SEATTLE — Amtrak is scheduled to begin restoring Cascades service on Tuesday, April 1, as repositioned Amfleet equipment replaced the sidelined Horizon railcars, the Washington State Department of Transportation said in a statement today (March 31, 2025).
Since Amtrak removed 70 Horizon cars — including 26 in Cascades service — from service last week because of corrosion issues — six of seven Cascades trains have been replaced by buses [see “Amtrak sidelines Horizon car fleet …,” Trains News Wire, March 26, 2025]. The lone train still operating has been a Seattle-Eugene, Ore., round trip using an Oregon-owned Talgo trainset.
With substitute Amfleet cars arriving as they are ferried on the Empire Builder, the first trains scheduled to be restored on Tuesday are a Seattle-Vancouver, British Columbia round trip: No. 516, a 12:30 p.m. departure from Seattle, and No. 519, a 4:45 p.m. departure from Vancouver. That will mean at least one train is operating over all of the Vancouver-Eugene corridor.
Trains slated to be restored later this week are Seattle-Portland train Nos. 505 (an 8:55 a.m. departure); Portland-Seattle train No. 506 (a 9:20 p.m. departure); Vancouver-Portland train No. 517, which initially operate only between Seattle and Portland; and Portland-Vancouver train No. 518. Additional service will be restored as more cars arrive.
WSDOT says its goal is to “quickly restore all trips, but with a limited number of cars on each train. Therefore, most trains will have fewer seats available, providing just two coach cars, 17 business class seats and a café car. In some cases, this could result in the availability of just half the number of coach seats as normal. It is uncertain how long this limited seating will remain in place.” Advance booking is recommended until service is fully restored. Check the Cascades website for updates and additional information.
Department of Corrections:
“addition trains to return later this week”
Should this be additional? Or are there subtraction, multiplication and division trains, too?
“the first trains scheduled to be restored on Tuesday are a Seattle-Vancouver, British Columbia round trip: No. 516, a 12:30 p.m. departure from Seattle, and No. 519, a 4:45 p.m. departure from Vancouver. That will mean at least one train is operating over all of the Vancouver-Eugene corridor.”
Actually, train 516 departs Seattle at 8:30 a.m. arriving in Vancouver at 12:30 p.m. Yes, TRAINS just mixed up the Vancouver arrival and Seattle departure. But another hint that this wasn’t right would be knowing the equipment off train 516 protects train 519, so if the train departed Seattle at 12:30 p.m., it would arrive In Vancouver at 4:30 p.m., allowing just 15 minutes for dwell in Vancouver. Very unlikely.
And rather than “That will mean at least one train is operating over all of the Vancouver-Eugene corridor,” perhaps a less-vague phrasing might be: “With the reinstatement of service between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., all points in the corridor between Eugene and Vancouver again are served by at least one Amtrak Cascades train daily (each way).
When two dissimilar metals come into contact, such as aluminum and steel and then water (electrolyte) comes into contact. Galvanic corrosion can (not always) occur. In this case it did. The question is now can the Horizons be weatherized. Beech Grove will provide the answers.
Well if we wait on Beech Grove to tell us, we will never know, as evidenced by the inventory of wrecked but repairable Superliners that have been parked their for TOO long of a time, not to mention locomotives, and know one seems to care…
It would be useful for Trains Newswire to report what corridor/service the Amfleets are being transferred from, or if coming out of storage/spares inventory, what other corridor services/capacity may be impacted as a result. Photos so far do not show any Amfleet2 cars which means long-distance is not likely impacted. Thanks.
It’s funny but Rocky Mountaineer will be using rebuilt GP40’s and coaches, all decades old and reliable. Strasburg uses over 100 year old wood cars (steel underframe) with no major problems. Yet Amtrak can’t get brand new equipment to work reliably.
Key word: Amtrak.
I’m no fan of Amtrak’s new equipment and its reliability, but your comparison is beyond apples-and-oranges. Amtrak equipment can operate over 1,000 miles a day, day in and day out (on trains like the Empire Builder), whereas the Rocky Mountaineer operates a couple hundred miles per day and not every day, and only in season. The passenger aspect of the Strasburg Railroad is tourist operation on a railroad 4 miles long with a speed limit of 30 MPH.
Will undamaged Horizon cars come back into service after exsamination and how long will that take?
The Horizon cars will go back to Beech Grove for inspection, if the car(s) can be “weatherized” they will go back into service if not, well, most likely scrapped.
Before being scrapped, they should be put up for auction in case there are individuals willing to buy and refurbish at a much lower private enterprise cost. In fact that is how all of Amtrak’s fleet should be rebuilt or repaired with the exception of running repairs as needed…
If nothing else, the damaged Horizon cars that cannot be deemed safe for passenger occupancy, could be used as “axle count” cars, thereby freeing up Superliner cars now used for “axle count” purposes.
Talgo had issues but body rot wasn’t one of them.
That’s right. Let’s see what Alstom’s comment on this issue will be.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün