Viewliner II - Part 1 - Initial Production and Delivery

[jis]

I have heard the "late August or early September" estimation from one of the proverbial horse's mouth, independent of NARP. But then again horses have been wrong before

 

[StriderGDM]

Unless the cars move this week to Hialeah, I simply can't believe any will be in service by late August (ok, perhaps August 31st...)

Even September I think is a stretch.

My guess. September 15th at the earliest and more likely October 1st.

Then come December we'll find some cold weather issues and they'll be pulled for a week or two on the LSL.

 

[me_little_me]

I have heard the "late August or early September" estimation from one of the proverbial horse's mouth, independent of NARP. But then again horses have been wrong before

Q: How many months until the cars are ready?

A: Clop, Clop, Clop

 

[jis]

LOL!

 

[ScouseAndy]

the LSL needs 3 dining cars in order to be able provide full service on all dates IIRC(?) So even if the first car is delivered mid Aug and then lets assume (makes an *** out of u and me) they can deliver a car every week, it is going to be virtually late Sept/Early Oct before full dining car service can be restored.

If I am even close to this assumption then the Stavarvation couldn't see full service resumed until Mid to late Nov

All this fails to take into account any further terminal failures in the remaining heritage fleet. How many more such failures would it take to see the full temporary termination of east coast dining car service?

 

[CSXfoamer1997]

How long will it even take before Amtrak modifies its current Viewliner I sleepers for 125 MPH? They need to do it soon, or they'll likely never get the overnight trains up to 125!

Like most people say, "It's now or never."

 

[Ryan]

No, it's "now or whenever they get around to it".

Don't expect to make a huge difference when they do. 15 MPH isn't a whole lot.

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

How long will it even take before Amtrak modifies its current Viewliner I sleepers for 125 MPH? They need to do it soon, or they'll likely never get the overnight trains up to 125!

Like most people say, "It's now or never."

No, it's "now or whenever they get around to it".

Don't expect to make a huge difference when they do. 15 MPH isn't a whole lot.

I'm pretty sure the max speed of the train isn't the issue, the max speed limits of the tracks is. Other than Amtrak owned routes, most of the others you can't go 110 mph anyway (not even close).

 

[brianpmcdonnell17]

How long will it even take before Amtrak modifies its current Viewliner I sleepers for 125 MPH? They need to do it soon, or they'll likely never get the overnight trains up to 125!

Like most people say, "It's now or never."

No, it's "now or whenever they get around to it".

Don't expect to make a huge difference when they do. 15 MPH isn't a whole lot.

I'm pretty sure the max speed of the train isn't the issue, the max speed limits of the tracks is. Other than Amtrak owned routes, most of the others you can't go 110 mph anyway (not even close).

The NEC allows 125 MPH on some sections between WAS and NYP.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

How long will it even take before Amtrak modifies its current Viewliner I sleepers for 125 MPH? They need to do it soon, or they'll likely never get the overnight trains up to 125!

Like most people say, "It's now or never."

No, it's "now or whenever they get around to it".

Don't expect to make a huge difference when they do. 15 MPH isn't a whole lot.

I'm pretty sure the max speed of the train isn't the issue, the max speed limits of the tracks is. Other than Amtrak owned routes, most of the others you can't go 110 mph anyway (not even close).

The NEC allows 125 MPH on some sections between WAS and NYP.

He said "other than Amtrak owned routes".

 

[PRR 60]

Yesterday (July 23) was the sixth anniversary of the Viewliner II order with CAF. Six years. The entire order was supposed to take five years to completion. We're no where near completion.

This has been quite the odyssey. I bet the people at Amtrak who deal with CAF have some really interesting stories to tell about this project.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

I am also sure CAF has some really interesting story to tell about Amtrak, and this project.

 

[StriderGDM]

No, it's "now or whenever they get around to it".

Don't expect to make a huge difference when they do. 15 MPH isn't a whole lot.

Ayup, and most likely if/when they get them to 125MPH on the NEC, it'll be really more to help with timekeeping. It's not going to make a huge difference for an LD train if you save a few minutes on the schedule, but it will help if you can pad the schedule so that it (and others) don't get completely out of their scheduled slot.

 

[neroden]

Yesterday (July 23) was the sixth anniversary of the Viewliner II order with CAF. Six years. The entire order was supposed to take five years to completion. We're no where near completion.

This has been quite the odyssey. I bet the people at Amtrak who deal with CAF have some really interesting stories to tell about this project.

....I already heard one, a year or two ago, from someone at Amtrak who dealt with CAF. He said they were having trouble hiring people in Elmira who could "read a blueprint or screw in a bolt", if I remember correctly. I can believe it, unfortunately. He also said that New York State government routinely offered big deals to have companies put their factories in upstate NY, while states which *had* appropriately skilled workforces didn't, which is why this sort of thing kept happening...

Unfortunately I think neither CAF nor Amtrak is really to blame here. The big problem appears to be that locating a factory in Elmira made it hard to hire a workforce who were trainable, let alone trained -- though this was not anticipated by the Spanish bosses at CAF or the bosses at Amtrak, and probably should have been. Paying much higher rates might have gotten people to relocate, but that has its own problems. Arguably the factory should have been put in a town which had more of an industrial base, and therefore semi-trained workers, left -- if you really wanted to stay in NY, Buffalo might have been good enough, but Elmira wasn't.

I hate to say this because I'm only an hour up the road from Elmira and it's good to have local jobs, but really, putting the factory there was a big mistake.

 

[neroden]

Would rather see the Heritage cars parted out.

That's probably their highest and best use at this point! It's also probably the way Amtrak will get the most money for them. So yeah.

 

[PVD]

Rail cars had been worked on/built there previously, you weren't building a plant from scratch. They may have also seriously underestimated the number of people with machining and welding skills that left for the oil boom states. If they started up today, they'd have quite a few of them back..

 

[neroden]

I think the heritage diners were well past their service life at least 25 years ago. Most likely after that its been patches upon patches.

Maybe a tourist line that does not exceed 20mph might find some use but even then the bailing wire might break, the bubble gum stretch, or the duct tape tear. As a piece of original owner rolling stock they would have little or no historical value as too many modifications have happened. The only historical value is to show what junk Amtrak had to run in 2016.

The Temoinsa rebuild interiors have historical value as a representative of a decade of Amtrak service and a particular decor concept, and I hope at least one is kept as an example.

A couple of the non-Temoinsas seem to have had no major rebuilds (y'know, apart from the electrical conversion to HEP) and seem to be mostly original spec -- the #8502, #8528, #8524 and #8521 don't have a long list of rebuilds.

Cars like the #8530, #8531, or #8532, which originated as coaches and have been totally converted repeatedly, probably have very little historical value unless one can be used as an example of how cars were converted! (Perhaps some sort of partial disassembly and reconstruction in three different historical stages within the same frame as you walk from end to end...)

 

[neroden]

Rail cars had been worked on/built there previously, you weren't building a plant from scratch. They may have also seriously underestimated the number of people with machining and welding skills that left for the oil boom states. If they started up today, they'd have quite a few of them back..

Yes, I'm sure they seriously underestimated the number of people who had left for the oil boom. After all, the factory had been closed for years.

Hopefully they do have some of them back now, though I don't think people are returning to Elmira in large numbers. Anyway, it may be possible to turn the factory into a going operation and get good results now. It was a mistake to locate it there during the year they did, but that mistake's been made. Now that they've *dealt* with that it may be a perfectly good factory again.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I see lots of Commercials on TV about incentives for locating New Businesses in Up-State New York and they show different types in such faded cities as Buffalo, Rochester, Utica, Syracuse etc.

I'm wondering why they show them down here in Texas since we don't have any manufacturing, and people are moving here in droves for work?

Wouldn't they be more effective in the Rust Belt States such as Michigan,Indiana,Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin that have a history of manufacturing but the jobs are gone to Mexico,Asia and the Caribbean?

 

[PVD]

The commercials are just "feel good" stuff for the politicians to show off what they want people to believe. What business makes its relocation decisions based on a tv commercial that one of the higher ups saw.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

GE makes train engines only in Ft Worth. The Erie plant was Union and now it does not build any train engines.

 

[jis]

Erie still does some testing? I recall that one of the first HSP46s went from MPI to Erie for something. Don't recall what though.

 

[Eric S]

I see lots of Commercials on TV about incentives for locating New Businesses in Up-State New York and they show different types in such faded cities as Buffalo, Rochester, Utica, Syracuse etc.

I'm wondering why they show them down here in Texas since we don't have any manufacturing, and people are moving here in droves for work?

Wouldn't they be more effective in the Rust Belt States such as Michigan,Indiana,Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin that have a history of manufacturing but the jobs are gone to Mexico,Asia and the Caribbean?

I see those same commercials in Wisconsin. Perhaps a national TV ad buy?

 

[JoeBas]

According to NARP, Amtrak expects to see diners out of CAF by early September or possibly late August.

2018? 2019?

As my MD continues to remind us when discussing our R&D efforts... "The year matters".

 

[neroden]

The commercials are just "feel good" stuff for the politicians to show off what they want people to believe. What business makes its relocation decisions based on a tv commercial that one of the higher ups saw.

You'd be surprised how dumb a lot of CEOs are.