MARC cars on Capitol Limited

DC bound Capitol Limited just passed (5 Jan) through Silver Spring with four single level MARC cars at the front of the train. Guess would be these cars might have been serviced at Beechgrove?

Wow, that's really interesting. The Cap. Ltd. is known to shuttle commuter cars East-West, but I'm very surprised to hear that the MARC cars even left the BW area. What was supposed to happen at (and where is) Beechgrove?

"realtype"
Wow, that's really interesting. The Cap. Ltd. is known to shuttle commuter cars East-West, but I'm very surprised to hear that the MARC cars even left the BW area. What was supposed to happen at (and where is) Beechgrove?

Beech Grove is an Amtrak maintenance and overhaul facility. It is located in Indiana southeast of Indianapolis. The facility is also used to do maintenance and overhaul on non Amtrak equipment. The WMATA Berda cars were final assembled at Beech Grove.

maps.google.com Amtrak Beech Grove maintenance and overhaul facility.

It is my understanding that MARC is sending out the single-level cars for an overhaul 4 cars at a time. I would venture a guess that these were the first set returning from the overhaul.

spvanhart wrote:It is my understanding that MARC is sending out the single-level cars for an overhaul 4 cars at a time. I would venture a guess that these were the first set returning from the overhaul.

Yeah, but that was by B'dier. Isn't there shop in NY? But anyway I had totally forgotten about that and that's almost certainly the reason these cars were being moved.

spvanhart wrote:It is my understanding that MARC is sending out the single-level cars for an overhaul 4 cars at a time. I would venture a guess that these were the first set returning from the overhaul.

I think the second - I've seen some "different" looking single level cars around for the past few months - fresh striping, newer looking insides, slightly different font on the road numbers. Can't recall any road numbers offhand, I'll keep an eye out and snap a pic.

HokieNav wrote:

spvanhart wrote:It is my understanding that MARC is sending out the single-level cars for an overhaul 4 cars at a time. I would venture a guess that these were the first set returning from the overhaul.

I think the second - I've seen some "different" looking single level cars around for the past few months - fresh striping, newer looking insides, slightly different font on the road numbers. Can't recall any road numbers offhand, I'll keep an eye out and snap a pic.

Well, one of the cab cars has a brand new paint scheme, but I forgot the number. It also has two "MARC" logos (which makes it look less attractive) on the end instead of just the one. There are also many cars with "new" interiors--they look identical to the normal interior but the lights are slightly brighter and the news are definitely brand new (ie. look exactly the same, but more supportive). Plus they have (relatively) new safety booklets. I think these are the "MARC IIa" cars that were rehabbed earlier (the MARC IIb's are being rehabbed now). Other than that I haven't noticed any other changes...