Yes - it's been discussed here before, but unfortunately this site lacks a quality search function. Again, aesthetically, the consist rivals the Acela. I appreciate the redundancy, and perhaps the real answer is for the higher speed to Orlando. But were talking practically zero grade (even when MIA to ORL is fully operational) and a six to 10 car train - hardly something these 4,400 HP engines would be phased by. I would have probably opt't for a cab car (but one that was identical to the loco, not like the Bombardier ones). That being said, there is stability realized whenever a train is pulled rather than pushed. Would be interesting to know if only the lead loco in each direction is actually the driver.
FWIW, the New Mexico Rail Runner Express only uses one 3,600 HP MP36PH 3C (which has a separate HEP engine), and it has considerable grades, albiet shorter consists. It maxes out at 79 MPH.
According to Wikipedia, they only plan to expand the five coaches to a maximum of seven. If this thing takes off, that could be a bit short sighted.
I'm glad to hear that there was excitement on site. Wish I could have been there!
They only have "plans" to extend the trains to 7 coaches, but that's on the basis of the existing car order (4 cars at the moment, 5 when they extend to Miami, and 7 when they extend to Orlando). IIRC the station platforms are set up to accommodate 9-car trains (which is a reasonable maximum in the near term; really, the fact that we often end up talking about Regionals [1] needing to go to 10+ cars [2] outside of peak-of-the-peak periods is arguably a symptom of capacity problems and not a good sign...ideally you'd probably want to see Amtrak adding additional trains to cover that capacity since doing so would offer some mix of added customer flexibility (and thus induced demand) and added operational flexibility (e.g. slipping another station or two onto a few trains' timecards)).
Do remember that it is very likely that if the service to Orlando is successful enough to make them want to push for even longer trains, they'd probably be moving
very quickly to extend service to Jacksonville...and that right there gets you an extra slug of trains between Miami and Cocoa to move capacity onto. Stuffing a passing siding or some limited double-tracking onto the Cocoa-Orlando segment would probably also not be the toughest thing in the world, either, so simply pushing up to two TPH at peak hours between Orlando and Miami (or between West Palm Beach and Miami) probably wouldn't take
too much longer than it would take to order and take delivery on a few new trainsets. Do remember that in their wrangling with Tri-Rail they wanted any Tri-Rail service to presume that Brightline would use up to four trains per hour (IIRC the number was 64 daily round-trips), so this
is something they've considered.
In some wild scenario where Brightline service is swamping four TPH worth of capacity, I
very strongly suspect that all of the stations save for Miami could probably have their platforms extended to 11-12 cars without an extreme amount of engineering being needed. Miami is only complicated because the platforms are something like 4-5 stories above street level. However, the levels of ridership required to achieve this would be stunning. [2]
[1] Not necessarily LD trains, which are their own complicated kettle of fish and which have reasons to be longer.
[2] And here I'm specifically referring to cars in the size range of a "standard" Amfleet, Horizon, etc. and in use on an intercity, not commuter, run. If you're looking at Talgos or something like that, you'd expect a higher car count, while commuter runs have their own quirks and there are often reasons to let those trains be a bit longer.
[3] Ok, going with the current equipment you have 49 seats in the Select carriage and 66 in each Smart carriage. Presuming that a 9-car train would have two Select carriages (2*49=98), I'm going to also presume 6 "regular" Smart carriages (6*66=396) plus the ninth carriage having reduced capacity due to some sort of food service station (probably not a full cafe). Let's figure you get 26 seats out of the food carriage (losing 40 to food service space), though I could easily see getting 46 seats out of it (or even getting a full seventh carriage and the food service space coming out of the second Select carriage...this is what you have on Great Western over in the UK, by the way). So you've got 520-540 seats per train. Four TPH in each direction gives 4160-4320 seats per hour...and overall capacity depends on just how many hours you run at those levels. Six hours at those levels and ten hours at half of them gives somewhere around 45,000 seats per day. If you're going with that on weekdays and two TPH service on other days (I'm presuming 250 "standard" weekdays and the remaining 115 days as "standard" weekends), you'd have 15.27m seats per year and you'd probably be looking at overall ridership in the range of 10-15m riders per year (remember, you've got a number of station pairs to work with here, so there's going to be some seat turnover). Considering that the current projections hover in the range of roughly 3-5m riders per year if everything is running smoothly, I think we're a decent distance off from that...but truth be told, if this were paired with Tri-Rail service, improved connections at the stations, and perhaps half of those trains making a few more stops I could see it in the long run.
