Oregon buys 2 Talgo trainsets

Indeed, my Subaru Legacy was assembled in Indiana while, say, a Ford Fusion is built down in Mexico. Which one is more American? What about the new Buick Regal? I believe it will be built in the US, but is a rebadged Opel Insignia designed in Europe. There's really no such thing as an American car anymore.

What one should care about is where the value added work is done. Bolting a kit together is not value added. Any old schulb can do that and it doesn't increase the skill of the domestic workforce. The work we want performed in house so to speak is the one that gives Americans the ability to design quanity railroad rolling stock.

Mr Halstead doesn't make things up, he's just picks his numbers to paint as bad a picture as possible. The numbers he states are likely referring to the average loads of all four trains on reaching or departing from Eugene (this includes the 500 leaving at 5:30am and the 509 arriving at 11:45pm). Yes, I've ridden both of those and they do really, really badly (these times should be covered by buses). ODOT was on a kick of actually posting these for a while, but seems to have stopped again. 2008 - June 2009 numbers are up at http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/RAIL/Passenger_Rail.shtml Note that this June the morning trains were canceled for most of the month, so the ridership figures are skewed down (oh my, but I thought they would all switch to the bus replacements? huh). Again, from my experience this probably skews heavily to the 504/507 combination. The average of total passengers for all four trains varies between about 65-110 depending on the month. No, it's not great, but it doesn't sound nearly as bad when it's effectively a single frequency trip with 90-150 riders with seasonal variation (and I firmly believe that the splits are close to this). One of the biggest mistakes Oregon has made is to give people ammunition by running a mostly empty roundtrip just because that's when the trainset happen to be available. If 500/509 were replaced by a bus, and instead there were a roundtrip train connection from 501 to 508 (which could probably happen now that Oregon owns some trainsets), and all of the sudden, you can get to and from Eugene during the afternoon. University students getting out of town after morning classes on a Friday and people taking off half a day before a holliday or summer weekend have an option to use the train. Evening football games in the fall and basketball games in Eugene become practically accessible from the regular service. There's more than one train a day with bus connections (and for the first time something on Sunday has bus connections) You can add extra service at Thanksgiving if need be (Oregon sent 4 full buses north to meet the 514 extra this year--I was on one of them and I definitely was not spread out--unfortunately none of us made it up to catch the train after spending more than four hours trying to get through I-5 traffic jam the entire way between Eugene and Portland-- they must have imported all those cars from somewhere, since the population is a joke. Even on non-peak weekends, I've had close calls on the buses before. None of us complained about the additional bus-ride though, because nobody but railfan crazies cares about the difference.)

The biggest problem in switching one roundtrip to the afternoon is likely passenger train meets, since midday trains would typically meet 11 and 14 (this was already a common problem for 507 when 14 was constantly late before the current lull in traffic)

Here's Mr Halsteads rules for passenger train subsidies, as near as one can tell from reading his postings:
1. If it goes somewhere you want to go, whether that's northwest Montana or Seattle, for the most part look the other way at the massive amount of money it loses to serve tiny portions of the travel market and enjoy using it, and plot out schemes for additional frequency, etc.

2. If it goes somewhere I don't want to ride it, like the Southern valley, it needs to be a bus, and you need to yell and scream and rant about how much you hate it, how awful it is, and berate anyone personally who expresses anything positive about it, whether that be that the scenery is pretty or the destination is desirable, or whatever else they can find.

You guys are too kind.

You're saying that he was merely picking the worst possible numbers out of context. But you can only give him this much credit by suggesting that you somehow know what he meant to write.

But what he actually wrote is that the Cascades ridership fits in two buses with room to spread out. What he actually wrote is that transit access makes no difference to ridership. What he actually wrote is that the group of people willing to take a train, but not a bus, is limited to "a few pro-rail folks". What he actually wrote, in older threads, is that cars get no subsidy.

He consistently says things that are factually false to support his position. He isn't looking at numbers in the worst possible light. He says things that are factually false. Over and over.

If he is just writing too quickly, let him come back, correct his misstatements and admit he got things wrong. It happens. We all make mistakes. But he's been back to the forum since he wrote these many falsehoods. So I draw the conclusion that he'd rather leave falsehoods on the record.

What does any of this have to do with the purchase of Talgo trainsets for the Cascades?

Will they be real Talgo Diesel Locos? Amtrak Locos on Talgo cars look too big and out of place.

Nexis4Jersey wrote:Will they be real Talgo Diesel Locos? Amtrak Locos on Talgo cars look too big and out of place.

It seems likely there will be HEP in the cab car, which offers a great advantage in that it allows the substitution of freight locomotive if there is no Amtrak motive power available.

In the end, there is no advantage in dedicated Talgo locomotives, at least in North America, as an inoperable locomotive would take an entire Talgo trainset out of service.

I had heard someplace that talgo has either adapted a european talgo engine, or delveloped one to be FRA compliant? I'm confused now. Cab car? are these new talgo sets the same design used in the northwest right now, or is this a new design? The current design of the talgo sets strike me as you would want a cabbage car over a plain cab car for safety reasons.

superbad wrote:I had heard someplace that talgo has either adapted a european talgo engine, or delveloped one to be FRA compliant? I'm confused now. Cab car? are these new talgo sets the same design used in the northwest right now, or is this a new design? The current design of the talgo sets strike me as you would want a cabbage car over a plain cab car for safety reasons.

Hopefully the drawing the Talgo RFP will answer some of your questions. It appears that the cab car will have the same general appearance as a Talgo locomotive but will be an unpowered cabcar with what appears to be a HEP diesel. Hopefully, this new design cab car will be fully FRA compliant, unlike the current Cascades Talgos, which require a converted "Cabbage" or a locomotive at each end for safe operation. The old blunt ended Talgo cab/baggage/car apparently wasn't FRA compliant by even the lower standards of yesteryear. Actually, it comes as a great mystery why Talgo bothered to design an non-compliant car car back in the 1990s? Perhaps it wasn't clear what sort of waiver the FRA would grant? Perhaps they thought the FRA would be less vigilant about the safety of an engineer in an otherwise unoccupied, non-revenue car?

Vincent wrote: Here's a copy of the RFP for the new assembly plant. In the pdf there's a technical drawing of the new trainsets, apparently all coach layout without food or bistro cars.

I'm not used to one axle per car trainsets. At least one wheel set per car would make me feel more secure but with the lightweight shorter cars I suppose one axle isn't as much of a problem as it would be on 85ft cars. It just seems like someone took some transit cars and put them on the main line. I'm used to more rugged trains.

Has there been any real world accidents in these trains?

goodnightjohnwayne wrote: In the end, there is no advantage in dedicated Talgo locomotives, at least in North America, as an inoperable locomotive would take an entire Talgo trainset out of service.

You mean lighter weight, less track wear, ability to take curves at higher speeds, and better overall performance aren't advantages?

The Talgo X locomotive was a disaster in Europe, quikly replaced by Talgo electric power heads.
no way the Talgo X power heads can be made FRA compliant and run on only 3 axles.

But the shell of their locomotive will make a great looking cab car.

By the way, here's a drawing of what Talgo plans to build for Wisconsin's Hiawatha

I doubt Oregon will want to buy a Talgo trainset of 13 coach cars plus a Talgo cab (basically all coach cars).
I would expect to see Oregon have at least a Bistro car included, if not business class coach too.

I do like the appearances of a Talgo cab car at one end of the train better than an used F40 Cabbage conversion.
I also expect the diesel locomotive up front will not have to be a F59 specifically, Amtrak's existing GE F40 and F42 locomotives would do, as well as new MotivePower MP-36 or MP-40 locomotives.

P42's look a lot better with the Talgo cars than the F59's do. The height mismatch is not so bad.

The Talgos appear to be just a little shorter in height than the VIA LRC coaches.

Nasadowsk wrote:

goodnightjohnwayne wrote: In the end, there is no advantage in dedicated Talgo locomotives, at least in North America, as an inoperable locomotive would take an entire Talgo trainset out of service.

You mean lighter weight, less track wear, ability to take curves at higher speeds, and better overall performance aren't advantages?

Actually, within the North American context, there are no obvious advantages to a Talgo locomotive, even if it was fully FRA compliant. Basically, if a Talgo locomotive was inoperative, or even simply due for an inspection, the entire trainset would be out of service. With the current setup, Amtrak has even leased freight locomotives on occasion, which is more of a real world advantage than any of the points you raised.