oltmannd PNWRMNM Oltmannd, If you want custom items, you are going to pay custom prices. Besides, ATK beyond the NEC is just another welfare project. They need to spread the joy. Mac I suspect that part of it is the whole bidding process. The consultant writes the spec from the "Christmas wish list" given to them by the DOT. The consultant and DOT finalize the spec and heave it out to the public for bidding. The manufacturers bid on the exact stuff in the spec. It can include all sorts of stuff like training, spare parts, documentation, adaptability for all sorts of train control, and who-knows-what.
PNWRMNM Oltmannd, If you want custom items, you are going to pay custom prices. Besides, ATK beyond the NEC is just another welfare project. They need to spread the joy. Mac
Oltmannd,
If you want custom items, you are going to pay custom prices. Besides, ATK beyond the NEC is just another welfare project. They need to spread the joy.
Mac
I suspect that part of it is the whole bidding process. The consultant writes the spec from the "Christmas wish list" given to them by the DOT. The consultant and DOT finalize the spec and heave it out to the public for bidding. The manufacturers bid on the exact stuff in the spec. It can include all sorts of stuff like training, spare parts, documentation, adaptability for all sorts of train control, and who-knows-what.
Well, hey! At least it is not the Lockheed-Martin F-35 Lightening II.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Then there are all the constraints in Federal law when you use Federal money. Content, testing, design...
Beat on high for 3 minutes, bake a 350F for 20 minutes...$7M brownies!
Everybody in the process is pretty much in bed with everyone else: The Transit-Consultant-Supplier Complex, it might be called if DDE were still around.
I can't believe that if an AC freight locomotive is $2.5M, that you couldn't build a decent passenger unit for $3.5M. A GE Genesis with some trucks fitted with frame mounted, quill drive motors would do it. (Just look at how long and how many miles those P42s have on'em!)
The real telling moment will be when (if?) FEC orders 125 mph locomotives.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
schlimm PNWRMNM Oltmannd, If you want custom items, you are going to pay custom prices. Besides, ATK beyond the NEC is just another welfare project. They need to spread the joy. Mac Is it possible for you to constrain your political obsessions?
Is it possible for you to constrain your political obsessions?
No more than it is for you.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
$7+ M a piece! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
daveklepper Wonder how the folks at EMD-Caterpiller and GE are taking this.
Wonder how the folks at EMD-Caterpiller and GE are taking this.
GE did not submit a bid, so I doubt that they expected to be selected. The final offerors were EMD, Siemens, and MotivePower. There is an IDOT webpage with many documents from the RFP for the Next Gen diesel locomotives. In the evaluation report, Siemens bid $225 million for the base contract, while EMD and MotivePower bid $260 million. In the scoring of the bids, Siemens won on points in each category.
The contract is not just for 35 locomotives because the RFP asked for options for up to 225 additional locomotives, including up to 175 in "LD" configuration. So the Siemens locomotives, if Amtrak can get the funding in a few years, are likely to replace all the P-40 and P-42s in the Amtrak fleet in the next 8-10 years. The Siemens bid is reportedly based on the Vectron DE diesel which will have a lot of commonality with the ACS-64 electric locomotive.
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