NJ Transit / Amtrak ACES Train

Heard somewhere recently (cant remember where) that the ACES service will not be continued summer of 2012. I see that the P-40's are operating on the Atlantic City line, or atleast were a week or 2 ago. What will happen now to the P-40 power and the 8 ACES coaches? Will amtrak use them for a new service or will NJT use them?

mflsjhs said:

Heard somewhere recently (cant remember where) that the ACES service will not be continued summer of 2012. I see that the P-40's are operating on the Atlantic City line, or atleast were a week or 2 ago. What will happen now to the P-40 power and the 8 ACES coaches? Will amtrak use them for a new service or will NJT use them?

Click to expand...

Those cars are owned by CRDA AFAIK, as is the ACES Service. They have so far not said what the future is either of the service or those cars. If they discontinue the service for good they may want to sell them to someone. The P40s are owned or leased by NJT I believe, so they will probably continue in service with NJT.

jis said:

Those cars are owned by CRDA AFAIK, as is the ACES Service. They have so far not said what the future is either of the service or those cars. If they discontinue the service for good they may want to sell them to someone. The P40s are owned or leased by NJT I believe, so they will probably continue in service with NJT.

Click to expand...

Any chance Amtrak will get them back?

NJT owns the P40's, they brought them outright for that service. CDOT initially leased its P40's, but eventually did buy them from Amtrak.

My guess is that NJT would not try to sell them back, they can use the power. And even if they didn't really want them, they would probably want to charge Amtrak more because of the work that gone done on the engines. Amtrak would refuse to pay more, and probably should refuse, since Amtrak has more that they can pull out of mothballs anyhow and fix up more cheaply than the most likely asking price from NJT.

What of the cars? That's where Amtrak is squeezed at the moment, from what I can tell.

Anderson said:

What of the cars? That's where Amtrak is squeezed at the moment, from what I can tell.

Click to expand...

I bet NJT will pick them up and convert them to regular commuter cars. Afterall they would just be 6 additional cars of a type that they have almost 300 of. The other possibility is that MARC will pick them up to add to the order for 54 that they just placed with Bombardier. The third possibility is that the other operator of similar cars, AMT will pick them up. For Amtrak they would be odd ones for which they will have to either build up inventory and expertise for maintenance or contract with NJT to maintain them. I think it is extremely unlikely that Amtrak will shell out the $3 million a pop to pick them up.

IMO the ACES train service was an ill conceived idea. The ACES service routes the train from NYC all the way across NJ to the PA border then back again across the state to Atlantic City for a long trip. Back in the day the Jersey Central Blue Comet route went to NJ and stayed on the eastern edge, eventually picking up the Pennsylvania route to Atlantic City at Winslow Junction. Today the old Blue Comet ROW is no longer intact but a significant section is being restored. This more direct and faster travel route would have made more sense but like 100's of other passenger train routes it was abandoned years ago. Another reason for the ACES service demise is that part of it was funded by the casinos. Business is down and those funds are no longer available to NJT.

dlagrua said:

Another reason for the ACES service demise is that part of it was funded by the casinos. Business is down and those funds are no longer available to NJT.

Click to expand...

Part of it? It is 100% funded by CRDA (other than the ticket revenues). NJT is just a contract operator.

I considered rhe aces service when I went to ac last year but with the long travel time couldn't swing it. I agree that the routing was unfortunate.

amamba said:

I considered the aces service when I went to ac last year but with the long travel time couldn't swing it. I agree that the routing was unfortunate.

Click to expand...

There are no other routes available that would cost anything less than several hundred million to put back in service at a level that would produce any better running time. Indeed the running time on the present route can be cut by upto half an hour possibly with tighter scheduling and getting the Race - ACY segment back upto 90mph, if someone wanted to do so. But the cost justification even for that is questionable.