From prior post: "On the other hand, there are reports that people don't like the ride of Talgo, either in Spain or the Pacific Cascades. I don't know what credence to give to the reports because among the railfan and advocacy community there are the naysayers and those who harken back to 6-wheel trucked heavyweight Pullman cars."
My hunch is that TALGOs are better at handling hunting on curves than hitchking or bouncing of a less-than-stellar route. Our TALGO ride was on probably (at that time) RENFE's best route. Not to disparage the BNSF (exx-SP&S) but it took a very, very good American RR to equal track quality of a well-traveled, well-cared-for European one. Back in the Seventies, anyway.
Also I wouldn't discount what (for lack of a better term) I call "Citroen Theory": I've ridden in them in France and they were absolutely wonderful! Have you any ridden on this side of the Atlantic, or was your friend's Citroen out of commission some way? Maybe the general principle holds that equipment that functions superbly in its home country doesn't always translate well....which wouldn't work for VW but does seem to work for other things....
I no longer have the book on NYC and NYNH&H experimental trains; but my recollection was that for Train X/Xplorer radial steering was imparted from the adjacent car through a coupling linkage, contol rods to the supported carbody, and equalizer mechanism similar to a push driill but double ended. The cars could be uncoupled and set out using retractable wheels if need be. Disassembling steering links would be quiet another matter. I seem to recall that part of an Xplorer was saved and sits at a museum. Perhads a reader could find out first-hand. I can understand the last car of the Xplorer being rough riding without anything to hold it down; but the car next to the locomotive should have been better riding. It appears that only a single locomotive was used at the front of the train - no pull-pull or push & pull.
That book "New York Central and the Trains of the Future" is something I have gotten to read at the Wisconsin State Historical Society. I also ran some patent searches to get more details on their mechanism.
The coupler on Train-X was this custom arrangement, and yes, the steering "signal" took place through the coupler, but in a somewhat more complicated fashion than a model railroad truck-mounted "Talgo" coupler. With Train-X, the wheelset was under the "A" end of a train car, and the drawbar had steering-link connections to that wheelset. The "B" end of the neighboring car had a coupler that mated with that drawbar. That coupler had pins the enabled the guided-axle steering. If you uncoupled the neighboring car, the withdrawal of those pins locked out the steering.
A Train-X train set had a "keystone" car in the middle of the consist that had two "A" ends, and strings of Train-X cars could couple to it on each side. The arrangement was
A-B:A-B:A-B:A-B:A-A:B-A:B-A:B-A:B-A
where the double "A" is the "keystone car." At one time Talgo had two kinds of end cars, but they too have a system with a "keystone car" and the "A" ends of the adjoining cars facing outward. On the other hand, even though the new system has only one style of end car, the end cars have linkage guidance of the axles at the ends of the consist. Train-X simply locked out those end axles from steering.
The story is that Train-X rode badly and that the end cars were particularly bad.
As to Talgo having a smooth ride, I don't doubt it as Patentes Talgo has put years into refining the design. On the other hand, there are reports that people don't like the ride of Talgo, either in Spain or the Pacific Cascades. I don't know what credence to give to the reports because among the railfan and advocacy community there are the naysayers and those who harken back to 6-wheel trucked heavyweight Pullman cars.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Maybe I should be saying this in CLASSIC TRAINS instead, but my Dad and I rode the "Catalan Talgo" in Spain in 1970. It was part of the Trans-Europ-Express system back then. Never had a smoother train ride before or sense. No creaking of bulkheads, not jiggling, no "bellows" action from the vestibule to scare kids. No compartments either, but many of the seats were laid out 2 by 2 facing. The interior looked more like a professional's waiting room than a mode of transit, or so it seemed to me.
Is there some particular reason why this "wild," "radical," fifty-year-old design can't be used more in this country? Are there other stretches than the SP&S route that would accommodate TALGO?
Paul, et al,
Talgo has been a subject of discussion on the CHICAGOTRANSIT Yahoo group.
I no longer have the book on NYC and NYNH&H experimental trains; but my recollection was that for Train X/Xplorer radial steering was imparted from the adjacent car through a coupling linkage, contol rods to the supported carbody, and equalizer mechanism similar to a push driill but double ended. The cars could be uncoupled and set out using retractable wheels if need be. Disassembling steering links would be quiet another matter.
I seem to recall that part of an Xplorer was saved and sits at a museum. Perhads a reader could find out first-hand.
I can understand the last car of the Xplorer being rough riding without anything to hold it down; but the car next to the locomotive should have been better riding. It appears that only a single locomotive was used at the front of the train - no pull-pull or push & pull.
Al Reinschmidt made the point that with the absence of an axle on the Talgo and independently rotating wheels, there is absolutely no centering of the wheels on the railheads for guidance around curves. Talgo steering relies on the flanges which leads to the need for more frequent measurement, re-profiling, and replacement. That said, Talgos operate in commercial service at over 200mph.
Harvey
Whadja mean semi-articulated?
One of my favorite Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoons are these bears who have come upon a rifle, abandoned, perhaps, by a hunter scared by the bears. The one bear scolds his comrade, "Thunderstick, did I actually hear you call it a thunderstick? That, my friend, is a Remington bolt-action 'thirty-ought-six'."
The Talgos are articulated about guided single-axle wheel sets located between the cars. The cars have an "A" and a "B" end, and the "B" end of a train car is suspended from its neighbor by a pair of link rods in the style of a circus trapeze. The wheel journals are connected to an "A" end through bedpost struts to air springs at the roof of one car. A set of rods and cranks centers each axle between the neighboring train cars to effect radial steering -- as the Talgo rounds a curve, the axle is pointed towards the center of the curve to direct the wheels along the tangent direction to the curve, minimizing wear. A drawbar connects the two train cars in buff and draft, and dampers (shock absorbers) in three axes in the space between train cars keeps the whole thing settled.
The original 1930's design of Spanish inventor Alejandro Goicoechea (a gentleman from Spain told me it is pronounced "Go-ee-coe-CHEE-ah" and the word means apothecary or druggist) was to have the train cars as a set of semi-trailers, each car hitched to the preceding car and trailing its single axle. Talgo, by the way, is a Spanish-language acronym for Lightweight Articulated Train of Goicoechea and Oriol, Oriol being the money-man behind the venture, of an aristocratic family and an acquaintence of Spanish dictator Franco back in the day.
The Talgo design has evolved considerably over the years, and they ditched the uni-directional design for a bi-directional Talgo. The co-inventor of the revised suspension was James MacVeigh of ACF, when Talgo partnered with ACF in the United States. Patentes Talgo SA is now several generations beyond the MacVeigh design.
The other unique aspect to Talgo is that the wheels are on bearings to allow them to rotate independently -- just about other train has a solid axle connection in connection with a cone-tapered wheel to effect steering, with the flanges just as a backup. While the Talgo axles are guided by the link arms, you still need something to center the wheels between the rails. In the absence of solid axle connection, the gravity effect acting on the wheel and rail profile can also provide a centering force.
Other notable guided axle trains include the Robert Young-inspired (Robert Young the C&O and later NYC railroad tycoon, not the TV actor) Train-X of the 1950s and the Alan Cripe TurboTrain of the late 1960s. The Train-X has a linkwork guided axle. The TurboTrain originally had centering springs, but Jason Shron of Rapido Trains told me they had to change that one too to a linkwork system. The Rapido Trains TurboTrain model will show detail of a linkwork guided axle (non-functional on the model), and Jason claims to have seen a photograph somewhere showing this.
In Denmark, they have a commuter train using guided axles, but I read that they use hydraulic cylinders for steering, and the French have an experimental train called Lyrex that is supposed to have the same system, but info on the Web is sketchy. Before he died in the mid 1990s, Alan Cripe had his own company, and he was promoting a derivative design from the TurboTrain to passenger advocacy groups around the time that people thought the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative was going to get funded, and he or his people must have made enough of an impression that the Midwest High Speed Rail Association Web site has good things to say about the Turbo.
Cripe's Fastracker DMT could have been offered in Diesel-hydraulic and turbine versions. The last I heard about it was that NARP had a nasty, snarky obituary about the passing of Alan Cripe, complaining that until the time of his passing he had been arguing against the electrification of the NEC north of New Haven and was still promoting his turbine trains as representing an overall cost saving to the expensive electrification project.
The other place you may see exotic suspension as in European low-floor streetcars.
The one other unique thing about Talgo is how they do guided axles all the way out to the end cars. The TurboTrain had those Power Dome Cars with conventional 2-axle trucks, finessing the question about what to do about the axles at the ends. Train-X simply locked out the steering of the end-car axles; earlier versions of Talgo were supposed to have had steering linked to the coupler connection to the locomotive.
The current Talgo, as far as I can tell, has long link rods running the length of a train car to steer the end axles of the cars at the ends of a Talgo consist. For an axle between train cars, you get the "steering signal" from the deflection of those train cars, but for an end axle, I believe they take the steering signal from the nearest pair of train cars and then send it long the long link rods. In my HO models that implement this, you get some amount of steering misalignment and resulting wheel slide in crossovers.
I had seen one Web site describing this, but again, the details were sketchy. The steering of the end axles or lack thereof may have been the downfall of Train-X and perhaps the 1950s Talgos. What is written on Train-X suggests that conductors tried to seat people in the middle of the train because the end cars with the locked outboard axles rode badly.
Why is Talgo doing this when everyone else seems not to be interested? If the Talgo patents are a problem, one could always go with the TurboTrain design, and the Cripe family would be eager to promote this if the 1990's experience is any guide. Perhaps Talgo does what they do because that is what they do and what they sell. Every other "exotic" train design, outside the low-floor European streetcars, has been abandoned but plucky Patentes Talgo has been at it for 70 years, making refinements and improvements.
FYI --- Close up of Acela Air Springs, each Air Spring pressure is monitored by computer and each Wheel Bearing temperature is monitored to the Cab and Conductor's Station (in the grill car).
Also note, all windows are Rescue Windows, also a section of the roof is a "Soft Zone" that can be "hacked" through by a Fireman's Axe.
Don U. TCA 73-5735
25-30 years ago GM proposed a lower-profile 125mph, 3,000hp locomotive for use at both ends of Amfleet-equipped trains. I'm sure they still have the design and any licensing.
I had forgotten that the TGV intermediate car air spring and resevoir seems to have a support point near the level of the belt rail and very likely above the center of mass. This would produce a degree of pendular suspension. The electric locomotive that the Acela is patterned after has a somewhat lower resevoir and mounting point. Bombardier might revise the design with a higher support point for a non-electric locomotive, perhaps using a Catepillar diesel for "Buy American" content.
Interestingly, the Bombardier LRC locomotive had long-travel springs that went to a support point above the floor level. Aside from the diesel, anyone hear how the suspension worked?
The Talgo XXI is mainly a streamlined A-unit. I think, it would not be difficult to design B-units to haul longer trains, too. However, if you have to lengthen platforms and perhaps to elocate switches, it will become costly. An alternative to longer trains could be fares depending on the demand for a specific train. Same way as the airlines price, or the French railways for their HST.
Another question. Does the Talgo-diesel-engine meet the US-crash-standards. They are different from European ones.
The Long Island DE30 seems to be one possible alternative lower-profile design for a Talgo.
Does anyone know the weight?
Do either the Talgo XXI, Bombardier non-electric Acela, or DE30 have a crash cage? What happened to the non-electric Acela locomotive - I think it was a gas turbine?
The Acela is a special Northeast Corridor design. No Steps (High Platforms only), tilt limited to 3 1/2 degrees (design can allow up to 7 degrees), 4 axels per car, 12,000 hp, dual voltage (25K and 11K), top "carded" speed 150 mph (250 kph), and YES the locomotive is a safety cab design. (first choice?? Rumor, some at Amtrak think it should have been the ICE if price was not involved)
Behind that drop snoot, is a full front end with coupler (the vertical slots on each side are releases that allows the nose to swing up). You then have a Crash Cage. Behind the Engineneer and Fireman's seats is a depressed, armored, refuge area in the floor.
The only Grade Crossings from Boston to Washington are from Westerly RI to New London CT area where the line follows along the shore line and the sandy beaches. The Crossings are protected with 4 Quadrant Gates and speed restrictions apply. (yes, they have hit one car that was trapped between the gates, 3 dead)
I'm sure the Acela will be purchsed for hybrid services along the eastern Seaboard - hybrid in the sense of contending with low level platforms off the Northeast Corridor part of extended services.
To my mind, the TALGO is more congruent with Midwest needs for compatibility with low-level platforms for superliners and gallery cars, passive tilting and from my experience a comfortable ride in normal circumstances, and light weight which saves fuel. My only knock is in train capacity limited to 400-500 seats which would be a happy problem. Then too, Southwest Airline gets by with 737s with varying frequencies to meet demand.
If the 265,000 Lb F59 causes a problem, what will happen with a 295,000 lb Genesis (I recall these were the weights; but let me know if I'm off by much)? I'm all in favor of lighter axle loads, especially if there is some serious 110mph or faster running. Wheel slip control can offset some weight for high adhesion at low speeds, but the real problem is having the horses for giddyup to top speed without obscene fuel consumption.
Amtrak's performance specs that I had seen years ago were a little agressive and could be relaxed a little for the Midwest. The Midwest does not need the power-to-train-weight of the NEC; and to do otherwise would wipe out the energy efficiency justification.
Another issue is crash-worthiness at grade crossings. I would like to see a dome or coupola for the engineer above and behind the front end - like the first streamlined City of Portland, Aero Train, and Turbo Train. The cab should be in a safety cage behind a crumple znoe. Other than that, a lower center of gravity with the lower profile is better for curves.
If the Midwest got enough trains, maybe U. S. final assemly would be feasible and not an expensive mandate for some arbitrary and unrelated goal.
As for power and given expansion of service, I'm sure enough heavy truck mechanics are familiar with european diesels to supplement and mentor the new and old hands in the Amtrak engine house. After ages of EMD, the same cry about different and unfamiliar engines was heard when the Genesis locomotives were introduced. Shop crews adapted. End of story.
If a Goverment Agency wishes to spend TAX PAYER MONEY for a product, then it should be spent to make American Jobs, even if it costs more.
What if the American Jobs alternative offers substantially lower performance? Such as reduced curve speed with a GE Genesis locomotive compared with a Talgo XXI Power Car?
What I am saying is that maybe the GE Genesis is what we will go with if the Lautenberg Lott bill ever makes it into law. The advantages of maintenance crews working with a known type of locomotive rather than whatever Patentes Talgo serves may negate somewhat faster schedules owing to less speed reduction on curves.
I would like to see Federal funding of trains succeed and bring about a train rennaissance rather than view Federal funding as a vehicle for mandates. I would like to see the American locomotive (Genesis) selected on the merits rather than on the mandates.
Think of it this way, would you rather get the trains and then push for "import substitution", construction of American trains to substitute for European or Japanese imports? Or would you rather work on persuading the folks on the fence to agree to higher taxes to get trains, and then tell them, you are going to have to raise your taxes even more -- we are going to make you in Arizona to pay for trains in New York, but we are going to have you pay even more for those trains, so a final stage of assembly from kits of parts can take place in Vermont to satisfy an ironclad mandate.
Buying the Acela, better "Financing" from Canada and France, maybe not the first choice for Trains when the Congress will not put the money up front.
So the reason the Acela was less than ideal, and perhaps hurt the chances of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative through guilt-by-association, is that Congress was too cheap. It is fine to talk about the Concrete Lobby and Congress as a creature of the lobbyists. But the ultimate purpose of passenger rail advocacy is to persuade our fellow non-rail-enthusiasts citizens to part with money to build trains. To say that Congress was "too cheap" to "adequately fund Amtrak" or get the "right kind of Acela train" is fundamentally to tell the people, who we are trying to persuade to support trains, that they are "too cheap" to get the kind of trains that those of us in the advocacy community deem best.
There was considerable discussion on another thread about tilt trains as a way to get faster station-to-station times, and one of the issues is that "standard" Diesel locomotives are too heavy to get the full advantages of tilt trains. If we get the funding, and if we go with the Talgo XXI, Patentes Talgo will probably accomodate with some kind of window-dressing final assembly within the US borders of something that is essentially an EU import, but is only of face-saving symbolism in terms of protecting American jobs. Or the Genesis will be selected, the trains will run slower, passenger acceptance will be lower, the rail rennaisance will be delayed, and the day when American factories are producing meaningful quantities of trains will be postponed.
My opinion,
If a Company puts out a Spec. for a product, and if an "Overseas" builder meets that Spec. at an attractive price, THEN BUY IT. (Airliners, Elevators, and every thing at Wal-Mart)
Buy American!
It is hard enough getting anything going with respect to passenger trains, and we have to add a Buy American! mandate on top of that. I come from a union family on Mom's side, and I can understand the sentiment in terms of protecting jobs, but here we are starting out with next to nothing and we are going to end up in a while with nothing at all.
With respect to the Pacific Cascades Talgo trainsets and the Acelas, each were assembled within the Lower 48 from major parts from beyond our borders, although perhaps Bombardier is (North) American while Patentes Talgo are those folks in Spain. As far as I can tell, those assembly operations are window dressing -- kind of like getting a bicycle in a box and having to torque the bolts yourself as opposed to getting it ready to run from the bike shop.
But the Buy American! mandate has consequences as the supplier has to be willing to engage in that exercise. The story I hear is that it favored Bombardier for the Acelas over the Swedish X-2000, which by some accounts was the better train.
The issues I raised with the Talgo XXI Power Car or locomotive or whatever you want to call it were 1) the Power Car is for all intents and purposes a passenger locomotive, and to simply propel a Talgo consist at 110 MPH, a properly geared Genesis would do the same job as it does in Canada replacing the ALCo/MLS LRC Power Cars, 2) the Talgo XXI Power Car, purpose-built for the Talgo train sets and not an adaptation of a heavy GE or EMD freight locomotive, may have a lower axle loading, offering faster negotiation of curves within the side-force limits on the rails, and 3) there may be a reason to go with GE or EMD apart from prejudice against major trading partners (Canada, Spain/EU), namely that import Diesel locomotives have had a spotty record on North American shores, perhaps because of the hard use our Diesels get in freight service, perhaps on account of the Maybach-powered Baldwin on the Train-X, where the mechanics back in the day had to run to the Volkswagen dealership to get metric tools and metric bolts to repair the thing.
Lets build back up passenger rail in America to the point where Buy American! becomes a reasonable consideration, and in the mean time, let us avail ourself of the best technology the world has to offer to get those trains back.
Passenger Service is Government operated (City, State, Fed).
Even the Acela had to be put together in Vermont and had a % of the product American Made.
In another sense, the Talgo XXI power car is simply a B-B Diesel passenger locomotive, and I don't see why its use would be restricted to Talgo trainsets. The Talgo power car, I would understand unless told otherwise, is of lower axle loading to allow going around curves at faster speeds without spreading the rails, an issue with the much heavier F59PHI from the Pacific Cascades Talgo, but otherwise a locomotive is a locomotive.
One of Fairbanks-Morse' last hurrah in Diesel locomotives was the "Speed Merchant" lightweight B-B passenger Diesel, one went on each end of the NH John Quincy Adams Talgo lightweight experimental of the 1950s. Apart from its low profile and light weight, the Speed Merchant was a B-B passenger locomotive, and with its dual-power third rail pickup shoes, FM was in competition for an order of such dual-power Diesels, one that they lost out to the EMD FL-9.
Another example is the LRC Diesel. While that too was low profile to be more streamlined with the low-roofed LRC equipment, the LRC Diesel was at another level just another ALCo-MLW.
On the other hand, the LRC Diesel was just another ALCo at some level, and when they wore out before the LRC cars, as Diesels do, VIA replaced them with Genesis locomotives -- not as low profile, but as compatible with the LRC cars as anything else.
The big question is whether Amtrak or commuter agencies are going to want a Patentes Talgo Diesel. The laws of operation are all the same, you have a piston engine with a high compression ratio, squirt in oil at pressure and it ignites, running the engine, which turns an alternator-rectifier, which powers traction motors, and so on. But the shop people who keep Diesels on the road are partial to EMD and in more recent years they are accepting of GE Diesels, although the EMD vs GE debate rages on.
But Maybach, Sulzer, Werkspoor, Caterpillar, and perhaps others have supplied Diesel prime movers for North American locomotives at one time or another, heck, so have Fairbanks Morse, ALCo, and Baldwin. A lot of these other Diesels serve happy customers in other markets, long after they left the locomotive business. Maybe the EMD and later model GE Diesels are really rugged and low maintenance; maybe they are what railroad shops are used to and any kind of odd-ball creates extra maintenance cost.
The Talgo XXI Power Car may be a fine, fine locomotive, but there may be questions regarding its acceptance with Amtrak.
Are there any plans to introduce the XXI onto U.S. tracks or has it gone the way of the "Jet Train" and been set on the back burner? I would think it would be more realistic for it to be implemented than the jet train since it possesses both speed and better fuel economy being that it is diesel powered.
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