Amtrak 90218 and Sequel: May 30 Collision Jackson MI

If "they" (management) decided to put a Cabbage on the rear end of 55 or 56 (vermonter) it would take time and man-power and equipment to remove/add the unit in New Haven, CT when they take the lead / rear diesel off and add the electric motor. The Cabbage cars are restricted south of Gate interlocking (right out of NYP) so they cant be used or dragged through the East River tunnels. Nice try.

Vermonter only has the cab car in use along the Springfield line (and through to Palmer, MA), which is what all the shuttles on the Springfield line use. Haven't heard about cab car crashes on the Springfield line in quite a while. I know there was a cab car collision with the Vermonter a while back when it was leading the train through Vermont, but Vermonter only has cab car forward for a short distance over its entire route - and that's on the Springfield line and from Springfield to Palmer.

Although I also concur that some of the F40s may have been better suited for cabbage service than scrap. If Amtrak can sell the F40s, that's money in the bank that it also needs. But most of this should have already been sorted out. I think it was around 2002 when I saw a line of F40s at Albany, before they were hauled away to Beech Grove. That was the last time I saw a group of Amtrak F40s together like that.

I thought that Amtrak didn't own any F40s anymore -- that all were sold, mostly to Rail World Locomotive Leasing.

http://www.railworldinc.com/rail_world_ ... easing.htm

Does anyone know if the Conductor was hurt?? What train was it? The Blue Water or one of the Wolverines??

When I walked up to him after the accident looking for the engineer and asking if the engineer was OK , he said I am the engineer. rear unit was AMTK 35.... engineer was in the cabbage car.
More pics on this site.
http://www.railroadfan.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1960

It was AMTK 350 Chicago to Dearborn

The photos and their descriptions show and say most of the story.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=145906
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=145837
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=145829
http://www.railroadfan.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1960
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoPi ... 841&Page=1
http://gp30.rrpicturearchives.net/archi ... x?id=13002

Some of those photos are just horrendous. Did they replace #90218 at Jackson? or did they continue to Chicago?

The 90218 was left at Jackson yard (as of Saturday the 3rd Unit was still in the yard). Dont know about the rest of the train if it continued to Detroit or what. Will do some checking.

From an insider on another group this is what I came up with.
http://www.railroadfan.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1960

• Haven't heard anything OFFICIAL on this rollin' boat anchor.
  
  I ended up taking the rest of the equipment back to Chicago that night; after cutting off the cab car, we left Jackson only 15 min. behind 355's schedule. Poor ole 353; they really got hosed that day. After sitting there in JXN until the single track was clear, they then had to wait for the signal maintainers to run some tests and try to get the signals to line up westbound; unfortunately they couldn't and 353 ended up running restricted speed most of the way to BTL as the disp. couldn't get CP-99 to line up either. Then as a result of a bad storm that came thru by Galien which blew a tree down across the main and somebody called it in the the train director who stoppped the train until somebody could come out to cut the tree up--they sat for another 1.5 hrs.--we ended up catching them and somebody decided to put our trains together as so not to have to deal with NS with 2 late trains. We arrived at 1120 pm CST.
  
  Then I was taxied back to JXN by Renzenbergers (sp??), but that's another story to be told with some other rails with some barley wine to see who has had the worst trip ever.

So #35 led 355 to Chicago...... Its the Wolverine. ATK owns the track West of Kalamazoo.... east of there, they have to Get around NS.. especially near Wayne Yard... right there is the CSX Jct. and the Ford plant..... only 2 tracks, maybe 3. after that its more industry... all 2 track...

It was smart to combine both trains...... saves time.....

The damaged AmCafe and one Horizon Coach are quite visible to any Amtrak and METRA passenger approaching CUS from the South.

I'd be placing my bets whether either car is returned to service.

The 90218 is back and running on the Hiawatha as of today 4-6-07. It looks very good fresh from repaint for the second time in phase 5 I wish it good luck this time around.

Wow, they fixed it?! That's a pleasant surprise. I thought it'd be "totaled".

If they could repair that, I wonder why Amtrak hasn't repaired AEM-7's 922 and 930. I thought they needed all the electric power they could get.

Good! Thats very good news.....

Any photos since she has been back?