Amtrak cars to Pacific Northwest to replace Talgo equipment

[081552]

Does anyone have any photos of the Horizon and Amfleet equipment that was deadheaded to the Pacific Northwest to replace the sidelined Talgo equipment?

[mj5890]

Sorry no pictures but I did ride the Empire Builder (Aug 4) out to Montana from Wisconsin and there was 4 Amfleet cars(3 coach and 1 lounge I think) which were behind the engine and before the baggage car.  There was problems with the power geting through these cars to the rest of the train, which delayed the train just out side of Milwaukee for about 1 hour.  After that it was smooth sailing

One the return trip(Aug 11) from Montana back to Wisconsin there was 1 Horizon fleet car.  Along with about 5 extra superliners which were reserved for Union Pacific Pasengers, and this extra train length meant that at many stations the train would have to stop twice and even 3 times at the same station for the people in the difrent parts of the train, this extra stoping contributed to the train being about 3 to 3 1/2 hours late to Columbus WI.

Any idea what is wrong with the talgo equipment?

 

 

[Paul Milenkovic]

There are a bunch of threads on other forums talking about this.

Apparently a routine maintenance inspection of a Talgo trainset revealed cracks in load-bearing elements of the suspension in more than one Talgo car (actually articulated connection between cars bearing a wheelset, but the wheelsets are attached to the A-end of one car, and the B-end of the connected car is connected to the neighboring car through a pair of hanger rods).

The story is that the whole Talgo fleet (5 trainsets) has been pulled from service until they can fix this or determine that the cracks won't cause an accident.  Apparently Renfe (the Spanish National Railroad that operates a lot of Talgo equipment) along with the Talgo company know about this problem, although it is not clear what Renfe is doing with their Talgo trainsets.

This is kind of disheartening because there are conservative tendencies, not only among Amtrak, their host railroads, and FRA, but also among the passenger-rail advocacy community about not trying anything new.  A lot of the threads have comments that the semi-permanently coupled Talgo cars prevent switching out defective train cars or running mixed consists of Talgo and Amfleet cars, and there is the general tone of animosity regarding articulated passenger equipment.  I hope they identify and make repairs to get the Talgo back in service.

[Anonymous]

Saw them on Friday afternoon going by northbound while walking back to my car at the Costco south of Downtown Seattle. I did a double take when I saw them go by! Hope the Talgo equipment comes back into service soon. Rode them many times between Seattle and Bellingham.