I've been an Oregonian for the last six years and I hope for many years more. While I think the Talgos used on the Amtrak Cascades are charming, they show such a disappointing inability to deal with service popularity and immediate need. Too, without dedicated or specially tailored right of way, the Talgos can't offer higher speeds promised by their builder - despite their tilting pendular capability - so 79mph is about it. Big deal!
Having grown up from the lowly Espee 1960s and '70s Sacramento Daylight through the miraculous Amtrak California San Joaquins and Capitols, I am amazed and somewhat appalled that the states of Washington and Oregon are so 'wowed" by the Talgos. These government transportation agencies seem to have been enthralled on a concept that lacks substance in the face of freight railroads that can't or won't provide the necessary signalling and infrastructure to make the Spanish-built trains really outperform a conventional US-built intercity train.
So, why can't we all push these agencies to adopt the "California Car" as nearly perfected by Caltrans for Amtrak California service on the Surfliners, San Joaquins and Capitols corridors? At least Amtrak California can add a car on demand when sufficient idle equipment is on hand. Amtrak Cascades requires reservations at all times because they cannot expand Talgo train consists without much advance planning thanks to pendular articulation. God help a passenger if you just show up at the depot hoping to catch a ride north or south...no reservation, no ticket, no ride! Except for the San Joaquins in California, that doesn't much happen.
I honestly belive the Talgos could provide a stellar service in the PacNW if there were 10 to 15 trainsets of ten to fifteen (short) cars each. But we must recall that each Talgo coach is less than 50 feet long, holds about half or a third as many passengers as an Amtrak California bi-level coach, and offers no significant speed advantage under present circumstances than these cleverly adapted Superliner clones in the Golden State.
So I'm wanting to start a movement - a push for the addition of newly funded and built Amtrak California style bi-levels on the Cascades Corridor to grow the business. It galls me that there are so many departures from Colfax/Auburn-Sacramento to the Bay Area in so few years versus the three puny departures the Cascades Talgos offer over a whole decade.
And now the entire fleet of Talgos are all out of service for safety checks...talk about salt in the wound!
One of the discussions about bringing Talgo to the Midwest, in some alternate Universe/timeline where we get the money, centered on the fixed consists. I was told that fixed consists for Talgo are not a problem because Amtrak effectively runs fixed consists of Horizon cars on the Hiawatha and other corridor trains. The argument is that if they need extra capacity they would (semi-)permanently add a car because the incremental cost of running that car all of the time is less than the cost of switching it in an out of consists.
Does anyone know if they switch cars in and out of the Pacific Surfliner consist? I suppose lengthening a Hiawatha consist from 4 to 5 cars is doable if you have a spare Horizon car somewhere in Beech Grove that you can repair. The Pacific Surfliner is its own fleet of cars, so the question is if there are any spare Surfliner coaches. As for the Talgo, they could in theory add cars to that consist - they can uncouple cars in the shop - but again the question is where could they conjure up another Talgo car apart from ordering it from the Talgo Company as an expensive special order.
The subject of crowded trains on Hiawatha and the new Illinois trains came up, and I had suggested perhaps they could work a deal adding Metra bi-levels to the consist for busy weekends. A bi-level is couplable to a Horizon car although I don't know the compatibility of the trainlined MU or HEP. The bi-levels are in demand for work-day rush hour and they are idle much of the other time, and using them for a weekend peak of, say, the Springfield or St Louis or even Hiawatha would be an effective use of resources. I received a rather derisive and sarastic response from someone who is prominent in Illinois passenger-rail advocacy circles in the form of "why don't we have the passengers ride in open-top gondalas while we are at it?"
I was later told that the Hiawatha and other state-subsidized trains had started out with suburban bilevels but that the Horizon cars was an upgrade that resulted in greater passenger acceptance. On the other hand, often times in peak times we want to get somewhere when everyone else has the same idea, and we may accept a higher-density seating arrangement without seat recline, hence I was a little miffed that my suggestion of "seasonal" use of the bi-levels was not only rejected but treated in such an off-hand way, especially in light that these trains used bi-levels when they started out so what I had suggested was not that lame.
Yet another consideration is that airlines run fixed consists (you can't tack on another cabin to a 737), and people work around the restrictions. One counts on the process of making an airline reservation as a negotiation process around what seats are available at what times and at what price, one adjusts travel plans around this, and one is advised to plan trips well in advance to get seats at good prices at really busy times.
As to the aversion to turning or switching trains in these days of bi-directional fixed consist corridor trains, I saw somewhere that Metra indeed switches consists. They run as many as 11-car rush hour consists and 4-car off-peak consist, and the off-peak consist is actually coupled at the tail end of a cab car of a 7-car consist to add the additional 4-car with a second cab car bringing up the rear of the train -- something like
loco-coach-coach-coach-coach-coach-coach-cab-coach-coach-coach-cab
where they switch out the lead cars and run a bob-tailed consist of
loco-coach-coach-coach-cab
off-peak.
Metra gets away with running cab cars in the lead for the push mode of push-pull while Amtrak uses full locomotives or ballasted "cabbage-car" F40's. I don't know if a non-revenue cab car is an FRA rule for Amtrak, but I read that your Cascades Talgo is required to have 100+ ton locomotives or non-revenue cab cars at the ends in addition to the non-revenue Talgo-consist end cars to satisfy FRA rules for "grandfathering" the lightweight Talgo equipment into continued use. After the Glendale, CA accident, the days of revenue-seat cab cars or even MU cars for all that matters may be numbered.
I had suggested the idea of bringing back cab cars in place of the F-40 cabbages as a fuel-saving measure with greatly reduced train weight for short corridor consists along with improved aerodynamics of not having the boxy F-40 with the height step. Again, the same group of passenger-rail advocates layed into me saying that the cabbage car was there to protect the lives of train crew and implying that I wanted to sacrifice locomotive engineers for the sake of a minor increase in fuel economy. Boy, there are a lot of folks in the passenger-rail community who are loads of fun to hang out with from the standpoint of being a train enthusiast and asking what-if questions!
Finally, as to the 79 MPH speed limit, the California trains work under that same speed limit. I suppose if you are restricted to 79 you could easily substitute California Cars or Superliners and get a more spacious train car, although you would lose about 20 minutes on the schedule owing to curve restrictions.
If we are viewing the 79 MPH trains as a cautious, incremental approach with an eventual end-point of 100 MPH+ high-speed trains, perhaps the most important thing from the standpoint of passenger acceptance is adherence to schedules. Don't know how California does on time keeping, but part of their capital budget was buying the Surfliner cars and F59PHI locos; a bigger part of their budget was on various track improvements to accomodate the service. They seem to have worked closely with Union Pacific to figure out how to accomodate the trains and they have added terminal-area trackwork to eliminate choke points to make this all work.
I hear that with the Illinois trains, they have a more adversarial relationship with their host railroad and their time-keeping is suffering. Another well-known Illinois passenger-rail advocacy person, not the one who dissed me about bi-levels, was quoted as saying "think of how much more the ridership would increase if they ran the trains on time." In another question posed to insult-passenger-rail-advocate, I had asked why Illinois hadn't purchased their own train cars in the fashion of California and instead had to scrounge on the Amtrak system, and I was told this was for cost saving. So for one of the promoters of the Illinois service to chide the service for bad time keeping is somewhat disenginous. A good part of the California experience was that while they didn't built a subgrade-up TGV, they bought their own locos, passenger cars, and made a lot of choke-point track upgrades in close cooperation with their host railroad on their own dime without complaining that the Federal government or Amtrak or their host railroad was withholding necessary resources when trying to do this cheaply, or at least with other people's money.
So, I got to thinking. There is this maxim about war that arm-chair generals worry about tanks and guns and warplanes; real generals worry about logistics (getting enough food, water, ammo, clothes, spare parts to the front). Perhaps arm-chair railroaders worry about the train equipment or perhaps improvements to the track; real railroaders worry about signals. The 79 MPH restriction is foremost one of signals; maybe with GPS and computers and all of the wireless communication, there will be some breakthrough in signals that will solve the speed restriction problem and the freight-train schedule interference problem and passenger trains will get well again.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Redwood Chopper wrote:without dedicated or specially tailored right of way, the Talgos can't offer higher speeds promised by their builder - despite their tilting pendular capability - so 79mph is about it. Big deal
Now what kind of top speed are you trying to achieve? FRA crashworthiness specifications have gone up since 1999, and the requirements insofar as track classes and signaling are just as stringent as ever. You can get 125 mph with both Talgos and Surfliners if you upgrade the Cascades corridor to Class 7 track, cab signals plus automatic train stop (and of course, significantly geared and powered locomotives); but the speed difference through curves would yet be significant and give the Talgo sets the edge over the conventional rolling stock.
79 MPH, Grade Crossing Protection!!! No Grade Crossings between Boston and Washington EXCEPT in the New London, CT area. (Tourest Area)
In the Northeast Corridor, all trains are Reserved Seat Trains. The 20 Acela Train sets differ from the French TGV, on which it's based, in that each car has its own pair of 4 wheel trucks which does allow a car to be removed or added if needed. Remember, only 15 of the 20 are in service on a normal day.
The Regionals use Amfleet Cars excect on Holiday weekends. They then "borrow" Commuter Coaches from Boston and other east coast cities to add cars.
Don U. TCA 73-5735
I'm well aware of the differences between average speed/sustained speed and top speeds. However, my basic point against the cascades talgos was not so much speed related as their service flexibility. Right now the Cascades Corridor needs to grow its market. I do not believe the Talgos manage to capture growth. Their fixed consists - which top out at about 10 cars, the equivalent of about 5 conventional standard (lile Horizon) coaches and 4 bi-levels - limits Amtrak (WADOT+ODOT) from quickly adjusting to demand or to actually build demand at smaller cost.
At some point, say once frequent service (more than three daily trains in each direction) between Portland and Seattle is established...more like 6 to 7 minimum each way departures...Talgos might work epecially well, particularly in express service. At the present time, however, the BNSF has largely provided a well-engineered double track line with bi-directional signals and higher speed crossovers. The Tacoma area still means slowing for curves and congestion, but the area where speed is more important is south of Tacoma where sustained running with few stops is crucial.
WADOT's I-5 is a marvelous freeway, but is quickly approaching saturation and is seeing a lot of commercial tractor trailers. For me, this means a semi-pleasant drive, but not a fun one thanks to having to be sharply attentive in making the 200-odd mile drive between Portland and Seattle. WA Highway Patrol can be aggressive and Washington freeway drivers tend to me even more so...drivers speeding 15 to 20mph over the posted speed limit (65 in most areas) is typical. So I prefer the train. I just don't enjoy having to compete for a highly limited number of Talgo seats, and hate the fact that I can't just go down to Union Station and climb aboard for a pleasure trip that may be spur of the moment, or a business trip that is brought on by a meeting venue change, etc.
To build a strong and steady Cascades Corridor fast and frequent service needs to be provided. Frequent just isn't happening. ODOT hasn't contributed much to the service costs and that is much to blame, but even if the OR legislature came up with capital funding, I don't see why the transit agencies should stick entirely to the Talgo concept at this time.
I think you'll find a lot of answers to your questions here http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/rail Download the Long Term Plan at the link on the right of that page. The Train Equipment link is also relevant to this discussion.
Long term - 20 years out, Washington DOT is looking to own a total of 15 Talgo trainsets operating at 110 MPH, once planned track upgrades are completed.
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