HORNELL, N.Y. — Alstom has produced 270 units of its Amtrak order for 28 Acela Avelia Liberty trainsets and expects to see the 160-mph trains inaugurated in spring 2025, four years after the railroad had planned to introduce the premium Northeast Corridor service.
That was the forecast offered by Alstom officials last week during a tour of the company’s plants here for about 25 members of the New York Chapter of Young Professionals in Transportation, along with reporters and other transportation-industry figures.
Avelia Liberty trainsets will replace Amtrak’s current fleet of 20 nearly quarter-century-old Acela trainsets. Built by a Bombardier-Alstom consortium, they entered revenue service in 2000 and achieve a top speed of 150 mph for only about 50 miles in New England.
Each new trainset consists of two power cars and nine passenger cars, which includes first-class and business-class coaches and a stand-up bistro car, with total seating capacity of 386 passengers. That’s 25% more than the existing Acelas, comprised of two power cars and six intermediate coaches. Both types rely on articulated configuration, with adjacent coaches sharing a truck.
The 270-unit figure, which comprises both coaches and power cars, represents more than 85% completion of the $2 billion order. Fourteen of the 28 trainsets have been delivered but none is in service, pending commissioning by the Federal Railroad Administration and acceptance by Amtrak. In the meantime, most are filling up storage tracks in Philadelphia and Olean, N.Y. while test runs continue. Victor Ionescu, Alstom’s site managing director for Hornell, told Trains News Wire that Avelia Liberty trainsets have run 90,000 miles in tests on the Northeast Corridor. (Amtrak offered a similar figure at its annual public meeting; see “Amtrak public board meeting addresses equipment timelines,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 4, 2024].
Of the delay, Dani Simons, the firm’s vice president of communications and public affairs-Americas, said, “On the production trains that we have already shipped to Amtrak there are a number of ‘field modifications’ that are on a punch list to finish before final acceptance. Some of these items will be addressed in the actual field. Some of them will be addressed in Hornell. The decisions are made partly based on logistics as well as the nature of the repairs. At this time, we do not anticipate any major changes to the trains.”
The Washington Post previously reported that major modifications to wheelsets and the pantograph-catenary interface were needed. A trainset has operated at 165 mph on FRA’s Transportation Technology Center 13-mile test track at Pueblo, Colo., but the laboratory-controlled conditions there vary greatly from those of the aging infrastructure on the 457-mile-long Northeast Corridor, stretching from Boston to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.
As before, Alstom officials cited delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply-chain issues, and the disconnect between “policy written in Washington and the real world,” according to Simons. [See ”Alstom explains latest delay for new Acela deployment,” Trains News Wire, March 19, 2024.]
The tour included visits to Plant 1 (Avelia rolling-stock assembly) and Plant 2 (traction motor and other subassembly fabrication), including a test building where the tilting-carbody mechanism is evaluated. A 4,000-foot-long test track is equipped with catenary that can be energized at 12,000 volts or 25,000 volts a.c., the two types of current employed on the Northeast Corridor.
The group also got a preview of Plant 4, an $80 million robotic facility under construction that will be opened next year with the start of a $775 million contract to build 200 bilevel commuter cars for Chicago’s Metra, with an additional 21 of the same design for Virginia Railway Express.
At the core of Alstom’s Hornell complex is an 1850s-era Erie Railroad maintenance shop. Over time, the facility has been occupied by Erie Lackawanna, Conrail, General Electric, Morrison Knudsen, Amerail, and Alstom. Under Alstom, employment in the 8,000-population town has ranged from 1,280 (during a New York City R-160 subway-car project) to 22 (a skeleton crew kept on after the R-160 project ended in 2010).
Alstom has or soon will handle railcar, subway, light-rail, or rapid-transit work for Amtrak (Pacific Surfliner cars) Bay Area Rapid Transit, NJ Transit, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, and Maryland Transit Administration. The current workforce is 800, most of them assigned to the Acela Avelia Liberty project but they will be redeployed as the factory shifts to producing the Metra/VRE cars and a $713 million SEPTA order for 130 new trolleys.
In a highly unusual and inexplicable move, and despite Alstom’s pre-tour approval on all photography in Plants 1 and 2, the firm’s New York City public-relations agency, Berlin Rosen, issued a retroactive, post-tour ban on photos showing Amtrak’s logos or service marks, and any views showing a power-car nose door open.
Asked to explain this edict in light of the fact that Avelia trains displaying those insignia have been testing in public view since 2020, and Trains and other media have posted or published dozens of such photos, including those showing the open nose door, a Berlin Rosen spokesman would only repeat the directive, as follows: “This is to protect Alstom IP [intellectual property]. We also request images of the Acela and Amtrak logos to not be posted specifically because the Amtrak logo is their own IP.” [See “Amtrak invites press to inspect new-generation Acela,” News Wire, March 24, 2024, and “A first look at the next-generation Acelas,” News Wire, June 13, 2019.]
You ARE aware that “the aging infrastructure on the 457-mile-long Northeast Corridor, stretching from Boston to New York” receives regular maintenance with new rail, ties, ballast, wire etc. as necessary, and currently sees scheduled, high-speed operation.