Viewliner II Delivery/Production

electricron wrote:I'll be surprised to see Amtrak ever order more new cars from CAF again. The late deliveries and poor workmanship by CAF is unacceptable performance. There are plenty of other vendors Amtrak can choose from.

Would CAF even be interested in building more Viewliner cars for Amtrak? According to the OIG report, CAF stated that the company will lose $41 million on the contract and that loss may increase if the cars are further delayed and either more defects are found or the ones already listed cost more than expected to fix. With the high defect counts and problems with the delivered baggage cars and very likely more fixes for the car types yet to be delivered combined with the very delayed deliveries, Amtrak has every reason to look to other builders for any future Viewliner build contract. If or when it ever happens.*

The only "good" news of sorts in the OIG report is that the direct cost overrun to Amtrak for a $300 million contract is modest at $7 million. That is a small hit for a contract of this size and this delayed. CAF is taking the hit with one advantage of awarding contracts to a big company like CAF is that it can afford the hit while a small or underfinanced company might go under and leave Amtrak holding the bag (ie the 1990s Viewliner I contract).

* Pretty sure that Siemens will be quite interested in building Amfleet I and II replacements using its own coach car design when Amtrak lines up the funding. And will be competitive on price.

Mr. O'Keefe, there is a difference between the Bombardier order for the Acela and that of the Viewliners with CAF. That difference is that Bombardier was confronted with "from scratch" issues even if the carbodies were simply LRC's and the "Power Cars" we're TGV's imported from France.

By contrast, the V-II's we're from a prototype developed by Amtrak and with the V-I's on the road for some fifteen years before the contract was let, there was plenty of experience with the cars.

I'm inclined to side with the IG who has seemed to "dump everything" on CAF. Contracting with them may well be found as "political".

gokeefe wrote:To summarize everything that has been said:

Boxcars are designed for freight operations and loading docks at freight facilities. They are fundamentally incompatible with passenger equipment and passenger facilities.

The requirements for a modern baggage car able to operate at higher speeds (125 MPH) are far more significant than a boxcar which is generally designed to operate at speeds no greater than 80 MPH.

For the sake of argument, there is this example of a passenger-compatible boxcar-based design which met the NEC loading gauge. Speed and frame limitations, I don't know. I'm not suggesting that Amtrak go back on its commitment to an all-V-II baggage fleet, but it would be technically quite possible.

mtuandrew wrote:For the sake of argument, there is this example of a passenger-compatible boxcar-based design which met the NEC loading gauge. Speed and frame limitations, I don't know. I'm not suggesting that Amtrak go back on its commitment to an all-V-II baggage fleet, but it would be technically quite possible.

It would not be compatible with 125 MPH speeds. Those designs were limited to Class V speeds (at best).

So I would strongly refute the idea that it would be "technically quite possible". The speed capability is precisely the most important thing. Boxcars don't meet the crash worthiness standards. The Viewliner design is in fact the only 125 MPH compatible baggage car in service right now anywhere in the U.S. and potentially anywhere in the world.

Wouldn't the TGV mail train cars which are technically baggage cars certified much faster than 125 MPH ?

The discussion is Viewliner II not TGV, even mail planes go faster than 125 but were getting off course ?

From the NARP Hotline:
"Attendees at the March 5 Annual Meeting of the Empire State Passengers Association (and the NARP NYS Regional Meeting) held in Schenectady, NY, learned that the testing of 2 each of the new CAF-produced dining cars, sleeping cars and baggage-dorm cars is expected to start within the next month. Some limited, in-service, revenue testing is expected over the coming several months. The cars are being manufactured by CAF at its Elmira Heights, NY plant. Amtrak has been taking initial delivery of the new CAF cars at its Albany-Rensselaer maintenance facility."

Hopefully some progress!

Well ThirdRails little countdown points to Tomorrow as the day something is supposed to happen

To rif on an old church song:

"Today is the day CAF has made..."

I've heard one VERY unconfirmed report that Amtrak may have had a train headed towards CAF today.

Any details? Is it only heading there today, or is the actual movement towards ALB perhaps happening today (since I have to be down that in a few hours anyway.)

C'mon...you've been around long enough to know how this works! What goes up, must come down....a day later.

That was my thought too, but I didn't have 100% accurate information on exactly when stuff was going UP.

a Gene Poon report: AMTK 123 and 520 are on their way to Elmira NY, reportedly to take
delivery (but not at the "acceptance" level) of new cars from CAF.

Since the baggage cars are all delivered, these should be the first
production Viewliner diners.

and since it is a Gene Poon post, we all known the information is half baked or exaggerated. A draft of diners is not what will emerge from the factory. The original three are coming out for testing and returning.

The diner hold up apparently is because they cant get the HVAC to flow right. Hot spots in the cars, cold spots etc. I really dont get why they are having an issue like this. The cars i thought were supposed to use the under car system like the old viewliners. If they would have stuck to ideas that worked in the past maybe they wouldnt be having such issues.

At least they're fighting it now rather than putting the cars in service and trying to fix the problem later.