SC-44 Siemens Charger Locomotives

gokeefe wrote:So really the only thing Amtrak loses is the ability to run into NYG in an emergency?

And the ability to put in a joint-order with NYS (MNRR and LIRR), which you would also lose by buying a tri-mode.

It is interesting to notice the penalty that everyone pays by having what effectively amounts to four modes in the New York area (diesel, overhead AC, overshoe DC and undershoe DC).

its more interesting that buffs keep fantasizing , yet its pretty much set in stone that LIRR/MN/Amtrak will combine a order of third rail dual mode only .
LIRR to replace all dm/de
Amtrak to replace 18 P32acdm with about 22 new units
MN replacing 30 P32acdm with upto 38 plus new units.

DutchRailnut wrote:its more interesting that buffs keep fantasizing

If a question is going to be asked or a thought shared this would seem to be the place to do it.

Questions about platform utilization at Penn Station have become very serious indeed. "This is the way it's always been done" is not as good an answer as it was when the facility was running well below capacity.

Terminating regional trains at New York Penn is starting to look like a waste of a track slot when there is nearly round the clock demand for outbound travel.

All of those reasons for tri modes would require the train to loop at sunnyside or have power or cab car on the other end of the train. The initial cost of such engines would be extreme, as well as trying to maintain such. Amtrak already provides connecting services to all of those destinations at penn station where riders switch trains. Regional travelers are not that hard up to switch trains in penn for the ride up north to albany. Amtraks current model for this costs them no additional monies and requires no disastrous highly expensive AC/Diesel dual modes that are to heavy to ever meet certification over 90mph.

ApproachMedium wrote:All of those reasons for tri modes would require the train to loop at sunnyside or have power or cab car on the other end of the train. The initial cost of such engines would be extreme, as well as trying to maintain such. Amtrak already provides connecting services to all of those destinations at penn station where riders switch trains. Regional travelers are not that hard up to switch trains in penn for the ride up north to albany. Amtraks current model for this costs them no additional monies and requires no disastrous highly expensive AC/Diesel dual modes that are to heavy to ever meet certification over 90mph.

Yes. It would make much more sense to extend Regionals to New Haven than to Albany.

andrewjw wrote:

ApproachMedium wrote:All of those reasons for tri modes would require the train to loop at sunnyside or have power or cab car on the other end of the train. The initial cost of such engines would be extreme, as well as trying to maintain such. Amtrak already provides connecting services to all of those destinations at penn station where riders switch trains. Regional travelers are not that hard up to switch trains in penn for the ride up north to albany. Amtraks current model for this costs them no additional monies and requires no disastrous highly expensive AC/Diesel dual modes that are to heavy to ever meet certification over 90mph.

Yes. It would make much more sense to extend Regionals to New Haven than to Albany.

I would love this, but....
You now need either a cab car at one end, an engine at both, or a run-around move in NYP.

And you'd need to run 1/2 the seats backwards, which still seems to bother folks.

Now, if this mythical idea of a NYP-Pittsfield via Albany route ever comes to fruition, that's a decent argument for doing something like a cab car. Once you've got that, running on to DC from NYP isn't a bad idea.

Now, you could do ALB-NYP-BOS, but there's not a huge market for that.

That said, Cab cars ideally will be coming, but not for awhile.

It's not beyond reason to imagine a thru NYP route involving Sunnyside, the Hell Gate Bridge and some connection in the South Bronx to Metro North Hudson Division (hence to Allbany. etc). There already is some kind of freight connection along the Harlem/East rivers leading to the yard next to the Hell Gate / NH ROW and I believe there is some kind of track connection there between that yard and the NH ROW. Quite likely this connection is not ready for prime time and it would need some serious work to support even light passenger usage, but it would not a tremendous big deal.

A more circuitous route probably needing more (and perhaps more logistically problematic) trackwork would be to continue along the Hell Gate route to the junction before New Rochelle and take a left there (on the new trackwork you'd need) to head back towards the city, turning north again at the Y where the Harlem and Hudson lines meet.

Amtrak did something like this (going to New Rochelle and changing power and reversing) in order to briefly use Grand Central while the recent track rebuilding project at NYP was happening. A similar maneuver would also work for this kind of trip (DC-Albany) with no trackwork necessary, just an extra half hour or so of cruising around NYC (with some decent views) and the riding backwards thing. Of course, with an engine change and riding backwards, one could do this at NYP and save the cruising around. For an even more ridiculous plan, one could go to New Rochelle and reverse, add an engine and get towed back into NYG/GCT and then reverse again, proceeding normally up the Hudson from there.

You're never going to get a wye put in at Shell. There's no room there for it. Just use a connection between Penn and GCT. Problem solved.

The only thing "tri-mode" that's going to be offered is with either/or DC or AC ordering options in the Siemens product catalog. Siemens is going to aim hard at enough component modularization in the "Charge-Sprint" to be able to plug the E-mode compartments with either DC 750V or AC 12.5/25 kV | 25/60 Hz with as few changes as possible to all other diesel and common components. With an idealized design target of total modularization and zero mods to non- E-mode by the time they get things totally perfected on the platform for subsequent orders. They'll sell a crapload of DC units in this upcoming NYSDOT/MTA combo order, then use the large scale of that first-order installed base to substantially undercut the ALP-45DP's unit price and support costs on the AC version to entice other customers who are currently scared to death by the ALP's blowout cost/ops/maint margins.

Despite the Day 1 feasibility of offering either/or DC and AC versions, New York is extremely unlikely to segment the Empire order as AC for the Empire Connection's overhead vs. MNRR/LIRR order's strictly DC third-rail order. Even if you got perfect factory plug-and-play modularization of the E-mode compartments it's not going to make enough sense for New York to consider the AC version for the Empire because that variant will by technical nature have a higher unit cost and weight from the additional transformer bulk and complexity than the somewhat simpler DC E-mode guts. New York just doesn't have enough skin in ops-cumbersome NYP run-thru schemes and paranoia-level future-proofing to bother hedging on that for the post-Gateway era. They gain far more banking the cost premium for segmenting the order into simply buying a few more DC units in this combo order and maxing out fleet sizes as far as they'll go.

The promise of modularization is that the huge size of this New York order--anywhere from 75 to 90+ DC units depending on how many extras get ordered to scrape NYSDOT off the national P42 pool for ALB engine swaps and/or displace LIRR/MNRR Upper Harlem straight diesels with a single unified fleet--substantially lowers the barrier of entry for later AC buys. That includes elsewhere on Amtrak, on partial commuter electrifications like GO Transit's first-wave system, and in California. YMMV in any given case whether engine-swap vs. dual has potential cost or ops advantage, but whereas today the bar for buying AC duals is incredibly high it gets much lower if the "Charge-Sprint" already has an installed base of close to 100 units and E-mode modularization makes new production runs of the AC version pretty academic with falling unit costs for each new order. The threshold for AC dual paydirt is a lot lower in a universe where DC "Charge-Sprints" start off as one of the continent's most numerous in-production passenger loco makes of any kind and building off that scale than they are in a universe where follow-on orders to such extreme off-scale unicorns like the ALP-45DP are the only way to build scale and momentum for duals applications. So while it won't be New York that's ordering the AC version...hope like hell that they lather on as many DC units as they can grab to max out that fleet size. Ultimately that's what's going to pave the way for some of the more *reasonable* AC dual proposals to gain traction elsewhere.

With modern inverters whether the input is A.C or D.C doesn't really matter, it all gets chopped up and smoothed out a few times anyway. If the d.c needs to go through a transformer, it needs to be chopped up before the transformer as well. The main difference with the A.C is the much higher voltage, needing more insulation/ clearances before it goes through the transformer. Space is the issue on a dual mode of any kind. I wouldn't be surprised if it worked out cheaper to provide 2 locos , one straight diesel , one straight electric , than a dual or tri mode loco. THis would allow one each end of the train , negating the need to turn.

What do the prime movers take on the Charger, then? AC or DC? Because the diesel generator on those things I think generates AC, and it'll make sense if the prime movers were AC.

The prime mover takes Diesel but it generates AC, which gets rectified to a DC bus , of which the traction and HEP inverter generate the proper AC .
big difference with a DC dual mode and AC dual mode is the 10 to 15 ton transformer it has to lug along.

Assuming that the locomotive generator voltage in the approximate range it wants to use in the prime mover, and that the 10-15 ton transformer is to step down catenary voltages or to step up third rail voltages, I'm curious as to which it is; i.e. is the AC catenary version or the DC third rail version the reason for the heavy transformer.

I'm also curious as to how these considerations fit in with those involving dealing with the several voltage-frequency combinations available in the NYC area's various AC cat systems. Is this issue related to whatever equipment is required to deal with different frequencies or is it just another variation of the same stepping down the high catenary voltage thing?

Pretty sure the issue is AC. As I understand it the DC voltage on the third rail is basically the same as the voltage to the traction motors (corrected per Dutch).