Get the room, I've done taken it dozens of times and unfortunately the LSL is almost always late into Boston. The slow trip from Albany to Boston is infuriating, knowing you can drive it in half the time.
Any thoughts on the New York section of the LSL and its need for dual power. I wonder if they will have to keep some of the dual mode units to fill that need or replace them with something else.
Looks like Albany is the only one missing. Good news, maybe the Star or Cardinal will get a Lounge. Some of the early deliverers are probably ready for a long maintenance, so good thing there are spares. :)
I took the Lake Shore Limited in 2000 at Christmas. There was a blizzard and we got to Chicago very late, catching a very late City of New Orleans, and got to downstate Illinois at 4am on Christmas day. We were just happy the train was running at all, as nothing else was moving. Even in 2000...
Not sure what it costs Amtrak to operate a car, but if you assume they are making 75% off the PV cars, then it costs $0.82 per mile, or just under a $1000 for one direction on the LSL. Using the logic above, this is likely why the original order was changed to reduce the number of bag dorms...
The Bag dorms will indirectly generate revenue by getting the crew out of revenue space in the current VL1 sleepers. Just for the LSL, 6 crew * $500 per room * 2 trains *365 days = ~$2.2M.
I'm interested to see how he would get more service out of the host railroads, and Congress will want its say if he starts removing service in favor of different service.
The quote would imply mostly off the shelf technology that other railroads use around the world. Maybe Amtrak has learned from the VL2 order. Their most recent orders all seem to be off the shelf products with minor modifications to work here; Acela replacement, Chargers, Siemens replacement...