CHICAGO – Amtrak continues to reshuffle its equipment to address the loss of its Horizon car fleet, sidelined suddenly earlier this week because of corrosion issues. That effort has decreased the number of train cancellations.
The hardest-hit area remains the Pacific Northwest, where six of seven Amtrak Cascades round trips have been replaced by buses since 70 Horizon cars were pulled from service on Thursday [see “Amtrak sidelines Horizion car fleet …,” Trains News Wire, March 26, 2025]. Twenty-six of the Horizon cars had provided the bulk of the Cascades fleet; equipment is coming that should ease that loss. Five Amfleet cars en route to the Northwest were being deadheaded in front of the regular consist of the westbound Empire Builder that departed from Chicago today (March 29, 2025). A single Amfleet car had been in the consist of the Builder on Friday, March 28. Many of the cars are being reallocated from Northeast Corridor service; four Amfleet cars arrived in Chicago earlier today on the Lake Shore Limited.
The makeup of the Chicago-Twin Cities Borealis also reflects the equipment shortage. Its regular single-level equipment — usually four Horizon coaches and an Amfleet cafe — has been replaced by three-car Superliner consists. That’s one car less than the Superliner trainset that had substituted earlier this year when Horizon equipment was sidelined. Meanwhile, Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha service, which had initially seen three of six round trips replaced by buses, today was down to just one such substitution, according to train-status information on the Amtrak website.
Trains News Wire continues to await a response from Amtrak or carbuilder Alstom on the nature of the Horizon corrosion issues and potential repairs.
“Amfleet is a totally American style that was meant to imitate airplanes. That’s my quarrel!… The vision for the future of the railroad should be based on defining its own dreams, not appropriating them solely from someone else’s experience.” – Cesar Vergara, in “Amtrak’s design on the future” (1992), Bob Johnston
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
Those mighty veteran Amfleets to the rescue!
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
I may be wrong. I may be very wrong. If so, I will read any corrections or any other information that may be offered. FWIW here are my thoughts:
(1) Amfleet is based on a Budd design. Horizon is based on a Pullman design. Experience is that Budd built better cars, in the 1950’s or so, than Pullman.
(2) The longest-lasting cars have had stainless steel shells. Horizon fleet is aluminum.
(3) Amtrak did get many years of service out of the Horizon cars. Not as if they were junk to start with. The Horizons are based on earlier commuter rail cars that may not have been the best, but at least they were usable. VIA Rail’s Renaissance cars, and the Rohr and the United Aircraft turbo trains, were garbage off the assembly line. Not the Horizons.
Anyone else’s thoughts?
As I recall, Amfleet I used Budd’s Metroliner design. It was a proven design that could be manufactured quickly to fill equipment needs.
Amfleet II modified the Amfleet I design with larger windows and a few other things. There was an article in Trains within the past 12-18 months about the origins of Amfleet.
The horizon 2 cars are lemons. These cars were made by a company that no longer exist. Bombardier transportation no longer is in operation these cars were improperly made and they do not have any weather seals. Because of this all these cars have exceeded their warranty and they are no longer safe to use on any of our Amtrak routes. Because of the ways with the Venture series coaches that are supposed to replace them Amfleet coaches which are older than them are being dead-headed to every single city along the line and all the horizon 2 cars are being sent to beats Grove where they will either be weatherized or scrapped. Hopefully Siemens Mobility picks up the slack and gets the Venture II coaches into service we need those coaches if we are going to restore service on all Intercity service lines.