Amtrak Acela Turboliner.

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battalion51 said:
Wow, that was the exact opposite of what my guy said. He said they had a mechanical problem outside of Croton-Harmon today and lights and bells were going off, he's like "What the f*** did I do."
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Well they also say that when all the alarms start going off in the Acela Power cars too.

battalion51 said:
The train handles poorly, takes forever and a day to load up (the entire train has four traction motors), and doesn't like it when you ask it to pour on the power, which is why he broke down today.
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It's not the number of traction motors that's the problem. It's either a lack of power from the diesel engines or simply that the traction motors are too small. Remember a single engine Regional can pull 8 cars with just 4 traction motors.

The Texas Eagle when it runs with just one engine is pulling a a bag, a dorm, a sleeper, diner, lounge, and at least 2 coaches with just 4 traction motors. So it's not the number of motors that's the problem. Yes it may load slowly too, but once it gets going it can move well.

I think that it may actually be the size of the motors that's the problem. I don't know if they fixed the issue with the rebuilds, but I know that the Turboliner II's could never go to Sunnyside yard on their own power. They couldn't produce enough tractive effort running on third rail power to climb up the grades in the East River tunnels.

This problem however isn't going to get any better, since Amtrak is now planning to only run with six sets now instead of seven. They are going to use the cars from the seventh set to add one car to each of the other six consists.

battalion51 said:
I haven't been on the thing myself, but he knows his equipment so I'm going to trust him.
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I haven't heard anything one way or the other about how the rebuilds are holding up mechanically and performance wise. Overall the passengers seem to like the trains, although I have heard a few people complain about the cars.
 
I haven't heard anything about the remainder of the turboliners in a while.

The last that I had heard, well over 6 months ago, Super Steel was waiting for Amtrak to provide some parts. Amtrak didn't have the money to buy those parts, therefore the rebuilding process had basically come to a stop.

Bottom line there is no status on the rest of the trains.
 
The last trainset to be rebuilt was still in revenue as of August of last year, so it'll still be a while before all sets are in service.
 
battalion51 said:
The last trainset to be rebuilt was still in revenue as of August of last year, so it'll still be a while before all sets are in service.
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No that last Turboliner II set was mothballed by March 1st of 2003, as both I and Superliner Diner saw that set sitting on a siding at Albany/Rensselaer station on that date. The trainset was snowed in, even though the most recent snow had been more than a week before our arrival in Albany. So I know that it was out of service at that point.

By the way Viewliner has pictures that I took of that trainset sitting in the snow on his site.
 
Can we maybe try to lock some of these "questions by ricardo" topics, they're taking up a lot of space on the discussion boards.

That or maybe a separate discussion. :lol: :p
 
As far as I know, nothing has changed since the last report. There are still only two trainsets that have been accepted by Amtrak. One set runs each weekday, with the other set held in reserve.

OTOL does list three sets on their page, which may indicate that a third set has been delivered to Amtrak, but again I haven't heard that it was accepted for service.
 
And two Turboliners may be all we ever see.

High-speed rail service between Albany and New York City may be derailed. That's in large part because of Amtrak's financial problems.
Amtrak is trying to back out of a $185 million contract it has with the state and a steel company in Glenville.
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The full story from Capital News 9.

The above story also confirms that only two trainsets have been accepted. Thanks also to OTOL for finding this story.
 
The first ever French Turboliners for Amtrak came into the country and into service out of Chicago in 1973.

Another different batch was built up for the Empire Service runs in 1976, which they also started entering service that year following some signaling upgrades.
 
None, only the single RTL-II had that red/gray paint job and that was taken out of service last year.
 
From what I understand, Amtrak has now accepted three trainsets. However one of those sets has been broken up and an two extra cars from that set has been added to the running sets, increasing each by one car.

Please note, that the above is unconfirmed. I've only seen one source for the above info and I'm not sure just how accurate that source is.

The remainder of the sets are at Super Steel, but from what I've heard no work is being done of those sets. Amtrak has failed to provide motors and a few other needed parts, so rebuilding has basically ground to a halt for lack of parts.
 
Amtrak Railfan said:
When was the first RTL-II Turboliner Sets in service?
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Again if you had gone to the On Track On Line roster, that you told us the other day that you liked, you could have answered your own question. The OTOL list shows the dates that Amtrak engines and trainsets started service for Amtrak.

Please check this list first in the future, before you ask us questions about when Amtrak brought its engines or trainsets.
 
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