Equipment interior: It's 10 years old now and showing it a bit. The interior surfaces are a bit dirty, but seats and carpeting are clean. Seats are leather and very comfortable. Tables for four at the ends of some cars are nice for groups. Ride is generally smooth. I'd be hard pressed to say it's any better than Amfleet, though. But, considering the weight and that it's single axle, that's pretty amazing. The ride is generally quiet, more so than Amfleet, but only because the HVAC blower is very quiet. Most annoying feature is the pneumatic doors at each end of the car. Very noisy and not reliable. Widows are nice sized. Would have rather had pull-down shades than cloth curtains, though. Would have helped as sun set over the sound. Bathrooms were a bit nicer than Amfleet although they got just as trashy in a hurry during the trip.
The cars have TV screens in the overhead and headphone jacks. This is good. They didn't work on the way up. This is bad. But they did show a movie on the way back. This is good. It was a PG13 rated one - I would not have been pleased if I had elementary aged kids along. This is bad.
Equipment exterior: Paint scheme is great! Not so great - cabbage at north end of train. On return trip, had P42 for power - not a pretty combination. Low floors made entry and exit fast and simple. Passive tilt seemed to work very nicely. I never noticed any strange behavior entering or exiting curves.
The route: It's a great trip. As scenic as the trip up the Hudson River. It's not particularly fast, though. Lots of curves in sections and some really slow connections and bridges hammer the running time pretty hard. No shortage of riders. The Sunday evening train was pretty close to full. The Tues evening return was about 1/2 full.
Customs: Going north, the Canadians do "one stop shopping" at the station in Vancouver. It included a "nosy" dog. You get off the train, grab your checked baggage on your way by the baggage car, and head thru customs. Zoom. Fast and easy. Southbound is a bit strange. It starts out just like the Canadian side, in reverse. You go thru US customs in the station, check your bag and board. Then, at the border, US customs comes thru and does an inspection. There are no station stops between Vancouver and the boarder. I don't understand this.
Stations: King Street Station is a dump in a mostly OK part of town. But, they are slowly renovating it and it should be nice when they are done. It is very convenient to the new Central Link light rail line and the bus commuter tunnel, though - a short walk to a new overpass, then one block to Central Link/Bus tunnel station. Pacific Central Station in Vancouver is very nice and close to a SkyTrain station, but on the edge of a dicey part of town. Both cities have more than their share of homeless wandering around, begging, and the train stations seem to be good hunting grounds for them. The Cascades use a fenced-in section of the platform area to segregate the Amtrak train from the rest of the area since you are on the "other side" of customs, both ways.
Operations/personnel: They assign seats at check-in on a first come, first serve basis at Seattle and Vancouver, BC. How nice is that! The outbound conductor/trainman mans the check in. For the thru trains, the inbound conductor relays in which seats are filled. It seems to work well and is an efficient use of personnel. All the staff we came in contact with at both stations and on both trains was friendly. The only silliness was the tiny baggage carousel at Seattle. They had a dinky, "airline style" carousel that they placed the checked bags on. They grabbed it off the train, put it on a baggage cart, then hauled it to the carousel. They plopped your bags on it so they could travel a good 15 feet or so to where they had you wait. They should have just taken the bags off the cart an put them on the ground outside on the platform apron. (this has me thinking. The baggage carts are at normal car floor level, so they actually have to lift the bags UP to get them on the cart! Maybe they should just get some airline carts and let the passengers pick the luggage right off the cart.)
Food: The cafe car served good food, including some that was from well known local restaurants. Very nice. Cheaper than airport food. One car had the food service and another had some table seating. Seemed to always be someone there buying something, but the line was never long.
Odds and ends: CN has some lousy jointed rail in Vancouver. Talgo does not particularly like lousy jointed rail - the ride was terrible on this short stretch. Talgo goes "click-clack" on jointed rail instead of "clickety-clack". That's just weird. VIA's 20 car Canadian has to double out of Vancouver. 5 cars and locomotives on one track and 15 cars on the other. Is there any other place a passenger train has to make a double out of the origin terminal?
Conclusion: Talgo has a lot going for it. Amtrak would do well to consider it for their "emerging corridors". The Cascade route north of Seattle is great. I recommend riding it if you ever get the chance.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I do remember the outbound summer-length Super Chief/El Capitan in the pre-Amtrak era barely fit into Dearborn Station but the inbound run had to be doubled. An ATSF RS1 would remove the last three or four sleeping cars and put them on the next track.
oltmanndKing Street Station is a dump in a mostly OK part of town. But, they are slowly renovating it and it should be nice when they are done.
Yes, I was in the King Street Station a few months ago. The friend that picked me up from an Amtrak train revealed the on-going restoration project, albeit very little progress noted. There was a display of the project in the main waiting room.
Distressingly, there was no on-street parking in downtown Seattle. We drove around forever, and still could not find anywhere to park. Wound up temporarily parking at the downtown McDonald's, and of course had to buy something (cheap) there. Downtown is certainly a "jumping place," socially.
oltmanndThe Cascade route north of Seattle is great. I recommend riding it if you ever get the chance.
Great advice. I shall go past Seattle next time! What is the length of time from Seattle to Vancouver? Can one get a sleeping compartment?
travelingengineeroltmanndThe Cascade route north of Seattle is great. I recommend riding it if you ever get the chance. Great advice. I shall go past Seattle next time! What is the length of time from Seattle to Vancouver? Can one get a sleeping compartment?
oltmanndThat's just weird. VIA's 20 car Canadian has to double out of Vancouver. 5 cars and locomotives on one track and 15 cars on the other. Is there any other place a passenger train has to make a double out of the origin terminal?
I don't know of any other place (Amtrak trains are not long enough to need such, so far as I know) today where doubling is necessary. In February of 1970, I took the Silver Meteor out of Miami; it was doubled in the station (stub station). This may have been standard practice with winter season trains, at least.
The inbound Canadian is also doubled in Vancouver.
Johnny
sunbeamI rode a Cascade last week from Portland to Seattle. It's comfortable, and very sleek on the inside. However, I thought the single axles between the cars were very noisy, and a bit rough - seems like it would be better to have 4 wheel trucks.
In Spain Found the same ride conditions and when riding over less than perfect track much better on 2 axle trucks. If track is perfect with no freight traffic single axle rides great otherwise............................
blue streak 1sunbeamI rode a Cascade last week from Portland to Seattle. It's comfortable, and very sleek on the inside. However, I thought the single axles between the cars were very noisy, and a bit rough - seems like it would be better to have 4 wheel trucks.In Spain Found the same ride conditions and when riding over less than perfect track much better on 2 axle trucks. If track is perfect with no freight traffic single axle rides great otherwise............................
I guess this is the third try at single-axle trucks.
The first generation was in the mid to late 1950's. The railroads had already invested heavily in a "lightweight streamliner" replacement passenger fleet in the late 1940's based on two-axle trucks, and they were losing money and fighting high costs of operation. There were three attempts at single-axle ultra lightweight trains. One was the Train-X, put into service on the NYC and on the New Haven. A second was an earlier version of the Talgo. A third was the GM bus-bodied Aerotrain -- single axle trucks, but not articulated like the others.
My impression was that the GM Aerotrain hunted badly above a "critical speed" and hence was a naive design that didn't take into account the dynamics of the wheel-rail interface. The conventional two-axle truck is also a naive design, and the British are said to have had such ride problems with their "Mark I" coaches, but it is probably more forgiving in its design parameters.
In discussions of the GM Aerotrain, it often comes down to "oh, yeah, well ol' GM thought they could just stick some bus bodies on rail wheels, and they were no more than buses and they were no good." One could say that "ol' GM thought they could just stick some submarine Diesel engines in a locomotive", but that one actually worked and revolutionized railroading. I think the real answer comes down to the "steering" of cone-tapered wheels connected with solid axles as is railroad practice works out much differently than the steering of rubber tires on cement, and that the GM Aerotrain was maybe 10-20 years ahead of its time in terms of there being a scientific understanding of how to develop railroad suspensions for high speed operation.
The GM Aerotrain had "compliant axle steering" instead of guided axles, and the guided-axle Talgos and Train-X should have worked out much better. I suspect that what "they hadn't yet worked out" was how to guide the axles at the end cars. From the Train-X patents, it was apparent that they just locked out the axle guiding on the end axles, and accounts of the Train-X was that it rode more roughly in the end cars. Talgo may have had similar problems in the past, and the current generation Talgo uses long push-pull rods to steer the end axles from the nearest intermediate axle, a different system than where they got the steering from the coupler or inter-set drawbar.
The other thing about the 1950's experimental trains, and this includes the single-axle trains along with the New Haven "RDC Hot Rod", the lower-profile locomotive-cab RDC's named "Roger Williams", is that they had Spartan interiors. I had a gentleman come up to me at the February Madison Model Railroad Show where I was doing my Talgo exhibit for the proposed Madison, WI train, and he was telling me of his experiences of the 1950's trains. He offered up some complaint regarding ride, but his recollection on that had faded, but his main complaint is that the cost-cutting potential of the new trains was put front and center, and that intercity trains were given the same sparse bench seat and linoleum floot interiors as the commuter trains. In his opinion, passengers were put off by these "third class" accomodations.
The second try came a mere 10 years later in the form of the United Aircraft TurboTrain. The interesting thing they did there was to put dome seating at the ends of the train set and two-axle trucks under the domes -- that avoids the whole "how do you steer the single axles at the ends of the train" problem.
With respect to the yet ongoing controversy about guided single-axle articulated trains, one can read H. E. Edmonson (1969) "Turbotrain" Is the Hardware Equal to the Hard Sell" Trains, Vol 29 #6 pp 20-23, where the author offers up the same critique of ride quality. Then you can read the response by A. R. Cripe (1969) "Railway Post Office: Facts from the Designer" Trains Vol 29 #8 p 50, where charts are shown that the TurboTrain had a smoother ride than a "conventional coach" on the New Haven.
Edmonson remarked, "To a degree, the sound created from passing over the joints magnify the actual feeling transmitted to the passenger" which is pretty much the same thing everyone is experiencing on the Cascades Talgo.
There is one more thing about Talgo and TurboTrain. With TurboTrain, any lateral motion was combined with the pendulum motion. That was OK out on the mainline with broad curves and spiral entry and exit from curves, but negotiating switches, slips, and crossovers in terminal areas really bounced people about. Jason Shron writes in "TurboTrain: A Journey" about how he and his brother, as kids, ignored the announcement to stay in ones seats and would stand among the rubber passageway and have fun being bounced about. Talgo, however, may have separate degrees of freedom for a pure lateral motion from the pendulum motion -- there was a recent engineering journal article by the Talgo people (L Baeza, J Carballeira, A Roda, and J E Tarancon (2006) "Method for obtaining the modal properties of articulated trains equipped with independently rotating wheels" Vehicle Systems Dynamics, Vol 44 #11 pp841-856. -- If you have access to a university library, you need to check this out. Parts are quite densely mathematical, but the article is very well illustrated and explains how the Talgo works) that I would need to study more closely.
Again, the railroad suspension requirements are much different from the road vehicle, and most passenger equipment has had lateral motion of some kind -- swing hangers, side-compliant springs on Amfleet, and so on. Perhaps riders of Talgo could observe whether the combining of lateral with pendulum rocking motion is a problem.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Another thing to take note is that Don reported that the TV monitors were broken on one train set and that conductors had to stow some doors in the open position because the mechanisms had problems.
There are a number of people in the advocacy community who fancy themselves as latter-day Lucius Beebe's or E. M. Frimbo's, scoffing at anything less than a heavyweight parlor car on 3-axle trucks with Middle Eastern hand woven rugs and walnut wood paneling. There are a number of such in our local advocacy group who are looking forward to the Talgo as being more plush than the Horizon Cars, which are scoffed at as "mere commuter equipment adapted for Amtrak service -- we need something nicer." Whether Talgo will meet those expectations remains to be seen -- maybe when they still have the 'new train smell' and haven't acquired 10 years of that baked-in grime on wall surfaces.
On the other hand, when stuff is visibly broken (and when bathrooms are let to get all messed up, probably the combined efforts of sloppy passengers along with low effort of onboard personnel), and problems with doors has also been a knock on the Horizon cars in Hiawatha service, it creates a kind of "low rent" and "Greyhound bus terminal" ambiance.
The average travel, who is trying the train but has other options, probably has no reference of comparison regarding a bumpy ride in places. But the broken TV's, the out-of-service doors, and the sloppy bathrooms, however, could be off-putting.
Paul MilenkovicAnother thing to take note is that Don reported that the TV monitors were broken on one train set and that conductors had to stow some doors in the open position because the mechanisms had problems. There are a number of people in the advocacy community who fancy themselves as latter-day Lucius Beebe's or E. M. Frimbo's, scoffing at anything less than a heavyweight parlor car on 3-axle trucks with Middle Eastern hand woven rugs and walnut wood paneling. There are a number of such in our local advocacy group who are looking forward to the Talgo as being more plush than the Horizon Cars, which are scoffed at as "mere commuter equipment adapted for Amtrak service -- we need something nicer." Whether Talgo will meet those expectations remains to be seen -- maybe when they still have the 'new train smell' and haven't acquired 10 years of that baked-in grime on wall surfaces. On the other hand, when stuff is visibly broken (and when bathrooms are let to get all messed up, probably the combined efforts of sloppy passengers along with low effort of onboard personnel), and problems with doors has also been a knock on the Horizon cars in Hiawatha service, it creates a kind of "low rent" and "Greyhound bus terminal" ambiance. The average travel, who is trying the train but has other options, probably has no reference of comparison regarding a bumpy ride in places. But the broken TV's, the out-of-service doors, and the sloppy bathrooms, however, could be off-putting.
King Street station has to come up a notch to feel as good as a bus station. It's a mess. But, if they ever finish the renovation, it'll be a gem.
I give Amtrak generally high marks for customer focus on this route. The people were uniformly professional, polite and helpful, they tried hard to differentiate the service with region fare and decor in the cafe and the equipment was generally clean, even if some parts of it could use a good scrubbing.
FWIW, I cleaned up the bathroom on the northbound train - figured it was the least I could do being a "railroad guy."
Raceways and outlets for electronics, especially laptops, may be a partial solution.
Seat-back video might keep passengers entertained and quiet if earphones are provided, but that's another cost.
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