SteelWheels21 wrote:they are also saying that it will be the first to use those DMU railsets. I thought I had read that a few other outfits in the country also were using those. Can anyone confirm this, are we the first?
Well, it all depends on semantics, but generally that is an incorrect statement.
TriMet is the first entity to have ordered the Colorado Railcar DMU
that was not part of a FTA demonstration grant.
TriMet is
not the first operator of the Colorado Railcar DMU, it'll be the second. South Florida Regional Transportation Agency (SFRTA, a.k.a. Tri-Rail) - as Irish Chieftain stated - already has a small fleet of the CRC cars. But, again, as Irish Chieftain stated, the performance of the cars in revenue service is, well, less than satisfactory.
There are several other operators of "DMU"s in the U.S.; most notably the Budd RDC, the NJ Transit River Line's vehicle (manufactured by Siemens, it's similar to a TriMet 200 or 300 series LRV but diesel powered), and the
North County Transit District (San Diego County, California)'s SPRINTER system which uses a European design, non-FRA compliant, DMU, also manufactured by Siemens (not yet in service). In Canada,
Ottawa's O-Train uses the Bombardier Talent, also known as the Die Bahn class 643 trainset. Of course, VIA Rail also uses the Budd RDC on several long-distance routes.
As for the Flexiliner, ODOT demonstrated the trainset for a few weeks, and also ran it on a few branchlines as well outside the Portland-Eugene corridor. Yes, it was in revenue service, but for a very short period of time, and only as a demonstration. Those trainsets are back
at home in Israel. ODOT sponsored the "Lewis & Clark Excursion Train" which used a trio of former BC Rail RDCs between Portland and Astoria on a four-times-weekly schedule in the summers of 2003 through 2005. And the Port of Tillamook Bay owns two RDC-1s formerly of NJ Transit, of which one is operable. The Pacific Northwest Chapter of the NRHS owns two former Boston & Maine RDC-9s (coachs, no cab controls), but both were long de-motored and today are cannot operate self-propelled.