Recent content by mrpresident1776

That FRA map is pretty neat, thanks! Yeah there was no way I was going to drill down to the exact track on some of those approaches and yards. Openrailway map is neat too, I like the speed limits, for the US, those must be relatively new because I extended someone else's Acela speed limit map...

I created a reasonably accurate version using some MSrailroad maps of historical lines which are very accurate. Feel free to play around with and share! Let me know if the link breaks...

You're right but these coaches look most similar AGV coaches, minus that distributed power, and with power cars on each end. They have similar curved roofs, shorter car lengths and Jacobs bogies and lack the boxy look of the TGV coaches. While the TGV coaches have been out of production for more...

Bottom of page 5, footnote 11, the power cars are "compact" about 10' shorter than Acela's. Interesting source, I certainly don't doubt it although 381 seats is only a 25.3% increase and I do recall Amtrak wanting trains no longer than 205 meters in order to fit into existing maintenance...

According to what Alstom shared with the media, the power cars are 18 meters or 59' long. A rough comparison from that power car length to the trainset on page gives me an estimate of 67.8' for the first passenger car and 52.5' for the second car if that visual is to scale. Visually comparing...

Exactly, the cars themselves look like the articulated AGV jacobs bogies, have similar length and only 1 set of doors per car but with the same tilt as Pendolinos.

No kidding, it looks they slapped power cars onto a 7 car Pendolino. I thought the original spec was for up to 200mph speed and 40% more capacity, not 33% according to the Alstom press release. I guess they must have done a lot of negotiating in the trade off process...

Boardman might be referring to the design of the Acela trainsets when he talks about 20 years. David Gunn said as much. https://skift.com/2012/12/15/why-amtrak-is-replacing-its-acela-trains-on-the-northeast-corridor/You figure that Acela's traction systems are based on the 3rd generation TGV and...

The New Pendolinos used in Italy and Poland can do 155mph so they could be what Alstom is proposing. The British Pendolinos are the previous generation of the Italian and Polish trains. But the requirement for faster operation in the future leads me to think they proposed the AGV with tilt, an...

Yes, I don't have the latest RFP but the joint Amtrak/CA RFP lists 2 additional business cars for the 2025-2030 page 3. Essentially, they're asking for pricing information to be included if they at some point decide to go that route. It is not really an contract option in the traditional sense...

Correct, I believe the Acela 2 contract will include an option to buy 2 additional cars to length trainsets in the future at reasonable price. The Acela 1 contract did not have one and Bombardier would have had to restart that production line and could have charged a lot as it would have been a...

I think someone already mentioned that Talgo was the other bidder. While Siemens probably bid or looked at bidding, they would have needed a tilting train to achieve the RFP specs. Siemens hasn't made a tilting train for a while now and the ones they did make were not reliable, see ICE DMU, or...

I would guess that the annual debt service payments would be about $130 million per year, $2.45 billion @ 25 years @ 2.38% interest, very reasonable considering today's Acela takes in about twice that in profit, and the Acela II's will at minimum, increase profit by 50%, and likely even more...

Will the new Acela's be faster right out of the box? I read on Reason Rail that they would reduce the NY-Boston travel time by 38 minutes and 24 minutes between NY and Washington but it wasn't clear whether this would be because of the Acela II's characteristics, better acceleration and higher...