I'd rather them take their time and deliver them in a manner so when finally enter service, they aren't crapping out all over the railroad...like the aforementioned ACS-64s.
Diner 8400 is a classified by Amtrak as a Viewliner I. It was gutted and refurbished by Beech Grove to serve as a functional prototype for the Viewliner II diners, but it is still a Viewliner I.
How quickly people forget! It was a year ago now, but one set of Viewliner 2 sleeper, diner, and baggage-dorm cars were shipped from Elmira for testing last July. They were seen in the wild on test runs on the NEC, including 125+ mph passes, and then were shipped back to Elmira. Have not been seen outside of the CAF plant since then.
Thanks for this update.
The Viewliner order was for $300 million, when announced. The most recent budget said they'll cost $350 million.
We know that CAF had a serious problem hiring competent stainless steel welders. We know that this delayed production by at *least* one year, maybe two years. As far as I can tell, this problem is sufficient to account for pretty much all the delays prior to the first accepted cars.
No, it was not. The plan several years ago, as stated in articles on the Viewliner II order, was to build the new cars on 2 simultaneous production lines: one the would build in sequence, the diner cars, the baggage-dorms and the sleepers and the second production line for the baggage cars. And, of course, to have delivered the cars by now. For reasons not publicly stated, that was changed, after the initial tests on the first sleeper, bag-dorm, diner units, to first build all the baggage cars, then the other 3 types. CAF was late and way behind schedule on delivering light rail cars to Houston which may have tied up their second production line for longer than originally expected, so that may have been a factor in changing the delivery order to one Viewliner II type at a time. Although we might see a delivery overlap on baggage cars and a test set of diners, depending on the production line backlog.
The FY15 budget states the total project cost at $342 million. The contract with CAF was announced as and stated for years as $298 million. There may well have been cost increases in the contract with CAF to cover Amtrak change orders. But the total project cost would also likely include the costs of training, testing, inspection, facility upgrades, contract oversight, equipment moves that would be in addition to the payments to CAF. I expect spare parts would be included in the CAF contract.
Extremely likely. It seems the welding problems affected the Houston order as well.
That's good news. The question is how many baggage cars will be delivered in this batch? 48 baggage cars have been delivered, there are 22 to go.
The 48 through the 57 are being picked up.
Alas, he may be out of town.
