Apparently, there has not been any discussion here, or I cannot locate it, regarding this order with problems that make the V-II debacle look like that "Sunday School Picnic".
The order breakdown is 130 cars, 88 for Midwest (IL MI WI) and 42 for California. The cars were contracted between State transportation agencies and Sumitomo USA using funds appropriated under ARRA09. Nippon Sharyo was awarded a subcontract for assembly.
About two years ago, a prototype "shell" was fabricated for testing. The shell "flunked" the FRA mandated stress test, although not by very much.
There things sit; the funding with which to build the cars expires this Sep 30.
Posted by palmland (Member # 4344) on :
Rumor has it that contract will be transferred (not sure how you do that) to Siemens in CA to build the cars but as single level. As Brightline knows, Siemens has a good track record. Hope this is true as it would be an easy transition for add on order for Amtrak for eastern routes.
Posted by Vincent206 (Member # 15447) on :
Single level, yikes. I don't know if CA will want to stick with an order for single level rolling stock. As I remember, the new bi-level design had some significant improvements over the existing CA cars. If CA does go for single level cars the Talgos would likely be much more suitable on the curvy Surfliner route than a standard single level car.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
About the web, even though the IDOT posted that the subcontractor was being changed to Siemens from Nippon Sharyo, that posting was a jpeg link that cannot be reproduced here.
For about a day the Ill DOT posted the change, it was "surreptitiously" withdrawn a day later. The consensus was that the release was authentic, but somebody with say decided it shouldn't be out there - and so it was withdrawn.
Posted by MargaretSPfan (Member # 3632) on :
On another forum I learned that the cab-car design flunked because the engineer's compartment failed the crumple-zone test. I have no idea by how much it failed, but it did fail, nor do I have any idea how difficult it would be to redesign the engineer's compartment so it would pass the FRA's buff-forces test. This failure is not a minor issue.
Those tests are done many times with a lot of instrumentation and use crash-test dummies.
I did not know the funding for these cars will expire at the end of this month (Sept. 30, 2017), which is also the end of the federal government's fiscal year. Is it too late to encumber those funds? I assume that that is all that has to happen by Sept. 30.
If I am wrong about any of this, please correct me. Thanks!
I, too, have no idea why Caltrans would ever be even remotely interested in buying any new single-level passenger rail cars, as they simply cannot carry enough passengers to be practical. And these new cars will have almost all of the same drawbacks as the former "Comet" commuter cars which Caltrans has been using, which enabled them to add two more "San Joaquin" trains.
Well, single-level cars are better than no new cars, but that is about all that can be said for them.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
The final "nail in the coffin" has now been driven:
NIPPON Sharyo announced on July 24 that its US subsidiary will close its rolling stock assembly plant in Rochelle, Illinois, at the end of this month due to a lack of orders.
The plant opened in July 2012 and initially supplied 160 double-deck EMU cars for Chicago commuter rail operator Metra. The facility also assembled DMUs for Sonoma-Marin Area Rapid Transit in California and Metrolinx in Toronto, as well as double-deck coaches for Virginia Rail Express..