http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-metra-riders-to-benefit-from-new-rochelle-railcar-plant-20120719,0,3515900.story
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
The Japaneese are not stupid, the cost of the factory is baked into the price of the initial railcar orders. The business and profits are moved away from an American owned firm (Super Steel in Milwaukee), and the Japanese give the implication the plant means jobs, jobs, jobs while scooping up millions in taxpayer money. The exact same blueprint that the Spanish used with Talgo in Wisconsin. They even took the business in a no-bid contract from the same firm (Super Steel in Milwaukee, WI). It kind of makes you wonder how dumb are politicians are to keep doing this? This plant will close in less then 5 years if it even takes that long. Hard for me to see how the millions spent in taxpayer money are really buying much here.
The wages and construction costs are real USA money. What percentage ar eprofits and what money spent in the USA? Interesting question. While Talgo may be in a privileged posiiton, the Japanese companies won on competitive bidding, and their profit margines cannot be that huge.
$585 million for 165 cars? That's a low-bid contract? $3.5 million a piece? I am not an expert on self propelled cars but that is not what I would consider a razor thin profit margin. Maybe it is in illinois though. I'd be interested in seeing who bid in that contest and what the terms were.
A self-propelled passenger car, be it electric or diesel-powered, is essentially a locomotive with a passenger car body. Also consider that these MU cars are not a standardized design so the development costs have to be absorbed over a short production run.
CSSHEGEWISCH A self-propelled passenger car, be it electric or diesel-powered, is essentially a locomotive with a passenger car body. Also consider that these MU cars are not a standardized design so the development costs have to be absorbed over a short production run.
Ahhhh, no it's not. A locomotive is built to much higher standards of push and pull forces and contains a lot more horsepower as well as control systems no where near the scant systems you can get away with on a self propelled rail car. Regular Gallery Car about $2 million. So your argument is that adding electric power plant and the specific design of IC Highliner type cars adds $1.5 million per car to the cost? Wow.
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Appears San Francisco got a better deal from the same plant........only $3.1 million per car. It is a different design but is the design difference really $400k in cost to this manufacturer or is Illinois paying part of the low-bid SFO order for 18 cars?
"In mid-December 2010, the Board of Directors of Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART)unanimously approved a contract with Sumitomo Corporation to build SMART’s passenger rail vehicles at a new Nippon Sharyo plant in Illinois. The contract covers the manufacture and delivery of up to 18 self-powered rail cars (nine two-car trains) and cost $56,853,739 – more than $23 million below the original engineer’s estimate for vehicles."
Eh, I wouldn't say that locomotives are built to much higher standards. The Japanese obsession with profitability through efficiency is why something like 98% of scheduled trains are worked by DMUs/EMUs.
ComradeTaco Eh, I wouldn't say that locomotives are built to much higher standards. The Japanese obsession with profitability through efficiency is why something like 98% of scheduled trains are worked by DMUs/EMUs.
And do the DMUs/EMU's have the ability to withstand the buffer forces of pulling or pushing a freight train or can they only handle one maybe two unpowered trailer cars? How do they fare in a collision?
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear in the other post. I was comparing locomotives and multiple units purely for passenger service. However, the point remains that EMU's and DMU's can and are built to the same standards as their locomotive counterparts. RDC's could often handle an extra unpowered trailer car or two, though this was frowned upon by Budd. The B&M had trailers with 300 hp engines linked with 900hp cab units , but that's a separate beast. A frontal collision is really a complete failure of operations and happens exclusively on networks that have cultures that fail to value absolute safety. Trains should not be built with the expectation that they will be slammed against one another.
But in the USA that is exactly how they are built!
Ahh but that's because of the FRA. DMU's and EMU's are built to high standards, often with higher horsepower/weight ratios than their locomotive hauled cousins but can't really compete well when limited to draconian crash standards.
In the case of operating passenger service on freight tracks, FRA draconian = archaic = overweight, hence underpowered.
ComradeTaco Ahh but that's because of the FRA. DMU's and EMU's are built to high standards, often with higher horsepower/weight ratios than their locomotive hauled cousins but can't really compete well when limited to draconian crash standards.
I wouldn't necessarily fault the FRA, our passenger trains are completely outnumbered by heavy freight trains on most routes. What we need is dedicated right's of way. Can you imagine the Metrolink crash if the passenger train had not met the 800k buff force standard? As it was 25 people died, but the passenger cars survived relatively well, had it been a lightweight train like the lightweight Japanese DMUs it would likely have been completely obliterated, with a majority of the passengers killed. This is why I support a dedicated right of way for the CA HSR project, lightweight off the shelf trains that needn't be able to survive a collision with a freight train.
That could have been completely avoidable with PTC, or if Metrolink didn't have drivers that decide texting is more important than the lives of 500+ people. Budd RDCs were used without lose of life on both the north and south sides of Boston with mixed freight service. Frontal collisions are one of those things that should never occur under any operating conditions and when they do, it's often because of a blatant disregard for safe operational practices.
That's a good point, I haven't heard anything from the FRA about dropping the 800k lb. standard but it would be worth considering on lines with PTC once the bugs have been worked out.
PTC will not be infallible. I doubt that the collision standard will be modified anytime soon.
Only with dedicated right of way, with light rail used as a precedent.
ComradeTaco Frontal collisions are one of those things that should never occur under any operating conditions and when they do, it's often because of a blatant disregard for safe operational practices.
Frontal collisions are one of those things that should never occur under any operating conditions and when they do, it's often because of a blatant disregard for safe operational practices.
@dwight Yes, I think the FRA is going to be pretty stubborn about the standard, though I can completely see where they're coming from. I think MUs could operate very safely with a PTC system and a good staff.
I apologize Zardoz if you felt my comment was insulting to the fine men and women who work our railways every day, as the that was never the intent. I never implied that all railroads demonstrate a disregard for safety. Many railroads demonstrate a remarkable culture of safety including Deutche Bahn, SNCF, Thalys and particularly JR.
However, I stand by the statement that frontal collisions are caused by a blatant disregard for operational safety, which is precisely why lower weight MUs should be acceptable. Because many operational cultures ( though certainly not all ) in North America will not allow for the blatant disregards in operational safety that other cultures seem to find acceptable.
At the risk of opening up a big can of worms, we need a clear definition of "blatant disregard of operational safety".
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