What Happened to Amtrak's New Acela Trains?

How did the French Screw over Amtrak this time?

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Time Stamps:
0:00 Intro
0:37 Keeping Track
1:15 Back in Time
2:45 The First Gen Acela
5:02 The Avelia's Problems
7:09 No Excuses
9:16 Domestic Manufacturing
11:17 Outro

[alanthefisher]

We should have bought Velaro trainsets like any reasonable person would have

[spaghettiking]

I like how America and Canada were built on trains, yet even setting up the most basic rail infrastructure now is such a challenge, politicians doing anything on rail is considered newsworthy.

[Happymali]

When the Mk1 ICE toured the US they had two main issues:
-Passengers hated sitting face-to-face
-It couldn't cope with the poor US track quality

[Mario-mxuh]

Want a reliable high speed train like France ?

- Dedicated lines for passengers only
- Straight curves
- Good maintenance

Not shitty pendular trains on shitty old tracks to save money.

Pretty simple. But maintenance is the key. France prioritised funds to high speeds lines, the flagship. So certains secondary lines are in bad shape, with lot of delays, reduced speeds, canceled trains, lack of That's another story.

[mixk]

You're right about the domestic manufacturing part. Imagine what if the train lobby was as successful as General Motors...

[LimitedWard]

Everyone's focused the trains, but the real crime was how Alan writes his checkmarks.

[eftalanquest]

putting "wings" on pantographs to stabilize them isn't as goofy as you might think, it's pretty standard procedure actually. pretty much all the types i worked on had them in one form or another

[OntarioTrafficMan]

Throwing money at domestic train manufacturers is exactly the mistake we made in Canada. Bombardier was the world's largest rolling stock manufacturer, and the Canadian government favoured them for Canadian rail orders. In the absence of any real competition, Bombardier increasingly produced subpar products. And although Canadian railways still purchased their stuff, that's not enough to support a large worldwide manufacturer, and they started falling behind on the world stage. Now we no longer have any Canadian rail manufacturers since Bombardier bought all the other ones, and now they've been bought by Alstom.

[remicardona_poly]

Fun fact: the Liberty is the first Avelia out precisely because SNCF/French Gov delayed their order of TGV M (Avelia Duplex). SNCF has been "downsizing" the TGV fleet for the past decade or so (for reasons I won't get into), which has negatively impacted Alstom and its suppliers. Your whole argument wrt supporting the rolling stock industry is on point.

[RVail]

Maybe you could show on a map exactly where the most decrepit NE Corridor rail sections are located. So that everyone would know where rail infrastructure upgrades are most urgently needed. It would be great if the entire NE Corridor could be height upgraded to allow for double-decker train cars to run along that route. Maybe even allow for running a double-decker Auto Train between the Boston area & Florida, for example. Similar track improvements to what Brightline Florida has recently finished upgrading.

[banksrail]

9:48 It’s wild, because the United States actually does this with the automotive industry ALL the time.

[neptuneWX]

Obviously blame the French, Acela must come sooner!

[AndrewTheRocketCityRailfan]

I hate anti-rail politicians, and I also hate it when people won’t learn to admit they have to invest money sometimes

[jfmezei]

Note: Avelia is a generic Alstom brand for all its high speed trains. The Liberty is one version of Avelia. Horizon is the version which SNCF will brand as TGV-M. There is the Avelia Pendolino etc. From what I read, the Liberty has its locos come from the Averia Horizon development but the coaches come from the AGV cars, without traction motors. The Horizon locos are designed to haul double deck TGVs while AGVs are single desk and this explains why the locos are weird shape compared to the coaches. (AGVs have only sold to 1 customer in Itarly).
The other important aspect: Amtrak specified tilting which TGVs don't have except for Avelia Pendolinos. (and not all Pendolinos have it, only the slower models because tilting has to be disabled for high speed trains)
The aluminium car shells were allowed to come from Europe (since no expertise in USA anymore), but the rest has to be made in USA, so Alstom had to source components here so in the end, it ends up being a totally new train that needs totally new testing.
part of the thinking on the tilting is to help reduce lateral force on tracks in a curce. The heavier the train, the mode sideways force on rails in a curve that can push track sideways. By tilting, it at least reduce the weight of the car that is pushed to the side in curce (but not the bogie which remains steady on tracks). proper track inclination in curves eliminates the need for any tilting and greatly reduces cost of train sets (and increase reliability and comfort. It is a HUGE challenge to tilt a train without maing people sick due to any delay between starting curve and starting of tilting. (and vice versa at end of curve).

[christophermeiners]

WOW! Support for domestic companies that isn't based on "Us before them" or "Keep our money here!"

[TheOnyxGemini]

Hello Alan, I live in Watertown, MA, a suburb of Boston. I wanted to tell you about the abhorrent transit situation that the nearby city of Lynn has found itself in. The city has been building more densely around its commuter rail station, however, the MBTA has closed the station due to the disrepair of the building, even though it was built in 1991. A new station will not be done until 2030, which is absolutely ridiculous.
The city has urged the MBTA to build a temporary platform, which will take 12-18 months. Otherwise, they have to take a shuttle bus to Swampscot for the commuter rail or a shuttle to Revere for the Blue Line, which will take a long amount of time during rush hour. It's ridiculous that Lynn, which is the same distance to Boston and Brooklyn is to Manhattan, has no accessible transit to get to Boston. This is compounded by the fact of the large Latino and Black population in Lynn. This has also caused economic problems as building contractors to have densified around the station will suffer since young commuters will not move in without transit. This has led to a grocery store cancelling its plan to move into one of the buildings. I wanted to spread the news about this. If you want to see the full article, it's in the June 25th Boston Globe written by Joan Vennochi.

[brianwithoutay]

In about every 50 comments someone asks about the mismatched side profiles. Short answer is they have always been like that since the beginning when decision was made to pair power cars with trailing cars from 2 different series. The power cars do not tilt so no reason for tapered sides. The trailing cars do tilt so if it makes people happier consider that the sides align at full tilt. It's basic form follows function. 

An early CGI rendering by Alstom did show a transitional fairing piece at the back of the power car to blend the profiles. Hopefully one of these days Alstom or Amtrak will explain why it was not included in the final production design. I suspect the reason for omitting that fairing piece was that power car and trailing cars are already roughly the same width or at least close enough that any deviation has no effect on wind resistance. At their belt line the trailing car may be slightly wider than the power car however above the belt line the profiles of the trailing cars taper inward and become narrower than the power car. An additional fairing on its own could not resolve the profile difference unless the shell of the power car also tapered inward to match. Altering the shape of the power car shell could have altered its structural design and create a chain reaction of parts and pieces that no longer fit within the reduced shell envelope. 

All that would fly in the face of Amtrak's goal of using "off the shelf" components as much as possible to avoid repeating the mistakes of the original Acela. Perhaps the additional fairing would have added unnecessary weight and there were benefits to performance in omitting it. I hate to quote Elon Musk but there is an old adage he likes to repeat (certainly copied from someone else) going something like "The best part is no part. Sometimes the best design is no design. Sometimes the best solution is no solution." BTW - that did not go so well for Elon in omitting the flame diverter below Starship but in concept it holds true.

At first the mismatch bothered me but then I began to respect its aesthetic honesty. I love Amtrak's "British Rail style" 2-tone color scheme for the new Acelas but it would help to draw attention away from the mismatched side profiles if the power cars adopted a more solid color and they did not even bother trying to extend the lower blue stripe across. Extending that stripe across just highlights the discrepancy. Instead I've always thought things would look better if the slab sides of the power cars were the same blue as the roof and current large blue Acela name and logo changed to white on a blue background. Now everything would be fixed, The mind just sees a mostly blue power car trailed by blue and grey trailing cars.

Even as they stand now I think the new Acelas make for an incredibly attractive set. Much more attractive than the Siemens Velaros in my opinion. The Alstom power cars have a distinct and modern design unlike the Siemens Velaros that just look too generic and bulbous to me. The only thing that really bothers me now on the new Acelas is noticing that the car numbers on the power cars and trailing cars do not match in size. They have to at least make those match!

[tonywalters]

DC to Richmond should be electrified, along with the Empire Corridor and the Hartford Line

[ralfschultze]

Highspeed trains need highspeed tracks.Even China build New tracks for the highspeedtrains, you can't go up to 160+ mph on an average road and think its in anyway safe

[Zach_Bloomquist]

Also love that you are wearing a Conrail shirt whilst explaining how this mess was made. Conrail fixing the NE rail nightmare leads to irony with us talking about fixing Amtrak.