Amtrak HHP-8 Discussion: Use, Reliability, Disposition

west point wrote:Stripping HHPs of parts ? Isn't it true they have to remain in operating condition as a term of their lease ?

Not if the lease is expiring or terminating. We're strictly talking the "if" possibility of BBD simply not being able to come up with useful excuse to take them back when the lease is dead. So question is about pegging the relative upside of a parts strip IF that scenario is in-play. We don't know yet if that scenario is in-play because immediate/pending status of the lease isn't known, nor are BBD's intentions for the units when the lease is done.

Right now the high speed rail dept has Alstom as the parts supplier and has no issues with supply of parts to the high speed trainsets. Often with HHPs we had to take stuff over to high speed rail for "exchange" because an HHP needed a part, and it just was not available at the moment. There are very few things compatible with the high speed trains not enough to make it a significant reason for amtrak to keep the things around after the lease expires. Plus on top of that, by the time the lease expires amtrak hopes to have a new high speed trainset anyways.

Does anyone know the date of the lease termination ? IIRC the lease was supposed to end December 31, 2016.

Tony

Backshophoss wrote:Sooner or later,the Hippo's will be "off lease",would BBD try to sell them off to some of the NEC commuter operators,
(other then Septa and NJT)or Export them to somewhere outside of the US and Canada?
Would BBD even consider donating 1 of the Hippo's to RRM of PA,if the only option was to scrap instead of
resale??

I'm thinking GO Transit.

Go Transit has announced a plan to electrify most of their system. As they have a LOT of locomotive hauled cars, they will need electric locomotives to pull them with. What with BBD being a Canadian company that's getting direct support for the Canadian government I would expect GO Transit pushed towards picking up the units plus how ever many more it needs for it's electrification project. The 21 existing units would be refurbished to match whatever new additional units that GO would need. Therefore I expect the units to turn up in Toronto area painted green and white once the Amtrak and MARC leases are up.

RRspatch wrote:

Backshophoss wrote:Sooner or later,the Hippo's will be "off lease",would BBD try to sell them off to some of the NEC commuter operators,
(other then Septa and NJT)or Export them to somewhere outside of the US and Canada?
Would BBD even consider donating 1 of the Hippo's to RRM of PA,if the only option was to scrap instead of
resale??

I'm thinking GO Transit.

Go Transit has announced a plan to electrify most of their system. As they have a LOT of locomotive hauled cars, they will need electric locomotives to pull them with. What with BBD being a Canadian company that's getting direct support for the Canadian government I would expect GO Transit pushed towards picking up the units plus how ever many more it needs for it's electrification project. The 21 existing units would be refurbished to match whatever new additional units that GO would need. Therefore I expect the units to turn up in Toronto area painted green and white once the Amtrak and MARC leases are up.

These Frankenlocos are not going to run in Toronto. The ALP-46 and would-be later generations are a newer design than the Hippos, are more proven in commuter rail service, use more systems still in active production in or given evolutionary enhancements in other parts of the world, and have a design lock/stock owned by Bombardier instead of the BBD-Alstom mash-up that is the Hippos. There's not going to be another production run of such oddballs from the late-90's, and they aren't going to take a very small fleet of ex-AMTK refuse that'll have been sitting in dead storage for 5-7 years before the first electric train rolls under the GO logo. The Hippos are a dead-end lineage within Bombardier; the ALPs are still a going concern.

Quite a few interesting points made here, thanks for all of the contributions.

Whereas I agree the alp-45 locomotives are more modern, there aren't any spare ones lying around somewhere in North America GO could lease. GO would have to buy brand new electric locomotives no matter who the manufacturer was, and electric locomotives are not cheap to buy.
GO will be spending millions of dollars to electrify the rail corridors, a good way to save on upfront costs will be to lease some electric locomotives for startup. The only ones that will be available in North America are those being retired by Amtrak. There's two different models to choose from, which would GO choose?
If they're going to buy brand new locomotives, there's several vendors they could choose from, I believe it is entirely too early to predict what they will buy. They're under no obligations to buy made in USA locomotives.

Why would GO Transit/Metrolinx build a brand-new system just to mess around with elderly motors? They'll undoubtedly order new motors or MUs, whether FRA-standard or Euro/Asia standard (since they aren't limited by FRA rules up nort, eh?) No secondhand HHP-8s, Acelas, AEM-7s, ALP-44s of any flavor, or E60s If anything, maaaaaaaaaybe a few borrowed ALP-46/As or ALP-45DPs from NJT or AMT, but I doubt that highly.

electricron wrote:Whereas I agree the alp-45 locomotives are more modern, there aren't any spare ones lying around somewhere in North America GO could lease. GO would have to buy brand new electric locomotives no matter who the manufacturer was, and electric locomotives are not cheap to buy.
GO will be spending millions of dollars to electrify the rail corridors, a good way to save on upfront costs will be to lease some electric locomotives for startup. The only ones that will be available in North America are those being retired by Amtrak. There's two different models to choose from, which would GO choose?
If they're going to buy brand new locomotives, there's several vendors they could choose from, I believe it is entirely too early to predict what they will buy. They're under no obligations to buy made in USA locomotives.

ALP-46 (the all-electrics), not ALP-45DP. GO doesn't have a tunnel; they won't be buying dual-modes. They'll debut electrification using an all-electric make, even if it's initially just a short-turn supplemented by diesels until they can finish electrifying to the ends of whatever their first batch of electric lines is going to be.

The 46A update rolled off the assembly line only 4 years ago, and the Euro tech it was derived from is still being evolutionarily advanced. And Bombardier has the overwhelming home-field advantage in Canada for that electric procurement. AMT, GO, and West Coast Express are already 100% BBD shops for their respective coach and/or EMU fleets. If you had to make place bets, bet on a Bombardier product that's still a going concern. That probably means an ALP-46"B" or whatever the next update is. Or, if BBD wins the NJT MultiLevel EMU contract, possibly the same EMU stuffed in the BLV carbody instead of the MLV carbody.


It for damn sure isn't going to be any rehashed 20th century tech.

I wouldn't completely rule out GO Transit or AMT being dumb enough to take the HHPs because Bombardier did some sort of jedi mind trick involving a promise of refurb jobs in Thunder Bay or La Pocatiere, especially given GO's 12 car bilevel sets which would probably move along nicely with 8400HP pulling. But the timing's wrong for GO because electrification hasn't got started yet, and AMT would probably only be interested if it could find a sucker to take some ALP45DPs so it would use HHPs on Deux Montagnes. Also, Bombardier has already been pleading for C-Series cash investment for their aerospace division so I doubt even Canadian government wants to see or hear from them on beat up locomotives right now.

The only other operation which I thought might have some interest is Caltrain.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:GO doesn't have a tunnel; they won't be buying dual-modes.

Even aside from allowing electric service on partially constructed lines, CN holds a veto of electrification west of Burlington on the Lakeshore West line where shared freight operations exist, and between Bramalea and Silver Junction on the Kitchener line. Given that AMT have not managed to override similar CN/CP vetoes in Montreal, I wouldn't bet against them acquiring either pure electrics or going in (again) with NJT on EMU MLVs and keeping only the minimum necessary 45s, with GO taking their surplus to get electric service going.

dowlingm wrote:

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:GO doesn't have a tunnel; they won't be buying dual-modes.

Even aside from allowing electric service on partially constructed lines, CN holds a veto of electrification west of Burlington on the Lakeshore West line where shared freight operations exist, and between Bramalea and Silver Junction on the Kitchener line. Given that AMT have not managed to override similar CN/CP vetoes in Montreal, I wouldn't bet against them acquiring either pure electrics or going in (again) with NJT on EMU MLVs and keeping only the minimum necessary 45s, with GO taking their surplus to get electric service going.

That won't really affect GO, though, since they've been so incredibly aggressive at buying up their lines for public ownership specifically so they can control their own destiny away from CN and CP. Prioritization of what gets wired first vs. last gets shaped by what paper barriers remain, that's all. The only reason AMT doesn't have the same leverage is because they've only begun the process of buying up their lines, whereas GO/Metrolinx and their provincial overlords started stocking up that funding warchest >10 years ago and have completed in-house purchase of a majority of that system. AMT and Quebec province are just now loading up for bear to start of similar buying spree going through the 2020's.

Absolutely if NJT is smart and swung back to EMU's they wouldn't need to keep so many ALP-46's on the roster. Since their whole next-gen fleet plan is predicated on the max efficiency of going to a rote-standard MLV seating configuration across-the-board on all push-pull and EMU trains, logic would dictate that full follow-through on that philosophy favors simplifying the locomotive assignments too. If they paid up-front to fill in the electrification gap on the southern end of the NJCL and the Dover-Denville gap on the Morristown Line, they could eliminate the inefficient mess of EMU's covering some schedules, all-electric push-pulls covering some schedules, and dual-mode push-pulls covering some schedules. They could reassign all ALP-45DP's to diesel territory save for the extremely sparse Hackettstown and future Andover schedules, while segregating the ALP-46's/all-electric push-pulls to strictly NEC duty where the 125 MPH top speed most likely is going to be 25-35 MPH higher than the MLV EMU's and more efficient on electricity consumption (at Amtrak's high rates) than a monster EMU set. Then run the NJCL, Gladstone, and bread-and-butter M&E as all-EMU where the tighter stop spacing is best match for that equipment. There's no way they'd need to keep all 65 rostered ALP-46's if assignments were divvied up by specialty/efficiency that way, so portion of the 46 glut could easily become the proverbial "Johnny Appleseed" leasers or first-timer buy-n'-rebuilds that every system with emerging electrification passes around while their build-outs are still in infancy. It's asking a lot of dysfunctional NJT to actually follow through on all those efficiency gains their own fleet management report lays out in plain sight, but there's at least quantifiable probabilities to assign to the theoretical possibilities there. Those possibilities/probabilities are another point against the likelihood of recycled Hippos ever seeing service when the newer/more numerous/100% BBD design/still going-concern ALP-46 lineage is the make with much better real-world chance of re-circulating...and being sought-after in dollars-and-sense for recirculation.

dowlingm wrote:I wouldn't completely rule out GO Transit or AMT being dumb enough to take the HHPs because Bombardier did some sort of jedi mind trick involving a promise of refurb jobs in Thunder Bay or La Pocatiere, especially given GO's 12 car bilevel sets which would probably move along nicely with 8400HP pulling. But the timing's wrong for GO because electrification hasn't got started yet, and AMT would probably only be interested if it could find a sucker to take some ALP45DPs so it would use HHPs on Deux Montagnes. Also, Bombardier has already been pleading for C-Series cash investment for their aerospace division so I doubt even Canadian government wants to see or hear from them on beat up locomotives right now.

The only other operation which I thought might have some interest is Caltrain.

Agreed on the Canadian roads. AMT's definitely going ALP-45DP standardized for its shorter-term plans to tie more of its lines into the Mt. Royal tunnel. Second order of those is a "when" not "if", be it an outright fleet expansion for the new Mt. Royal run-thru schedules or weaning themselves off of a portion of the F59PHI fleet. And that solves all their equipment prerequisites for a long-term electrification expansion at whatever incremental pace they can swing. GO's timing is simply a lousy match. The Hippos will have been in storage for 6-8 years before first length of wire out of Toronto Union is ready for revenue service, and will--believe it or not--be just as old as the DC Toasters were when the AC reman contract was first awarded. For such a tiny fleet and oddball half-Alstom design it's just too microscopic a probability to wash. Remember: NJT ended up getting a better deal on total cost of ownership buying new ALP-46A's from BBD rather than sending its relatively young ALP-44 fleet out for overhaul. It's not 1999 anymore; the cost/benefit of rebuilding the late-20th century vs. buying a minor refresh of the early-21st century is even more divergent now. BBD could fire up the assembly line and rip out an incrementally upgraded "B" refresh of the ALP-46 in its sleep. I'm not even sure what the profit motive would be for BBD itself to put out a bid for a modest midlife overhaul of the Hippos for +10 years more commuter rail service. They'd make better margins just offering a new-purchase or new-for-lease production run of a 100% in-house, going-concern design like the ALP's. Unless they truly are so vain to want to prove...something?...to Amtrak by putting the Hippos back in service hell or high water. But they wouldn't be in such a dominant North American market position if they caved in to spite and vanity above business sense that easily.

Caltrain's got its EMU specs set (unless they reopen the stupid platform height fight), so they're probably not a candidate either. Short of another new AMT or NJT order of ALP-45DP's getting its trailing options temporarily leased to the Bay Area for first couple years before returning to their East Coast owners while Caltrain is busy filling in some 'tweener' point that's a lousy place for short-turning all-electrics...they seem to have no interest in stopgap rolling stock. They'll run the diesels end-to-end until they're all-wired, and they'll step the EMU order options way far out in so a new surge of units arrives timed more or less at the pace each subsequent electrification segment goes live. They're far enough along on design/EIS'ing now that construction starts are only 2-3 years away. If they were wavering on the fleet plan for each step in the build-out we'd have heard a lot more rumors by now; they tend to be a "loud" agency when it comes to airing out their internal debates in public.

GO is not going to be dumb enough to take the HHP8s, there's a reason Amtrak parked them all! I would expect GO to go with EMUs or a updated ALP46A.

Now, should NJT suddenly have dual modes come up for lease, they might grab them for a gap filler, but that's it. The only others I can see that would be interested is AMT and the MBTA. I know the MBTA is a long shot on this, but if they could get them cheap enough, they might give them a shot. After all, they could assign them all south and use them in electric mode on the corridor. After all, the GP40MCs and the rebuilt F40s are failing at an alarming rate and the HSP46s have had their own issues. Not only that, but that might finally get the ball rolling on electrifying the Old Colony lines, which were rebuilt with electrification in mind.

MBTA won't be going electric anytime soon. Even if they were willing to take on yet another maintenance headache in addition to the ones they already have.
There is only 1 electrified line (Providence/Wickford Jct.) and there are no dedicated trainsets for it, they get used on other lines as well. So MBTA would probably require additional trainsets to be able to dedicate sets to Providence/Wickford Jct., or would have to undergo engine change each time a set moved to or from another assignment.

Given the fact that MARC is now moving away from electric, that would give them pause even if the above factors were not enough.

Jon

MBTA Electrification ?? Although HHP-8s BOS - PVD there appears no way. But isn't the Fall River / New Bedford expansion going to be all electric. Or has that changed ?