the increased revenue on long-distance trains from having more connecting service. (This is because the LD trains may be coach-space limited or have traffic suppressed by poor OTP.) There's going to be a lot more connecting service.

This is also without including any estimate for "profit sharing" from profitable state-run services (I have no idea what the agreements are there) It's without any estimate for the savings from completion of e-ticketing (elimination of the back office which handles tickets).

It's also without any estimate for things which may not happen like the various proposals in the PIPs (which I would really like to see implemented), or carriage of pets as proposed by Congress (which will generate extra fees and extra riders), and with no estimates for change in gas prices, further collapse of the airline industry, increase in train speeds, etc.

On the other hand, it also assumes roughly stable wages & benefits (none of the "Bush gives the unions more than they asked for" nonsense), and stable On Time Performance (which we are NOT seeing right now). The ARRA projects are mostly supposed to improve OTP, and should do so, but given the general degeneration this year to date, there seem to be deeper problems at work here.

Nathanael, here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Does it

make sense to you?

Yes, it does. Two caveats: I don't know what Boardman is using to get his "six years" number. (It could be overly optimistic predictions of increased revenue or something else stupid.) Second, the loan repayment will be more than $24 million, because the loan *does* charge interest. (I don't know how much. It's low. Maybe 2%, to guess wildly?) That should still be multiple tens of millions in free cash flow.

 

[Nathanael]

No big thing, but in a more perfect world, I'd have liked for

the sides of the engine to curve out like the sides of the coaches.

But I guess that would be like matching liveries on a train. :wacko:

In the long run the stupid airline-imitation Metroliner/Amfleet profile is going to go away. So it might have made more sense to match the "wedge-shaped" Viewliner profile. Probably cheaper to just make the sides flat, though.

 

[Ziv]

Thanks to both Nathanael and Woody for responding.

I am still a bit confused by " This gives me a federal operating support level of $1 million in 2018, and I think I've estimated conservatively. "

A million? Or a billion? Because being negative by a million after years of $2.6Bn in payments is pretty much breaking even in my book. A billion is still a lot of money. Albeit in a good cause. A billion a year to support Amtrak would be and is worthwhile, I just want to be able to link to info that supports my statement that it is worthwhile when I post about Amtrak.

Thanks!

 

[engr08]

When should it be back in the Boston area?

From what I was hearing it wont be in the Boston area until they get more siemens reps. and im not sure how long that would be. Im guess as soon as more motors come online they will make there way up to Boston.

 

[MattW]

Has anyone heard when these will be used for LD service on the corridor?