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The Amfleets were the one-to-one replacement for the Heritage coaches, the ACS-64 fully replaced all of Amtrak’s other motors, and the Genesis fleet wholly replaced the F40PHs and FL9s. Otherwise, I guess the only full replacement of an entire class is the V-II baggage car.

My point was that Amtrak one go 1 new Viaggio car, 1 Amfleet in the scrap pile.

That appears to be the exact intention with this order ...

That's usually how things happen as far as I'm aware - as a handful of cars come on property and released for service, they release roughly the same amount from service to either backup or retirement or scrap, depending on the needs of the day. This can also depend on acceptance testing, usually 5-ish of the new rolling stock are tested by the carrier and in Pueblo and examined by maintenance forces. Sometimes new cars will build up in yards before the initial test fleet is done testing.

tomj wrote:My point was that Amtrak one go 1 new Viaggio car, 1 Amfleet in the scrap pile.

And that explains why there's no such thing as a surge fleet on Amtrak. Is it cheaper to pay to use commuter cars on only Thanksgiving weekend [ and mostly only Sunday, at that]? Are there other "surge periods" where back-up equipment is needed? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Surge fleet cars could be assigned to trains that are booked full. For example the Meteor is often booked solid during summer travel and other holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas season, Easter, memorial day and summer travel peak. Other trains have other peak times such as the Crescent ATL <> WASH..

The best surge fleet is one that someone else maintains for you. Besides MARC and NJT along the NEC, it seems like Amtrak could get some use out of the Metra fleet for Midwest holiday travel. In the past I’ve suggested a Friends of Amtrak Equipment Trust that would own Heritage cars, lease them to private operators for events and charters, and then lease full LD trainsets to Amtrak for a nominal fee during peak travel seasons - but the Anderson administration seems like it would have no need for that concept.

There are some differences between the inspection requirements for private charter cars and cars used in revenue service. Although I understand its not "regular" revenue service I'm not sure the FRA would agree. Others in these forums know far better than I do exactly what the issues might be.

At long last:

The first 7 carshells are in production at Siemens Sacramento Facility and carshell #1 has completed the passivation process. Carshells 8 through 12 are in the initial stages of construction. The expansion of the Sacramento production facility is in process and on target for a November completion.

A fleet of 50-75 cars would be perfect to keep for the holiday surges and to lease to commuter agencies such as the LIRR during the summer season as needed. Keeping more would be of no benefit to them, except to get expanded service off the ground. They would be a great asset to helping more regional lines service and once established, replacements could be afforded.

So I was reading the document and I saw Reissue revised Bi-Level PRIIA Spec as a thing.

Now This is interesting because I SUSPECT but can't prove that the superliner style bilevel cars are still popular enough outside of the NEC that there is a demand for a next gen Superliner style car so in theory someone could build one to replace the Amtrak direct superliners.

I think they might be going in a different direction ... Reissue in order to facilitate purchase of existing equipment types. Look at what Siemens builds and then see if that has compatibility issues with PRIIA bi-level spec.

Maybe after the Nippon Sharyo debacle they realized their specs were unrealistic?

I mean I am shocked because the Superliner 2 is literally an old design, they could unironically have Bomb build Superliner 3s from the same stuff as Superliner 2s, put in new guts, modern ACs and use their off the shelf truck designs and boom, a 110mph superliner is ready to go.

They could but then you'd still be stuck with an old design. No room for innovation at all and no accounting for improvements in mechanical design from the last 40 years. Potentially very inefficient from a lot of different viewpoints.