Amtrak Acela Replacement Plan Creates Bombardier Rivalry

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Geeze - I'm going to have to get a few more pics of those engines too

Yeah - Amtrak - seems to replace their stuff rather than maintain them for the long term.
Not too bad I guess, since the older they get - the more money they have to put into them

That was the langauge they used in that article, but I'm not sure thats the case. Some of the "newer" budd cars (not counting the Amfleets of course), are already close to 60 years old. I would say thats a good run. I've heard rumors of Amfleet retirement, but I don't think thats anything in the near future. I'm unfamiliar with the status of the superliners, but i'm guessing they aren't going anywhere either.

They may have more of a case for the locomotives, since the P40DCs were a little young to store and sell, but then I haven't heard any bids to replace the P42DCs or the other diesels they have. Some people question the replacement of the F40PH, but then they had a good run as well, and some of them are used as Cab-control/baggage cars, so they are squeezing usage out them.

Speaking of cab cars, don't forget that there are former metroliners still running on the rails. When they were in service, they had so many bugs and flaws that they certainly seemed rip for an early retirement. I haven't heard of any plans to remove these from service either!

In the case of the Acela sets, as I understood it, they just didn't have the passenger capacity. There was a plan to buy 40 new Acela coaches (enough to add 2 coaches to each trainset), but since bombardier closed production, it would cost a lot of money to restart production to only add two coaches. Furthermore, most of the facilities that currently service the Acela apparently aren't really meant to handle longer trainsets, creating additional problems.

In the end, I suppose they figured its cheaper to replace them than to expand them. To bad they can't add couplers to the ends of those train sets and make them locomotive hauled (minus the power cars of course). That way, they could get some use out of the train at least.