PERRYVILLE, Md. — Amtrak’s first two Siemens ALC42 Charger long-distance locomotives, No. 300, in the interim “Phase VI” paint scheme, and No. 301, in the “Day One” scheme, are pulled through Perryville by an ACS64 on Thursday, in a deadhead move from Amtrak’s Wilmington, Del., shops to Washington. From there, they are reportedly headed to Michigan for testing. Photographer Gary Pancavage notes he was on Amtrak property with company permission and wearing all required personel protective equipment.
We are not assuming anything. Amtrak’s financial statements show the NEC turned an operating profit in 2019 – 2020 is an outlier due to the pandemic – while the state supported trains and the long-distance trains showed significant operating losses.
In FY19 the long-distance trains incurred an operating loss of $475 million before depreciation, interest and miscellaneous charges. By comparison, the NEC had an operating profit of $569 million.
Adjusted for probable capital charges, i.e. depreciation, interest, and miscellaneous, the NEC lost $39 million compared to $188 million for the state supported trains and $605 million for the long-distance trains.
Those who claim that Amtrak skews its book results to show a more favorable light on the NEC don’t have access to the company’s books and, therefore, their claims are based on speculation. There is no reason to believe that Amtrak is purposefully distorting the financial results of its segment operations, i.e., NEC, state supported, and long-distance trains.
Paul, you are 100% correct. The independent public accountants certify Amtrak financial records as being substantially correct. I certainly believe them over the speculation of railfans who want them to say differently. After traveling on every Amtrak long distance train and at least one round trip on each of the corridor trains and moderate use of the NEC I can say that the future of Amtrak is not the long distance trains but rather the corridors between heavily populated locations.
As of 9:19 pm Central Daylight time, October 23rd, No. 21 is marked up more than an hour late into San Antonio. Train No. 6 is running more than 13 hours late. Train No. 11 is more than 2 hours late. And Train No. 2 is about 6 hours late.
New locomotives are not going to fix the problem of consistently late long-distance trains.
Only a government run company would buy new locomotives for a service line that chews up all the operating profits of the NEC and then some. The long-distance trains make no sense. It is time to get rid of them.
And once again we are assuming the NEC makes a profit, silly.
Are these two the only ones delivered so far? What is the status of the rest of the order?
Why is the engineer’s visibility so limited? The P42 looks better, but not great. The F40PH had outstanding visibility.
What am I missing?
Crash worthiness, most likely.
Amtrak should give the F125s a try since their reliability is about the same as the F59s before them, and plus the Chargers are still having issues and I agree with Greg McDonald who doesn’t see doom or gloom for any manufacturers.