Alstom is building the next generation Acela equipment using parts manufactured by nearly 250 suppliers in 27 states, with 95 percent of the components produced domestically. More than 1,300 new jobs are being generated in nearly 90 communities across the United States to support production, including the creation of new, sustainable, high-tech, engineering and manufacturing jobs. Alstom employs more than 800 people in Hornell, N.Y., including members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
The company has also completed the assembly of the second trainset, which is expected to travel to Amtrak’s Penn Coach Yard in Philadelphia for testing in March 2020. The construction of the third trainset began in November 2019 and is tentatively scheduled to travel to Philadelphia for testing in September 2020.
Looks like a high speed platypus. Downright fugly.
It appears to me that, like the Viewliner cars, there is a slight outward cant to the sidewalls of the passenger cars to squeeze a few more inches of width at the seat chair level, very similar to the way smaller single-aisle jets are designed. Three or four inches at the chair level on either side gives an additional 6-8 inches of width at that elevation of the car. Perhaps others have some further insight to share?
CURTIS – Give it a rest, will you? The Madison train never made any sense. Aside from it being a loser proposal by any objective measure, its own proponents signed its death warrant by falsely labeling it as HSR. On the easternmost leg – the corkscrew Elm Grove to Milwaukee via Wauwatosa, it could have been outrun by a donkey waddling on a more direct route.
“Torpedoed” by Gov. Walker is a loaded term and it’s your right to use it. In my mind Gov. Walker, a Wauwatosa resident, made the right choice. The train through his own home town would have been a turkey and he knew it.
BTW CURTIS – You do know that the route west of Forestgrove Avenue in Pewaukee out to Watertown is single iron. HSR and three mile long freights on single track? How does that work.
I am waiting for the news report now……”new Amtrak trainset is 12 hours late to Pueblo, last seen on a BNSF siding awaiting a green light to proceed”
What is that car on the tail end? Looks like a Genesis B-unit.
Yeah, what happened to the powercar fairings? Looks outdated already. I hope they are still in the plan.
Odd that the side profile of the new engines don’t match that of the new cars. Seems like they would have the same curved in profile for tilting near the undercarriage as the cars.
“Route of the Southwest Chief, is it? What happens if it isn’t there anymore?
Remember the design for the ill-fated Talgo trainsets built in Milwaukee for the Wisconsin “hi-speed” rail service Milw.-Madison torpedoed by “I’m gonna stop that train in its tracks” Gov. Walker. However ugly, the equipment by now would have been in service for almost a decade. While a mug only a mother could love, perhaps the ridership would have.
Can’t comment on the mechanicals etc. just the aesthetic design. To borrow a phrase from a now-fired Boeing engineer, “designed by clowns supervised by monkeys”.
To bolster Ms. Vinson’s comment “…We are left with the absurd styling of Acela II for the next 20-plus years after initial service. Sadly, some of us will not be alive to see the fleet replaced with something tasteful as well as more advanced. ..”
That photo at Lisle, IL has got to be a design formulated AFTER a week of Bing Drinking…It resembles a ‘critter’ that is as ugly as homemade sin.
Lets just call “a spade a spade”. The power cars are simply ugly. Only Amtrak could spend billions and have such a disjointed mismatch of power and passenger units!
Too bad Lisle, Ill. was unidentified for its historical antecedent.
There is too much tendency of the avant-garde when designing new passenger trains in America. Alstom should have adopted the gracious styling of trains it builds in France.
We are left with the absurd styling of Acela II for the next 20-plus years after initial service. Sadly, some of us will not be alive to see the fleet replaced with something tasteful as well as more advanced.
The passenger cars are tilting on the curve while the motive power is not. As designed, as noted. On the straight I’d expect to see a streamlined profile.
Hopefully it runs better than it looks. Like everyone else is saying, why wouldn’t the power cars have the same profile as the passenger cars?
The power cars don’t tilt; tilting is for passenger comfort. Same is true for X2000 and Acela I. Still odd that side profiles don’t match. Rear car is a third (!) P42. Maybe to provide a cab for a reverse move.