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Albany/Rensselaer to Schenectady and on to CP 169 the junction with the CSX Chicago Line at Hoffmans. Amtrak will pay CSX $7 million a year for five years, while the freight carrier will pay Amtrak $1.5 million a year plus a per-car charge to accommodate its trains. CSX uses the line to provide local freight service and to reach its Oak Point Yard in New York City from the Selkirk hump yard. The 17-mile single-track bottleneck between Albany/Rensselaer and Schenectady will be double-tracked to double its capacity; track- work is expected to begin next spring and be finished in 2017. The railroad will also add a fourth track at the Albany-Rensselaer station and upgrade the signal system between there and Poughkeepsie to improve reliability. A separate Capital District project is build-
ing two miles of second main track between Saratoga Springs and Ballston Spa on Canadi- an Pacific’s former Delaware & Hudson line to Montréal. The siding is expected be finished in the spring and should reduce delays to Am- trak’s Adirondack and Ethan Allen Express.
EXTRA ACELA COACHES ARE NIXED: In February 2012 Amtrak received just one pro- posal for the construction of the 40 additional coaches it wanted to purchase in order to ex- pand capacity on the current six-car Acela Ex- press trainsets. The Amtrak Office of Inspector General initiated a review of the proposal in light of the proposed cost and the single source for the contract. The OIG thought the proposed price for the equipment was not based on well- supported or reasonable data and recommend- ed that Amtrak’s Chief Logistics Officer negoti- ate for a better deal. In the end, Amtrak decided in October to forego the purchase.
NS SELLS MICHIGAN ROUTE: On Decem- ber 9, 2012, Norfolk Southern, the Federal Railroad Administration, and the Michigan Department of Transportation signed a $140 million agreement that transfers 135 miles of NS trackage between Kalamazoo and Dear- born to the state. Starting in 2013, Amtrak will upgrade the route to 110-m.p.h. standards using a $195 million grant from the FRA, which should trim half an hour from Detroit- Chicago passenger schedules. In addition, MDOT plans to establish commuter service over the route between Ann Arbor and the Motor City; test trains were run between Pon- tiac and Jackson on November 13 and 14, 2012. Funding for the commuter service has not been identified, however.
CALTRANS PICKS BILEVEL BUILDER: On November 19, 2012 the California Depart- ment of Transportation (Caltrans) announced that Sumitomo of America will have 130 new bilevel corridor cars built at subcontractor Nippon Sharyo’s plant in Rochelle, Ill., begin- ning in 2015. 42 cars will go to Amtrak Califor- nia, while the remaining 88 will be purchased by members of the Midwest High Speed Rail Coalition (Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri) for operation on routes radiating from Amtrak’s Chicago hub. Certified for operation at up to 125 m.p.h., the stainless steel cars are based on the Amtrak “California Car” design and will be built in cab/baggage/coach, full coach, and cafe/lounge configurations.
First of 150 EMD ECO “Rebuilds” for Canadian Pacific Are Released
ELECTRO-MOTIVE DIESEL RELEASED THE FIRST of an eventual 150 Canadian Pacific GP20C-ECO road switchers in early December. The CPR 2200s are unlikely to be confused with anything else on the roster — or on anyone’s roster, for that matter. While they are considered rebuilds and use reconditioned Blomberg trucks and a few other components from retired GP7s and GP9s, nearly everything else is new. Each unit gets its 2000 h.p. from a new, turbocharged EMD 8-710 ECO engine coupled to an AR10 traction alternator. Ordered by CPR’s previous management, the four-axle units were to have been joined by a group of six-motor 3000-h.p. units rebuilt from the massive numbers of SD40-2s on the combined CPR/DME/ICE rosters, using 12-cylinder 710 ECO engines. However, in December the railroad said that while it was replacing 190 low-horsepower units with 150 rebuilds, the company did not anticipate buying six-axle power and said that it would not purchase any other locomotives or cars through 2016.
Amtrak Genesis Units Come Up Lame
USUALLY ASSIGNED TO WORK TRAINS, AMTRAK B32-8WH NO. 514 pulled train 42, the Pennsylvanian, passed Paoli, Penn., on September 16, 2012, as the widenose hood units were pressed into passenger service after several P32AC-DM and P42DC Genesis locomotives were taken out of service due to cracks in their fabricated, German-designed trucks. The cause of the problem was traced to the practice of replacing truck springs singly instead of in pairs as recommended by the manufacturer, and the uneven springing resulted in stress cracks. Amtrak 512, 513, and 514 were still working the Pennsylvanian in early December and had also made a couple of appearances on Northeast Regional trains running south of Washington, D.C., to Lynchburg and Richmond, Va.
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OVERLAND MODELS: BRIAN T. MARSH
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