@jfmezei

4 months ago

As of this fall, an Inpector General report confirmed Amtrak has NOT received any Avelia Liberties. Alstom has stored them on Amtrak property and is having probems with certification with FRA. The major one is that Alstom cannot provide computer modeling of the active banking system for each portion of track on the Corridor something which FRA said was a hard requirement before certification. BTW, Avelia Liberty is a hybrid: locomotive from the Avelia Horizon (aka TGV--M) but the coaches are Pendolinos. (and the lower speed model of Pendolino since high speed ones don't have banking). This is why the shape of loco does not match the shape of the coaches. It is somewhat ironic that in 2018, the FRA relented and realized its own rules prevented modern trains and changed it policy to allow importing modern trains, but the "made in America" rules prevent the importation of tested, working trains that can be put in service and instead the desiging of custom trains with USA components requiring full testing/certification regiment since totrally different from original model. The Viaggios were already heavy steel trains built for cheap in Europe to run on slow lines (only up to 230kmh) and Siemens then had to build a new version of it to meet "made in USA" and FRA rules (since designed in USA prior to 2018, still had the rules that requires everything to be slow and heavy). Siemens has newer Viaggios made of aluminium now but these would cost too much to convert to meet FRA stadards, so Siemens USA continue st offer the old heavy "Venture" cars. Also note that not only does "made in America" require new untested "made im USA" components, but every order of Charger locos from Amtrak as well as Viaggios has has different configurations and thus model numbers. (you noted this for locos, but this means Amtrak will have many incompatible locos that look the same but are different inside and have different perforance.). The long distance ones not only have different horsepower, but also more powerful HEP generators to power the longer trains with power-hungry Superliners. Siemens has sold enough of those Venture cars/Charger locos to more than pay for the deisgn of a "made in America" train. But it isn.t about to import and redesign ist newer rolling stock so USA (and Canada) are stuck with whatever Siemens has right now. (and Siemens has a lot of pressure to fix all the bugs in cars and locos). Cars are also different models for each order. Some are AAR coupler at each end. Some are sets of 2 cars with permanent coupling and AAR at end of the 2 car duo, and some are permanent couplings for the whole train, some allow the lococmotive to be changed. And some have AAR coupler at the CaB end so train can be towed by other loco. There are differenr door designs as well. VIA for instance is blocking doors on one end of cars, while other orders have finctioning doors are both ends. The stairs to access low level platforms are different, and of course Brightline has no stairs as all their stations have high level plaforms and instead, they have platform gap fillers that extend out from under door as door opens. So when each order requires customization, it also means lots of testing and teething problems. Now, only to Amtrak cannibalizing Acella steel trains. VIA has done the same iwth its core LRC cards (as well as trabscontiental equipennt which it no longer has enough to run daily trains). Both Amtrak and VIA thought they would be getting the replacemet trains on time and stopped orderig new spare parts for the old trains, but when the new trains turned out to be late, they were stuck with no spare parts and manufacturers no longer making them available. (For Amtrak part of issue was lack of communications internally between the gusy working on new train project and the guys taking care of old steel Acellas). The new Acellas have fancy tilting system: in the past, active tilting had a probem of delay between entering curve and cars reaching the proper tilting level to cancel the curve and this makes people sick. These new Acellas will use GPS and on-board route database to preduce when they are about to enter a curve and start to bank before the lateral G force is felt so it can be cancelled. (this is one reason FRA is wanting all i dotted on this because brand new and not used before).

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