Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="CMStPnP"]My understanding was the Midwest Corridor Cars were based on the California Surf-Liner car type with just a few modifications made to them and they largely followed the Amtrak future standard for corridor cars. Which makes the NS failure to largely apply some reverse engineering to a past car that was already built even more surprising. So not a totally new type of car. [/quote] At first glance it is surprising but there are changes. We concentrated on the 800,000 lbs buff load that both have to carry. The California cars were built before the APTA crashworthiness requirements were introduced in 1999. After building the Surfliners were at least three revisions of APTA rules. Last but not least the PRIIA bi-level cars are required to have pushback couplers as one of several CEM elements. So there are enough changes to get into difficulties. And with all other requirements in the PRIIA specification the weight limit might have been to tight. I have looked into the board meetine minutes. From the test failure to mid January 2017 the is always the same bi-level procurement update: The carshell is still re-designed. From mid January the updates are tabled. BTW Siemens stated that there Brightline coaches are based on the PRIIA spec but heavier. That was the reason for their presentation I linked. If you see that a Siemens Viaggio Comfort coach in Europe weighs about 102,000 lbs compared to the PRIIA limit of 104,000 lbs it might be near impossible to stay within this limit as the American crashworthiness requirements can bring up to 20,000 lbs more weight. On the other hand a Viaggio bi.level is just 11,000 lbs heavier than the single-level compared to 46,000 in the PRIIA specs. Regards, Volker
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag