Potential Horizon Re-use

Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

PVD

Engineer
AU Supporting Member
Joined
Jul 8, 2015
Messages
6,755
Location
NYC/Queens
Since this seems to keep coming up, I'll make it a separate thread.

Let me just throw out some of the things that keep resurfacing:

Will they be short haul, long haul, or split? long haul will require upgraded seating, NEC use would call for automatic door retro fit.

Toilet upgrades would most likely be modular installs, in the manner of the "Rail Plan" modules used previously by Amtrak.

Lighting and appearance upgrades might be another modular "package" upgrade, but I don't know enough about how the cars were built to comment on the practicality of this.

Other interesting possibilities open up for conversion of some SuperLiner trains to become single level and free up equipment. example: Cap Limited becomes single level making a through connection with Pennsylvanian easier. (needs single level diners & sleepers, shore power at PGH )
 
Last edited by a moderator:
One thing about Horizon equipment: they don't do well in cold weather. On some Midwestern trains, they get substituted for Superliners account water lines freezing up, and the doors as well, I believe. Pacific Northwest seems to be a good long-term assignment for them, or some other warmish clime, but I can't think of any routes that would qualify.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just-Thinking-51 said:
Scrap metal.
Click to expand...
Not at all a practical suggestion, however, given Amtrak remains chronically short of equipment and hasn't quite yet replaced Heritage dining cars which approach their seventieth birthday (roughly four decades older than the Horizons). Sure, in an ideal world Amtrak would receive an adequate capital budget and would have extra cars in reserve for peak periods, and then perhaps the Horizon fleet could be put out to pasture. But given the political realities, that would require more than revolutionary change; I'd expect to see Horizon cars in service possibly another twenty years.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It is also getting to the point where the diesel power problems may be the next big problem to tackle. On the advocatus diabolic front, if we upgrade the lighting to LED can we use the power saved to run heat tracing cable on components that suffer in the cold. I remember Viewliner sleepers suffered very badly in the cold until they went back and insulated some of the plumbing. Of course with toilets and sinks in every room it was quite a bit of work. LSL cars used to swap with the Silvers to get a chance to thaw in Florida
 
I said it that way because I was pretty sure they did, but was not sure if they still did it regularly. Would not surprise me one bit if they still do it. Isn't Hialeah a regular destination for the Viewliners ?
 
That is one of the reasons that the consists are flipped in the winter to place the Sleepers in the back, so that LSL can be easily interchanged with the Silver consists to send 'em south to thaw out as often as needed.

And yes, Hialeah is the maintenance base for the Viewliner fleet.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Palmetto said:
One thing about Horizon equipment: they don't do well in cold weather.
Click to expand...
This is probably going to be the defining point. The changes necessary for all other services are just interior upgrades. Making them do better in cold weather would be *work*.
The Viewliners might be upgraded with the cold-weather shrouding, but that's only because Amtrak has already designed and engineered it for the Viewliner IIs. There's no way Amtrak would spend the engineering time working out how to do that to the Horizon fleet.

So I'm expecting the Horizons to get shifted out of the snowbelt. Maybe they could be given "Amfleet II" style seating and used on the Star/Meteor/Palmetto/Crescent. Or used on the Carolinian or the Virginia services.

The Pacific Northwest is committed to Talgos, while California is committed to bilevels, and given the platform situation I think Texas/Oklahoma are committed to bilevels for a long time (well past 2018 anyway) so I don't see any opportunities there. Logically the Horizons have to go to the Southeast.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I wouldn't be surprised to see them show up on the Crescent and the Silvers. And if the Gulf Coast Limited ever starts running on that. Of course one thing I would like to see is an ATL-GRV-CLT-GRO-CVS-WAS-NYP day train similar to the Palmetto. And that would be a good place to put some cars. But then we need to fix the locomotive issues.
 
Seaboard92 said:
I wouldn't be surprised to see them show up on the Crescent and the Silvers. And if the Gulf Coast Limited ever starts running on that. Of course one thing I would like to see is an ATL-GRV-CLT-GRO-CVS-WAS-NYP day train similar to the Palmetto. And that would be a good place to put some cars. But then we need to fix the locomotive issues.
Click to expand...
On the Crescent, ATL to NYP is 8:04pm to 1:46pm next day, almost 18 hours. The best case scenario if you play around with the start end times for a day train would be roughly 6:04am to 11:46pm same day. I think that train would be as unpopular as the CHI-PHL version of the Pennsylvanian. If you wanted ATL to any of the major cities on the NEC (NYP/PHL/WAS), you would rather take the Crescent. The train wouldn't help Charlotte and Greensboro to the NEC either as the Carolinian hours already are good. You do have ATL to Carolina in better hours but you'd still either leave Atlanta really early or arrive in Atlanta really late.

According to the 2011 PRIIA, "Due to the distance (859 miles), a daytime train between Atlanta and New York would have to serve Atlanta and/or major northeastern cities before dawn or late at night, which would severely impact ridership and revenue."

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/570/756/2011%20PRIIA%20210%20Report%2009-26-11_final.pdf

Like I said about the CHI-PHL Pennsylvanian, great idea on paper but bad in practice.
 
I see two possibilities:

1: The cars get a major upgrade including automatic doors and cold weather issues. This will basically make them enter the general eastern equipment pool, and they would serve as a relief for the hard run Amfleet II's. If Amtrak invests in this it probably means that they have given up getting financing for an Amfleet replacement anytime at least for the next decade or so.

2: Without the upgrade they will probably serve as a reserve pool. I doubt that Amtrak will want them in any sort of regular service on the NEC as long as there's no automatic doors, and that leaves them with very few current routes to run. If North Carolina hasn't got enough equipment for the planned extra Piedmont frequencies, that's an obvious one. Equipment shortages might also force them onto the Downeaster outside the winter season and the Heartland Flyer, though none of the states would want this. Otherwise they will be available for holiday extras and most importantly you will have equipment available for possible expansions. Virginia is not too far from services that are not NEC extensions, NOLA to either Mobile or Baton Rouge, Illinois or California expansions beyond what the new bilevels will support. None of this will be tomorrow but having cars for new services or extra frequencies available is one less obstacle for it to happen...
 
If you were to upgrade the interiors, how suitable do people see them as a supplement to the a-2's? The manual doors would not be as much of an impediment there, but cold weather performance would still need to be addressed for most routes. I would love to see Amfleet replacement start, but I'm getting a bad vibe about power taking center stage out of necessity.
 
My guess is that in spite of all the planning the A-IIs will be around till the late '20s. The Horizons, with appropriate interior and plumbing upgrades can hang around for quite a while too, and even longer if they get a more through refurbishing the like the Comet Is and IBs have undergone for Utah and California.

Incidentally, at least theoretically once California gets the bi-levels - which lord only know when it will be now - there are about a dozen or so Horizon Ibs in relatively good condition that will become available for someone to use, unless of course California wants to continue to use them.
 
Along with the refurbed former NJT Comets they own, didn't they also lease some Amtrak Horizon food service cars and rehab them? Not sure, but those might "come back" also.
 
"Logically the Horizons have to go to the Southeast." Not logical at all, I think. All the routes in the Southeast start in the Northeast, and it gets cold there.
 
So there no place for this equipment to run.

Amtrak has a policy not to sell equipment, so it will not have to maintance equipment that it has determine is past the service life.

It cost money to keep equipment ready for surge use.

The equipment has been rebuilt to handle the cold, it did not work very well.

Scrap yard, as soon the replacements show up.
 
That would be fine if anyone thought the odds were good that replacements were coming anytime soon. There are around 750 Amfleets and Horizons and some converted Metroliner cars also. It is a multi billion dollar capital outlay which most of us would be happy to see start, I'm just not that optimistic that it is happening in the near future. That was why I through out the "what do we do in the interim" question for discussion.
 
Just-Thinking-51 said:
So there no place for this equipment to run.

Amtrak has a policy not to sell equipment, so it will not have to maintance equipment that it has determine is past the service life.

It cost money to keep equipment ready for surge use.

The equipment has been rebuilt to handle the cold, it did not work very well.

Scrap yard, as soon the replacements show up.
Click to expand...
They won't be scrapped.

The Horizon Fleet is not the Heritage Fleet; The cars are not nearly as old or so completely worn out. Further, "don't do as well in the cold" doesn't mean they cannot run in colder climates; Indeed, that's the very service they've fulfilled for many years - regional trains out of Chicago - and apparently will continue for some time.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top