Amtrak likely could have submitted an application for the Florida HSIPR funds to buy the 40 Acela passenger cars and extend the maintenance facilities, which would have been a viable use of the HSIPR money. But they may have plans to fund the Acela purchase out of the FY2012 appropriation or even borrow the money & pay for it from increased Acela revenue. Getting the funding for the Portal bridge replacement and catenary & power upgrades in NJ while the money is available might be the better tactic.
As for resurrecting an old abandoned prototype, there are 130 Viewliners on order to start arriving in late 2012. Why spend the money and time on it?
It is indeed the case that the 40 additional Acela cars + maintenance facility upgrade are nominally part of the 2012 appropriations at present. And indeed Portal and miscellaneous items on the Newark - Philadelphia segment in line with what is euphemistically being called Gateway Phase 2 are part of the application filed on April 4th for the Florida funds. That application also includes state match of upto $150 million from NJ for the Portal Bridge. Incidentally the Portal Bridge application was made once before by NJT when Amtrak was not allowed to participate, and was rejected in favor of sexier projects like in Florida.
The intended HSR work from that are:
1) CT Catenary on tracks 2 and 3 between County and Ham.
2) Some track realignments elsewhere in the Newark - Philly segment.
3) Installation of ACSES all the way from Newark to Philadelphia. That work is already ongoing but part of it will be funded out of this.
4) Portal replacement raising speed limit on the entire High Line to 90mph initially, and possibly upto 110 eventually. I bet PRR had never dreamed that would ever happen.
Oddly enough there is a small rump group of rail advocates in NJ and NY who appear to be opposed to replacement of the Portal bridge by a more modern structure. They have been trying to argue vociferously that there really is no need for additional capacity on the high line. Clearly they use smoking materials more potent than I can get my hands on
If revenue uptick continues as has been the case, Amtrak may be able to self fund some of the equipment acquisitions with commercial loans.
Interestingly, did y'all notice that the last uptick in revenue for Northeast Regionals making it marginally profitable above the rail, happened after the lower than low low bucket was added? Price elasticity at work again, when you can increase capacity faster than reduction in individual fares?
Coming back to Viewliner prototype, the Prototype shells are different from the production Viewliners Is and of course Viewliner IIs too. It does not pay to keep one offs in the fleet since it then requires keeping inventory around to deal with the one offs. They are better used for special purposes like design platform for new stuff etc., rather than mixing into an otherwise uniform fleet. Indeed, I am not sure how long Amtrak will actually keep even the one off prototype Viewliner Diner around, unless they can make it pretty much maintenance inventory compatible with the existing and being acquired fleet. Unlike in our favorite HO sets in our basement there are real significant costs involved in keeping non-standard stuff around.