Siemens Caltrans/IDOT Venture design, engineering, testing and delivery (2012-1Q 2024)

[PVD]

Actually they have produced US market compliant product, just not this particular style of car. That's the saddest part of the story.

Everything comes with a price or penalty....you can usually make something stronger, that comes with a weight or price penalty, and stronger and lighter (like titanium) usually comes with a big price penalty(along with increased complexity of fabrication).

Companies are not always smart, I worked for a company that was so intent on winning a contract that they agreed to penalty clauses for response times to emergencies, and ignored the fact that the site was on an island where you had to wait for a ferry. Luckily the equipment was very solid.

 

[west point]

The Capitol corridor business plan seems to give a high probability of no cars before 2020 and highly likely NS insolvency.

 

[A Voice]

The Capitol corridor business plan seems to give a high probability of no cars before 2020 and highly likely NS insolvency.

Unbelievable, but hardly unexpected at this point.

 

[Ziv]

Too bad Amtrak didn't bin the stipulated 20k pound weight reduction and call it a day after the buff test failure. Or reduce the weight reduction to 10k pounds and see if NS could have strengthened the cars sufficiently.

 

[keelhauled]

Too bad Amtrak didn't bin the stipulated 20k pound weight reduction and call it a day after the buff test failure. Or reduce the weight reduction to 10k pounds and see if NS could have strengthened the cars sufficiently.

Not Amtrak's call to make.

 

[Ziv]

Thanks for the reminder. Is it Caltran and IDOT that are in the drivers seat on this deal?

Could they have made that call to eliminate or reduce the weight reduction, or is the contract kind of a mutual suicide pact if the cars can't be delivered at the price contracted for? Reduced weight would have been useful, but wasting this many years and having nothing to show for it is a huge disappointment.

Too bad Amtrak didn't bin the stipulated 20k pound weight reduction and call it a day after the buff test failure. Or reduce the weight reduction to 10k pounds and see if NS could have strengthened the cars sufficiently.

Not Amtrak's call to make.

 

[jis]

I believe the funding legislation binds the contract(s) funded by it, to the NGC specification.

 

[CraigDK]

I think one thing worth noting is the margin by which the crush test was failed. It was missed only by about a 1/4 of a percent (if my math and memory are correct).

Does that show that a weight reduction is possible? Yes. Are the weights called for in the contract significant enough to be worth the effort? Someone else might be able to answer that. Can it be made within the specs? Possibly. The previous test hopefully provided enough data to answer the prior question.

 

[jis]

Engineering is the art of balancing contradictory requirements to produce something constructable for a price that is affordable. Of course way more weight reduction than 20klb is possible too, say if Titanium were used as the metal for the frame construction. but why add all that cost?

My main beef is that the writers of the spec really did not apparently have a clue about what cost tradeoffs they were making in just putting down a weight number just because it felt right to them.

Then add to that the fact that a company with zero experience in building sill-less cars came in with the lowest bid, possibly because of ignorance, and underbid outfits that actually had experience building such cars, and that bid was accepted because it was the lowest and vaguely credible. Wonders of bureaucracy. And well..... here we are...

 

[Ziv]

I always thought this was a John Glenn quote, but apparently Alan Shepard said it first.

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

Alan Shepard
I hope manufacturing a rail car would be a trifle less involved that a spacecraft, though.

Engineering is the art of balancing contradictory requirements to produce something constructable for a price that is affordable. Of course way more weight reduction than 20klb is possible too, say if Titanium were used as the metal for the frame construction. but why add all that cost?

My main beef is that the writers of the spec really did not apparently have a clue about what cost tradeoffs they were making in just putting down a weight number just because it felt right to them.

The add to that the fact that a company with zero experience in building sill-less cars came in with the lowest bid, possibly because of ignorance, and underbid outfits that actually had experience building such cars, and that bid was accepted because it was the lowest and vaguely credible. Wonders of bureaucracy. And well..... here we are...

 

[Thirdrail7]

It looks like 130 is turning out to be an unlucky number. Maybe they should merge with CAF.

 

[jis]

It looks like 130 is turning out to be an unlucky number. Maybe they should merge with CAF.

LOL! 13 x 10!

 

[WoodyinNYC]

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

Alan Shepard

My main beef is that the writers of the spec really did not apparently have a clue about what cost tradeoffs they were making ,,,

Then add the fact that a company with zero experience in building sill-less cars came in with the lowest bid ... Wonders of bureaucracy.

Apparently Amtrak had the big say on the committees that drew up the Next Gen specs, so it certainly shares some blame.

But the lowest bidder requirement comes from Congress, not from any bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, if I were king, like -- OK, keep politics out of it -- I'd have declared that by rounding off the 1/4 of 1%, the 798,000 lb level basically met the crash test requirement.

I mean, 800,000 has been the rule since at least 1945, they say. Has anything changed since then? Railroads are spending a Billion dollars or more on Positive Train Control to avoid crashes. And since 1945, probably a half zillion or so grade crossings have already been eliminated, or upgraded with four-quadrant barriers, flashing lights, and warning sounds, with more fixed every year. My fearless forecast is that the number and rate of crashes will continue to decline in future years. (And nobody wants to even experiment with "not invented here" life-saving and injury-minimizing measures like seat belts and air bags.) We simply don't need 1945's exactly and precisely 800,000 lb level of safety, and 798,000 lbs should do easily, or even 750,000 lbs.

Actually, seems as a nation we embraced the simplistic hard line -- zero tolerance, mandatory minimums, etc -- as if that would help anything. It didn't and it doesn't. So let the school principal have discretion about the pocket knife found in the glove compartment of a pick-up in the school parking lot, give back the sentencing power to judges when they know the details of individual cases and Congress can't, and allow IDOT, or even Amtrak, to make the calls on the two-penny stuff like whether $8.00 is the absolute mandatory minimum or whether $7.98 is close enuff.

 

[jis]

I suppose if it did not fail popping parts flying all over the place and collapse into a heap, there may have been a case for some consideration. However, a catastrophic failure is what happened, and I would be very uncomfortable giving a pass on that.

Proposing that such failures be given a pass is either disingenuous or an act of ignorance IMHO.

 

[StriderGDM]

And for all the grade crossings eliminated and the like, I give you this: http://i.imgur.com/vZ8qJ1C.gif Still happening here folks.

 

[RPC]

OTOH, in 1945 passenger cars were not sharing the rails with 286,000 lb. freight cars and (all too often) 53 ft. tractor-trailers...

 

[WoodyinNYC]

And for all the grade crossings eliminated and the like, I give you this: http://i.imgur.com/vZ8qJ1C.gif Still happening here folks.

You did notice that the crossing apparatus failed: The barriers were up and no lights were on. AFTER the crash the barriers came down.

 

[Gulfwind2]

While I agree that the existing regulations on passenger car manufacturing in the US today are over-reaching and in some ways are a hindrance to new passenger cars being put into service, we are absolutely going to have to get cozy with them because President Protectionist is not within a million years going to direct the FRA or Congress to re-examine Buy America. The rules regarding 800klb are what I would expect to be an easier thing to reconsider in the real world. The fact is that it does't matter how heavy modern day freight trains are. You are still far less likely to be on a passenger train which will ever collide with a freight train today as oppose to 1945. Car weight has got nothing to do with that. Car weight does however impact the rate at which track conditions deteriorate over time and the frequency of maintenance which a mainline will demand. This is the reason for why a shared-use corridor in the US cannot realistically go seek out the same passenger equipment which a country like Switzerland uses for a similarly-trafficked line. Swiss trains tippy-toe like ballerinas over a fine wood floor whereas US unit freight trains which use cars in deplorable condition are more like a gang of sumo wrestlers attempting their art on a similar surface. Again I do not feel this justifies the 1945 rule remaining in effect- but until we change right-of-way usage en masse in this country, we are not going to see the US passenger car building revolution that we have all been waiting for.

 

[PVD]

Buy American and the FRA standard are 2 separate issues. BuyAmerican waivers can be issued for prototypes to be built overseas with the bulk of production done here, the prototypes need to show regulatory compliance before full production is normally ok'd.

 

[jis]

While I agree that the existing regulations on passenger car manufacturing in the US today are over-reaching and in some ways are a hindrance to new passenger cars being put into service, we are absolutely going to have to get cozy with them because President Protectionist is not within a million years going to direct the FRA or Congress to re-examine Buy America. The rules regarding 800klb are what I would expect to be an easier thing to reconsider in the real world. The fact is that it does't matter how heavy modern day freight trains are. You are still far less likely to be on a passenger train which will ever collide with a freight train today as oppose to 1945. Car weight has got nothing to do with that. Car weight does however impact the rate at which track conditions deteriorate over time and the frequency of maintenance which a mainline will demand. This is the reason for why a shared-use corridor in the US cannot realistically go seek out the same passenger equipment which a country like Switzerland uses for a similarly-trafficked line. Swiss trains tippy-toe like ballerinas over a fine wood floor whereas US unit freight trains which use cars in deplorable condition are more like a gang of sumo wrestlers attempting their art on a similar surface. Again I do not feel this justifies the 1945 rule remaining in effect- but until we change right-of-way usage en masse in this country, we are not going to see the US passenger car building revolution that we have all been waiting for.

We can take advantage of car weight only on exclusive passenger usage tracks. All the light passenger cars are going to do nothing for the quality of track as long as it is regularly getting pounded by 286klb freight cars, which is the case for most of the nation's railroad tracks, including significant parts of the Amtrak owned NEC.

Having said that, what matters really is axle load. Where the weight in passengers trains kill is in the locomotives, specially diesel locomotives. If we are able to electrify our tracks and keep 286k and 312k freight cars off of the passenger tracks, that will go way further in improving track condition than worrying about 20k weight reduction on a 175k (Superliner) passenger car, that is pulled by a 270k locomotive on tracks where the primary frequent traffic is that of 286k+ drags of freight cars.

The FRA rules have recently been changed to allow significant weight reduction by using CEM and preserving the itnegrity of only the passenger carrying compartment rather than the entire car. It is quite within the realm of possibilities now to be compliant with FRA and yet order more or less off the shelf equipment with very minor changes. Siemens delivered their Viaggio derived cars to Brightline with relatively small and mostly cosmetic changes. And yet they failed to meet the Next Gen weight requirements. So now we are in a situation that we cannot order the Next Gen compliant cars because they are too light and the European manufacturers are baulking at the spec, case in point Siemens.

 

[Steve4031]

This may have been answered earlier, so sorry in advance. What is the difference between a centered sill car and one with no sill? I am not sure I'm even using the correct terminology so please forgive me in advance.

 

[jis]

Without getting too technical, typically a car that has a lower level that hangs between the two trucks, does not have a center sill. Cars that have a level full length floor above the trucks have a center sill under that floor. Think of the sill as a beam under the floor.

 

[MattW]

So if the 800k rule has been around since 1945, the question is, has it ever been seriously reexamined? Just because we've always done something some way, doesn't automatically make it the best way. Technology changes, rapidly. When my mom bought her Ford Crown Victoria in 2002, it had all good ratings by the IIHS. By now, the ratings have dropped a bit compared to the more recent models.

 

[Steve4031]

Ok so California cars, superliner cars and the commuter cars in Toronto are examples of this type of construction. The Metra bilevels on routes out of oglive and union station are not examples.

Thank you Jishnu

 

[west point]

With what rules are being changed in DC who knows what "might" happen to the 800k rule ??