Amfleet/SPV2000 shells and commuter conversions

DutchRailnut wrote:There is no servicable cars stored, all need major work to tune of about $100 000 per car.
The reason they are stored is Amtrak does not have that money to get the cars in service.
And unless someting big happens in Washington they won't have money for years to come.

I'm no expert, but. . . .
$100,000 per car or so, for an operating high-speed passenger car on lease doesn't sound too bad. Make the lease simply for the repair of the cars- you repair it, you can use it for X years, we want $100 a year/car lease rate, then we want it back in functioning condition. They're not doing any good sitting around, they'd probably get back to AMTRAK faster then AMTRAK would get the funding to repair them on its own.

DutchRailnut wrote: The shells at Bear are not Amfleet but are SPV shells, they are standard 85 foot shells but probably to narrow for 3x2 seating. also those shells would need to be changed considerably as window size is not conforming to todays FRA requirements for emergency egress.

Are you saying that the window size on the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles is smaller than Amfleet? Maybe I'm naive, but I thought the Budd SPV was just a Budd Amfleet shell with a diesel engine added. Did Budd instead build a whole different shell with different windows?