"Extreme Trains" TV show on Acela

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AAARGH!

AAARGH!

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Jul 12, 2008
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Cleveland, OH
I watched last night's episode of "Extreme Trains" on The History Channel. It was about a run of the Acela from Washington to Boston. Not a lot of depth; mostly the over-exuberant host saying "wow" to everything, including a draw bridge going up and down.

They digressed to other topics related (or semi-related) to the Acela, such as Acela train maintenance, how they make concrete track ties, track maintenance, catenary maintenance, that draw bridge, and the history of WUS and Penn Station.

Edit: And they did show the very cool NYP control center.

My only complaint is that they (yet again - every episode so far), digressed to a steam train museum to talk about steam locomotive maintenance. OK, for one episode, but not every episode. This has nothing to do with the Acela.

Anyone else see it?
 
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aaargh said:
My only complaint is that they (yet again - every episode so far), digressed to a steam train museum to talk about steam locomotive maintenance. OK, for one episode, but not every episode. This has nothing to do with the Acela.
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I didn't see it, but this sounds like what we in the media biz call "b-roll". It usually serves as filler.

My guess is that the budget on this show is not very high, and/or the schedules are very tight. So they'll go out and get whatever footage they can get, and if they come back and see they don't have enough (as it sounds like happens often), they'll intercut this steam locomotive maintenance b-roll into it.

I used to love History Channel but I can't watch it anymore. Seems like every cable channel now is trying to go "extreme", whether it's History or Discovery or Food Network or HGTV(?!). They've taken what used to be an informative and interesting network and turned it into a network full of supposedly telegenic hosts that just travel around and shout about how amazing everything they're looking at is. They've cranked up the volume while eliminating all the substance.

So the way you described this show doesn't surprise me.
 
Agreed on all counts. The guy's okay, but way too excited. I can't help but wish Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs was hosting—that's more of the tone I think would work. Alas, different network.

I don't mind the digressions to SteamTown as much, but heck, I would rather see an entire episode devoted to Steam Town. I get the idea they shot for more episodes than they ended up being asked to produce, so I think the SteamTown episode may have had to get chopped up and spread out. The series is great from the standpoint that we don't get series devoted to the topic much, but I can't help but think it could be done so it was a little more accessible and not as staccato in flow.

Ironically, the Acela engineer is also usually my 8:10 AM MARC train engineer to DC! I laughed out loud when he pulled the joke about not knowing what he was going to do when another train started coming toward him in the Hudson tunnel.

Rafi
 
I thought it was a good show. I really enjoy the extreme host.

I didn't know that was a bullet train till I watched the show.
 
Rafi said:
I can't help but wish Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs was hosting—that's more of the tone I think would work. Alas, different network.
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Though, the gimmick on "Dirty Jobs" is watching Mike Rowe take over control of a peice of machinery, and then break it by accident, and make a huge mess. Probobly not the type of person for a show on trains... ;)
 
MrEd said:
I didn't know that was a bullet train till I watched the show.
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Didn't know what was a bullet train? Acela? How do you (or they) define "bullet train"?
 
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I thought it was funny that they called the Acela 'green' because during dynamic braking, it puts power back onto the catenary 'for the next train to use'. Nevermind how much it uses to get up to that speed. Not that it's inefficient, but I would not call it green for that reason. Though compared to other modes of transportation, it is green-er.

Instead of going to the steam museum, I wish they had spend those few minutes on some other aspect of the Acela (or the trip itself). Why can't they find 47 minutes (or whatever it is) worth of material just on the Acela? At the worst, they can go into details of the Acela that maybe only rail fans would enjoy (not that we don't enjoy steam details). Better than this total digression off-topic that makes the already disjointed thing, more disjointed.

I wanted to see MORE of the Acela. While I was watiing for it to get back on topic, I was like the little kid holding his crotch trying not to pee his pants. I just couldn't wait! :huh:
 
I thought the explanation of the train's tilt system was interesting. I also enjoyed looking at the maintainance facility. I agree that the steam stuff is a digression, and a manifestation somehwat of the choo-choo train mentality that exists in this country. I not sure that this show was designed for knowledgeable hard core rail fans like us. I could see that it would be informative to someone like my girlfriend if I wanted her to understand more about the NEC.
 
I still like when they always say "AE goes 150 MPH!" - when the truth is it only runs 150 MPH for a short stretch! Most of the run is well under 135 MPH! (In fact in SE Connecticut - from Waterford to the RI border - there are a few grade crossings!)

FYI - That "beach running" shot was at Niantic, CT - right along Long Island Sound!
 
aaargh said:
At one point they said a high-speed train (synonomous with Bullet train I guess) was any train that went faster than 124 MPH. So I guess that makes the NE Regional a Bullet train too. :eek:
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Yeah, that's what I would have guessed was their definition. I hate the term "bullet train", it's become so meaningless. It used to be what we in the west called the original Japanese shinkansen trains, because the nose of the power car was literally shaped like a bullet and the word "shinkansen" didn't mean anything to us. Nowadays it's come to mean any high speed train anywhere, and even the term "high speed" seems to mean whatever the person using it wants it to mean.

I'm not sure how to get around that last part when referring to HSR, but almost anything would be better than the term "bullet train". Why not just "high speed train"? Does calling it a "bullet train" confer some imaginary status on it?
 
There are definitely a few things they could've done for filler/digressions besides steam trains. Why not go out to Michigan and look at ITCS and how they're running high speed services with diesel services, and what a huge need that fills...
 
battalion51 said:
There are definitely a few things they could've done for filler/digressions besides steam trains. Why not go out to Michigan and look at ITCS and how they're running high speed services with diesel services, and what a huge need that fills...
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Actually I've heard that ITCS has been suspended for some reason on the Michigan route right now. Not sure how long it's going to last, much less why it's suspended. But people have seen non-ITCS equiped locmotives leading MI trains in the past few weeks.
 
AlanB said:
Actually I've heard that ITCS has been suspended for some reason on the Michigan route right now. Not sure how long it's going to last, much less why it's suspended. But people have seen non-ITCS equiped locmotives leading MI trains in the past few weeks.
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I've heard the same as well. However, this special was filmed months ago, so ITCS was definitely up when it was filmed.
 
I see nobody else caught this. However, this guy is supposed to be a huge railfan and has some sort of job on the rails where he lives, but yet he FLEW into dc to film the show :blink:

I also thought they would show The Hell's Gate Bridge.
 
profwebs said:
However, this guy is supposed to be a huge railfan and has some sort of job on the rails where he lives.
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There is no passenger rail service in Central Maine. The nearest station would be a couple hours away in Portland.

So, I'm sure it is more an issue of logistics. He may even have been contractually obligated to work within a time schedule that would have forced using the airlines.
 
Or he wanted to fly in so he could compare the flight route to the Acela route and show why we need high-speed passenger service. He did say he was catching the Downeaster home.
 
ALC_Rail_Writer said:
The Acela is, by no straight of the mind... an 'Extreme Train'...
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Oh yes it is, I worked on the NECIP and when we were starting we asked the Japanese, Germans, and French to come and offer suggestions, they all said the same thing, "it couldn't be done" but it was do it or no high speed on the North East Corridor.

all other high speed railroads in the world are two tracks one in each direction, exclusively for the high speed trains, one track goes in one direction the other goes the other direction, and mostly all built from the ground up.

the NEC has an average of three tracks, all bidirectional, there are commuter trains, regional trains, freight trains and high speed trains all running 24/7. This runs and works something that no one else has been able to do. and it was done without ever shutting the railroad down.

by every deffinition the Acela is an extreme train on an extreme railroad, probably more extreme than any other railroad on the planet.

Bob
 
And in all reality the term "Extreme trains", as mentioned previously, is more marketing than anything else. But if you do think about how crippled our country would be without them, it is pretty extreme.
 
I'm rewatching this right now.

I am starting to get sick of his pronounciation of 'acela'

it is not 'assela'
 
Being on the West Coast here, what is the proper Acela pronunciation?

Also, I really hate the walking low angle shots of him waving his arms around.
 
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