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

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Yeah, the headlights, horn and window wiper are a dead giveaway.
On the current California bi-levels, the horn is mounted on the roof, dead center, unlike the low mounting shown here. I would question whether this low mounting would provide sufficient sound projection. The roof mounting does make for an overall height of right at 17 feet zero inches, since the roof height is 16'-2".
Actually that isn't quite true. There are 3 different California Cab Car designs out there. Some have the horns on the roofs others, have them embedded down below like the NS-render.
There's only two types, California cars and Surfliner cars, Cal cars have the horn on the roof, Surfliners have it at ear level as pictured.
Duly noted. Thank you. All the ones I have seen and taken note of have been on runs between Emeryville and Fresno and have had the center roof mounted horn.
Your welcome.

The 5 Surfliner Cab / Baggage cars in the NorCal pool have generally been kept on the Capitol Corridors when possible in recent years, due to their greater bicycle carrying capacity. This will change when the conversion of California Cab cars into Surfliner style Cab / Baggage cars is complete, as both types will then be inter-changable.
 
Bike capacity is a hot button issue on the Capitol Corridor. Just overheard a passenger debating with the conductor the other day about the bike capacity policies. The new "double stop" policy at Berkeley was meant to try to help the over crowding of bicycles as an interim measure so hopefully the new cars will have Bike Capacity included as well as the luggage racks so they can be interchangable between the SJ and CC.
 
I wonder if California will refit some of the older cars as bike cars, like Metrolink has (the lower level becomes all bicycle accomodation).
 
A search did not turn up a more recent thread specifically on the Nippon-Sharyo bi-level car order, so I guess I will resurrect this one with news I came across on the FRA eLibary webpage. There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new Shop 3 at the Rochelle plant on Wednesday, July 30 with the head of the FRA and the Governor of Illinois present. I have not yet found a newspaper article with much info or photos on the event beyond the press releases, so I will just post links to the press releases. The trade press should have reports on the event soon.

The major news beyond that the production plant is gearing up is that both the FRA and Governor's press release mention the placing an option order for 45 additional cars which make it sound as if the 45 cars option is close to a done deal. 34 cars are to go to the Midwest and 11 to CA. So the total order will be for 175 corridor bi-level cars which will provide a pretty big boost in seat capacity for the Midwest and CA corridors.

FRA Administrator Joe Szabo prepared remarks. (FRA eLIbary page)

Illinois press release: Governor Quinn and Company Officials Open Nippon Sharyo Expansion in Rochelle

Quote from the Illinois press release:

Caltrans and IDOT will soon finalize an additional option order with Nippon Sharyo that will enable Illinois to add another 34 cars to its fleet, for a total of 122 cars coming to the Midwest. Caltrans will buy an additional 11 cars, bringing their allocation to 53. This procurement will result in 175 new railcars being produced at Nippon Sharyo.

The 122 Midwestern railcars will allow all existing Midwestern routes to be equipped with new railcars, including service to St. Louis, Milwaukee, Carbondale, Quincy, Chicago-Pontiac, Chicago-Grand Rapids, Chicago-Port Huron and St. Louis-Kansas City. In addition, the new Moline and Rockford corridors will also be outfitted with new equipment.
 
That is major news. Let's think about this for a minute. The previous arrangement was:

- 42 California

- 88 Midwest

With the option, this becomes:

- 53 California

- 122 Midwest

Midwest numbers were, previously, kind of tight for equipping the IL, MO, and MI lines with three-car trains, with not much in the way of spares. Calfornia numbers were very tight and mostly replaced the existing leased and Comet cars.

But now! My goodness. Let me count the consists:

- 2 Missouri River Runner

- 2 Pere Marquette

- 2 Blue Water

- 3 Wolverine

- 2 Illini/Saluki

- 4 Lincoln Service

- 2 Quincy

- 2 Quad Cities

- 2 Rockford (/Dubuque)

- 2 Hiawatha (since the press release explicitly mentions Milwaukee service)

- 2 Hoosier State (since the press release says 'all' Midwestern routes; maybe Indiana will lease 'em)

====

25 consists

* 3 cars / consist

----

75 cars

+ 20% for "shop count"

----

90

122 means a lot of extra cars. Even if every consist is immediately beefed up to 4 cars (which seems highly unlikely in the near term), the total needed after shop count would still only be 120.

Illinois is going to have enough cars to lease to its neighbors for a few years.

I now begin to believe the claims that Michigan is planning extra frequencies soon on both the Pere Marquette and the Wolverines. I suspect the sticking point on that will be Porter to Chicago -- here's hoping the passenger route South of the Lake gets built ASAP. And if UP agrees we may get those additional St. Louis-Chicago frequencies fairly soon too. There will probably be enough cars to support a few additional services such as MSP-Chicago or Iowa City, should those be funded.

Meanwhile, in California the high number of cars also seems to allow for some expansion; something like 35-42 cars will be needed to replace the Amfleets, Comets, and leased Superliners, but the extra cars beyond that should allow for the formation of at least one additional consist, maybe two.

With so many cars, we should expect to see all the Superliners return to long-distance service. We should also expect to see all the Amfleets return to the East Coast. The entire Horizon fleet will be redundant in the Midwest; it really has to go to the East Coast, as I can't see where else it would go. I suppose Amtrak had better start retrofitting the Horizons for NEC service, or to beef up the single-level LD trains, or something. They need retrofits for either role.
 
Just a small note. I was on IDOT's HSR page today, and ran across this presentation given to the Arlington Heights Rotary Club-

http://www.idothsr.org/pdf/arlingtonheights_rotaryclub_presentation_071514_final.pdf

If you go to page 15 of the presentation it states that there will be six new sets of equipment for Chicago to St. Louis, not four.

So, that might change the calculus of your railcar assignments. By the way, that quote appears on at least three presentations IDOT has made in the last two weeks. The page also includes another rendering of the Siemens Charger Locomotive and what might (MIGHT) be a shot of a new bi-level being assembled. It could also be a Metra Electric Highliner.
 
Just a small note. I was on IDOT's HSR page today, and ran across this presentation given to the Arlington Heights Rotary Club-

http://www.idothsr.org/pdf/arlingtonheights_rotaryclub_presentation_071514_final.pdf

If you go to page 15 of the presentation it states that there will be six new sets of equipment for Chicago to St. Louis, not four.

So, that might change the calculus of your railcar assignments. By the way, that quote appears on at least three presentations IDOT has made in the last two weeks. The page also includes another rendering of the Siemens Charger Locomotive and what might (MIGHT) be a shot of a new bi-level being assembled. It could also be a Metra Electric Highliner.
That's not a Highliner, since access from car to car on the Highliner is on the lower level and there's no equipment area on the lower level, so it might be a Midwest/California bilevel.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Meanwhile, in California the high number of cars also seems to allow for some expansion; something like 35-42 cars will be needed to replace the Amfleets, Comets, and leased Superliners, but the extra cars beyond that should allow for the formation of at least one additional consist, maybe two.
Nope. Need to look at car types too. California is getting 5 cafe cars and three cabbages, only one of each is for new capacity rather than replacing Amtrak owned equipment (almost certainly for an already planned service expansion on the San Joaquins). Surfliner is getting 10 coaches for new capacity, they'll simply be adding a car to each of the 9 existing consists. And be slow as all get out accelerating with a single F59PHI hauling 7 Surfliners.
 
Just a small note. I was on IDOT's HSR page today, and ran across this presentation given to the Arlington Heights Rotary Club-

http://www.idothsr.org/pdf/arlingtonheights_rotaryclub_presentation_071514_final.pdf

If you go to page 15 of the presentation it states that there will be six new sets of equipment for Chicago to St. Louis, not four.

So, that might change the calculus of your railcar assignments. By the way, that quote appears on at least three presentations IDOT has made in the last two weeks. The page also includes another rendering of the Siemens Charger Locomotive and what might (MIGHT) be a shot of a new bi-level being assembled. It could also be a Metra Electric Highliner.
Good find on the hot off the press IDOT presentation.

The HSIPR grant award for the Chicago - St Louis corridor included rolling stock for 6 trainsets including diesel locomotives, so that is how the formal order allocation was structured. The reality is that all of the funding for the Midwest corridor bi-levels is federal money from multiple stimulus and FY2010 HSIPR grants, but the 88 + 34 cars will effectively be going to a joint state Midwest equipment pool. The CHI-STL corridor is stuck at 4 daily frequencies unless UP relents and allows another daily train or more funds are found for double tracking more of the corridor, so the Lincoln service will need only 4 consists plus the equivalent of a spare consist. If CHI-STL trip times are reduced to ~4.5 hours, 4 consists for 4 daily frequencies is not the most efficient use of equipment, but they may stay with that until more track improvements are done.

The photo on page 15 of the IDOT presentation shows a bi-level shell with a high door, so it could indeed be a prototype test frame or a first production article shell for the corridor bi-levels.
 
Illinois is going to have enough cars to lease to its neighbors for a few years.

I now begin to believe the claims that Michigan is planning extra frequencies soon on both the Pere Marquette and the Wolverines. I suspect the sticking point on that will be Porter to Chicago -- here's hoping the passenger route South of the Lake gets built ASAP. And if UP agrees we may get those additional St. Louis-Chicago frequencies fairly soon too. There will probably be enough cars to support a few additional services such as MSP-Chicago or Iowa City, should those be funded.

Meanwhile, in California the high number of cars also seems to allow for some expansion; something like 35-42 cars will be needed to replace the Amfleets, Comets, and leased Superliners, but the extra cars beyond that should allow for the formation of at least one additional consist, maybe two.
As I mentioned above, the corridor bi-levels brought for the Midwest are funded entirely with federal money. Illinois DOT is the lead agency representing the 3 Midwest states (IL, MI, MO), so I doubt that the 88 + 34 cars will be "owned" by IL. I expect they will be owned by a joint Midwest multi-state authority set up to own ad provide the bi-level and Next Gen diesel locomotive fleet. If service to Milwaukee is covered by the 34 additional cars, then the FRA may have taken pity on Wisconsin and allowed them to join in, so the Horizons can be entirely removed from Midwest corridor service to have more reliable equipment in winter weather. Of course, this does not include the Hoosier State, but it appears that the Hoosier State is going to be dropped or will use other equipment.
As for the South of the Lake route, that is likely to be a billion dollar plus project. Until the federal faucet is turned on again for intercity passenger rail projects, I expect it will languish. The TIGER grant program is not large enough to do much for a new South of the Lake route.

CA is providing $22.8 million in state funds towards the purchase cost of the 42 cars in the baseline order, so the state has an ownership stake in the new bi-levels intended for CA. Perhaps the 11 additional cars are intended to support the return of the Coast Daylight, but that may be optimistic.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
...

CA is providing $22.8 million in state funds towards the purchase cost of the 42 cars in the baseline order, so the state has an ownership stake in the new bi-levels intended for CA. Perhaps the 11 additional cars are intended to support the return of the Coast Daylight, but that may be optimistic.
As far as I know, all the involved states will have ownership of their cars regardless of whether the cars were procured with federal grants. These will not be Amtrak cars, and Amtrak will not have control over the assignment of cars among the various state services (a power Amtrak wanted to be granted). California's direct contribution must be for the procurement of cars over and above those paid by the feds.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
With a few corrections and additional info....

But now! My goodness. Let me count the consists:

- 2 Missouri River Runner

- 2 Pere Marquette

- 1 Blue Water (not 2 as previously stated)

- 3 Wolverine

- 2 Illini/Saluki

- 6 Lincoln Service (apparently 6 instead of 4 per IDOT presentation)

- 2 Quincy

- 2 Quad Cities

- 2 Rockford (/Dubuque)

- 2 Hiawatha (since the press release explicitly mentions Milwaukee service)

- 2 Hoosier State (since the press release says 'all' Midwestern routes; maybe Indiana will lease 'em)

====

26 consists

* 3 cars / consist

----

78 cars

+ 20% for "shop count"

----

94

122 means a lot of extra cars. Even if every consist is immediately beefed up to 4 cars (which seems highly unlikely in the near term), the total needed after shop count would still only be 120.
With 4 cars + shop/protect it will account for all 122 cars. Of course there will be some extras if as seems likely now, Indiana simply cans the Hoosier State.
Illinois is going to have enough cars to lease to its neighbors for a few years.
true
I now begin to believe the claims that Michigan is planning extra frequencies soon on both the Pere Marquette and the Wolverines. I suspect the sticking point on that will be Porter to Chicago -- here's hoping the passenger route South of the Lake gets built ASAP. And if UP agrees we may get those additional St. Louis-Chicago frequencies fairly soon too. There will probably be enough cars to support a few additional services such as MSP-Chicago or Iowa City, should those be funded.
As long as trains are not lengthened, yes.
Meanwhile, in California the high number of cars also seems to allow for some expansion; something like 35-42 cars will be needed to replace the Amfleets, Comets, and leased Superliners, but the extra cars beyond that should allow for the formation of at least one additional consist, maybe two.
Depending on how quickly ridership grows, California may choose to keep the Comet consists around to pinch hit. Afterall no one else is dying to take them.
With so many cars, we should expect to see all the Superliners return to long-distance service. We should also expect to see all the Amfleets return to the East Coast. The entire Horizon fleet will be redundant in the Midwest; it really has to go to the East Coast, as I can't see where else it would go. I suppose Amtrak had better start retrofitting the Horizons for NEC service, or to beef up the single-level LD trains, or something. They need retrofits for either role.
NEC could use all those Amfleets for sure. My guess is that at least a significant part of the Horizon fleet will get deployed in the LD BU, initially even with no modifications for use on LD trains for short turn segment passengers. That will release seats in Amfleet IIs for longer turn passengers and overall bring some relief to overcrowding. Beneficiaries will be trains like the Meteor and LSL, and perhaps even the Cardinal. Some of those may also get deployed as is on middle distance trains like the Pennsylvanian/Palmetto, Vermonter and such off corridor trains which do not necessarily require each car to open while on the NEC.
 
Personally, (wait for it) I prefer my Sharyos to be Kinki.
I waited for it.

Hee hee.

FWIW, and to those who may wonder why such a name... Kinki in Japanese means metal works.

In other comments....I have been very impressed with the way Illinois has taken the lead in Transportation. Their ability to source new locomotives and passenger cars seem to put Amtrak to shame.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
In other comments....I have been very impressed with the way Illinois has taken the lead in Transportation. Their ability to source new locomotives and passenger cars seem to put Amtrak to shame.
You mean they are able to shake the federal dollar tree better than anyone else when their guy is in the White House? They'd have to be truly incompetent if they were unable to do that, no? Call me cynical, but I don't see what is there to be impressed about. If it had not happened that would be a reason to be depressed about. ;)
 
Is the expectation that trainsets for all services will be the same size (all 4 cars), or would some of the higher ridership services have 4-6 cars while the lower ridership services might have 3-4 cars?

I can't recall from the various awards of funding whether specific services had specific numbers of cars allocated to them.
 
In other comments....I have been very impressed with the way Illinois has taken the lead in Transportation. Their ability to source new locomotives and passenger cars seem to put Amtrak to shame.
You mean they are able to shake the federal dollar tree better than anyone else when their guy is in the White House? They'd have to be truly incompetent if they were unable to do that, no? Call me cynical, but I don't see what is there to be impressed about. If it had not happened that would be a reason to be depressed about. ;)
Illinois has long been involved with intercity service, dating back to the early days of Amtrak when the Illinois Zephyr became one of the first, if not the first "403b" trains. This has happened under both Democratic and Republican presidents and Democratic and Republican governors. Illinois sponsors four daily roundtrips on the St. Louis corridor, two roundtrips on the Qunicy line, two roundtrips on the Carbondale route and, in cooperation with Wisconsin, seven daily roundtrips to Milwaukee. In addition, service to the Quad Cities and Rockford (and hopefully eventually Dubuque) are on track in the next few years. So having the President, secretary of transportation (until recently) and head of the FRA from Illinois don't hurt, but Illinois' rail leadership had been under way for a long time. Work on the Chicago-St. Louis 110 mph upgrade seems to have been going on forever, but that should be completed within the next few years. Again, this has been a bipartisan effort. Republican legislators love having trains serving their downstate districts. And lets not forget the lobbying efforts of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association. They have done a great job in keeping passenger rail in front of the legislators.
 
As far as I know, all the involved states will have ownership of their cars regardless of whether the cars were procured with federal grants. These will not be Amtrak cars, and Amtrak will not have control over the assignment of cars among the various state services (a power Amtrak wanted to be granted). California's direct contribution must be for the procurement of cars over and above those paid by the feds.
The California state funds have been in the mix for the purchase of the 42 cars for CA from the start of the bid process. It was part of the funding package. Regardless, yes, CA will end up owning the 42 + 11 bi-levels going to CA. Since CalTrans has money to spend, would not be surprised if in the next 2-3 years, CA orders more cars from the Nippon-Sharyo option for service expansions.
As for the Midwest states, the purchase of 34 additional cars, however the cars are allocated, should be sufficient to meet the near term growth needs of all 3 or 4 states. With 88 cars, MI and IL might have fought over adding cars to the Wolverine service versus the Lincoln service as both services grow in ridership. With the states owning the equipment and providing the subsidies, Amtrak won't be calling the shots.
 
I think Illinois, Michigan and California are shining examples (in addition to a whole host of other states like Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont, Maine etc.) of what can happen in a level playing field provided by PRIIA Section 209. OTOH, Wisconsin, and Indiana are prime examples of what can happen when freedom is given to those that for whatever reason don't want it. The whole idea is to try to get broader effective participation and collective contribution of resources, ideas and talents to enhance growth, where such can be achieved without waiting for a central monolithic organization to get around to it, if and when they please.

Of course this had started happening to some extent based on ad hoc arrangements before PRIIA. But PRIIA created an across the board legitimacy for such.

Now only if somehow we can get Amtrak to focus on PRIIA Section 208 and get cracking on the LD enhancement work with more energy. The LD BU needs to have a fire lit under them, and it is unfortunate that Congress did not see it fit to fund it adequately.

Actually as a result of PRIAA Section 212 Amtrak will not be calling the shots as unilaterally as it did on the NEC either. They will have to pay quite a lot of attention to the Commission, since the funding mix will change as a result of the Commissions work, and Amtrak will become more beholden to the states for the day to day operating and maintenance funding of the NEC. In short, become more sensitive to the desires of the customers than has been the case hitherto.
 
That is major news. Let's think about this for a minute. The previous arrangement was:

- 42 California

- 88 Midwest

With the option, this becomes:

- 53 California

- 122 Midwest

Midwest numbers were, previously, kind of tight for equipping the IL, MO, and MI lines with three-car trains, with not much in the way of spares. Calfornia numbers were very tight and mostly replaced the existing leased and Comet cars.

But now! My goodness. Let me count the consists:
The baseline order of 88 cars for the Midwest is broken down as: 46 coach cars, 21 cafe-business cars, 21 cab-baggage cars. If every train gets a cab-baggage and a cafe-business car that works out to 21 total consists with 2 coach cars each plus 4 spares or four 5 car trains. We do not know the breakdown of the 34 additional cars, but it is logical that it would be in roughly the same proportion, possibly tilted to more coach cars, as the Hiawatha service might not want cafe-business cars. And not all trains may need cab cars.
One exercise is to figure out roughly how much of an increase in seat capacity 122 bi-level cars will mean for the Midwest corridor services over the mix of Horizons, Amfleets, some Superliners it has now.

There are 94 Horizon cars total with 78 coach cars with 68 seats each and 10 club-cafe cars with 14 BC seats. 3 of the Horizon cafe cars are leased to CA for the Comet trainsets, so those don't count. Amfleet Is have 72 seats each and there are ?how many? running on the Lincoln service. Then there are Superliners used for some of the Michigan services on a seasonal basis?

If we use the seat capacity for the Surfliners as the likely numbers for the new bi-levels, the Surfliners generally have 90 seats for coach cars, 74 seats for BC cars, 82/78 seats for cab-coach-baggage cars. (according to On-track On-Line). Without the breakdown on the total 122 car order, it will be guess estimates at best on total number of seats. But a 4 bi-level car consist with 1 BC-cafe car, 2 coach cars, 1 cab-baggage car could have 74 BC seats plus 242 coach seats. So that replaces a 5 car Horizon consist?
 
If the 34 additional cars will (in part) replace the 6-car Amfleet/Horizon trainsets that the Hiawatha uses, that would suggest two 5-car sets for that service.

Separately, I had never really given any thought to the idea that BC seating may increase from 14 seats on Amfleet/Horizon cars to around 74 seats on the bilevel cars. It will be interesting to see how that (potential) substantial increase in available BC seats affects BC fares, revenues, and demand. In my experience, on the Lincoln and Wolverine services BC has been completely or nearly full every trip I've sat there.
 
Fortunately the Hiawatha service requires just two consists, so it is just a matter of allocating 2 more Coaches to it to get it upto 5 cars, from the base of 4 is that is the case. That should be doable within the scheme that norden put together.
 
The baseline order of 88 cars for the Midwest is broken down as: 46 coach cars, 21 cafe-business cars, 21 cab-baggage cars. If every train gets a cab-baggage and a cafe-business car that works out to 21 total consists with 2 coach cars each plus 4 spares or four 5 car trains.
That sounds correct, because that's the right number of consists for everything except the Hiawatha and Hoosier State. Helpful information: it means that they were basically planning 4-car consists for everything.
We do not know the breakdown of the 34 additional cars, but it is logical that it would be in roughly the same proportion, possibly tilted to more coach cars, as the Hiawatha service might not want cafe-business cars. And not all trains may need cab cars.
I will now guess that there are 2 consists for the Hiawathas (given that Milwaukee was explicitly mentioned in the IDOT press release), probably 5 cars each. That's 94 regular-service cars, which calls for about 20 spares (5 cabs, 5 cafe-business, 10 coach), for a total of 114.
The additional 8 should allow for roughly two more short (3-car) trainsets; this would be enough for the Hoosier State, or for a second Pere Marquette frequency or something else; or it could just be to lengthen trains. In any case, the single-level equipment is about to disappear from the Midwest (with the exception of the Lake Shore Limited and Cardinal).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top