micheal_can
Senior Member
It is too bad Amtrak and Via do not collaborate for the production of new DMUs that meet TC standards.. We could have DMUs on old lines and they would be viable.
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
It is too bad Amtrak and Via do not collaborate for the production of new DMUs that meet TC standards.. We could have DMUs on old lines and they would be viable.
robmausser
Senior Member
Someone as intelligent as you in the area of rail should know full well that the size and frequency of freight trains in Europe are dwarfed by those in Canada and the USA.
I took my railfan friend from Paris on the VIA toronto > montreal, and he was terrified when we passed a freight train, that we would be allowed on the same tracks as it.
nfitz
Superstar
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robmausser
Senior Member
Unfortunately they turned out to be very unreliable
micheal_can
Senior Member
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a Canadian company the the government does business with that makes trains......
steveintoronto
Superstar
Well then, best you tell those fools in California:
http://www.stadlerrail.com/en/meta/...ler-awarded-contract-16-double-decker-trains/
As for the Nippons:
https://systemicfailure.wordpress.com/2017/09/14/nippon-sharyo-loses-railcar-contract/
steveintoronto
Superstar
And no longer available. The Nippons are orphans. Nippon could pull the production line out of mothballs, but the units would cost well over twice the original price, which was very expensive to begin with.
smallspy
Senior Member
You make it sound like there are hundreds of millions of dollars of tooling that has been made - and scrapped - for these things. That's not the case at all.
Railway equipment does not get made in the same way as a car does. There is a very minimal investment in the type of tooling used in the auto industry, and instead the jigs used to build and assembly everything are modular to meet the needs of the equipment being made.
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
steveintoronto
Superstar
Hardly. I'm informed by the RFQ and the cut-off date for the price offered to SMART (who acted on behalf of UPX). The price doubled after the expiry to re-order, and that date is long past. Been posted in these strings.
As to "You make it sound like there are hundreds of millions of dollars of tooling that has been made" No I don't. I'm talking about the cost of re-assembling the jigs and the space necessary to do it in.
There have been no queries of interest for the Nippon Sharyos since the last SMART option. Feel free to post otherwise if you wish do dispute that. Why in the world would a company keep space and production lines idle for years when it's needed for other orders?
Meantime:
http://www.railjournal.com/index.ph...tex-rail-train-set-for-atlanta-unveiling.html
As I stated prior, it's time for TC to get off their padded arses.
http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/.../view/tex-rail-orders-stadler-flirt-dmus.html11 Jun 2015
USA: Fort Worth Transportation Authority signed a $100m contract on June 9 for Stadler Bussnang to supply eight Flirt 3 diesel multiple-units for the future TEX Rail commuter line, with options for more.
This follows Federal Transit Administration approval for the engineering phase of the TEX Rail project. A Parsons/TranSystems joint venture is design consultant, and an Archer Western/Herzog joint venture is to provide pre-construction services, working with the design team ‘in order to achieve a more efficient and cost-effective design’.
The 43 km TEX Rail line will start in central Fort Worth and follow existing freight railway alignments northeast across Tarrant County to Grapevine and Terminal B at Dallas Fort International Airport, serving 10 stations. Opening is planned for September 2018, with an estimated initial ridership of 10 000 passengers/day predicted to rise to 14 500 by 2035.
The DMUs are scheduled to be delivered in July 2017 for testing and approval by March 2018. While Stadler has previously supplied 49 GTW multiple-units to the USA under four contacts, the latest deal is the first US order for its Flirt family. The deal is also the first to include an element of federal funding and thus be subject to Buy America regulations which will require 60% of the contract value to be sourced in the USA.
The bodyshells and bogies are to be produced in Switzerland, with final assembly at a new factory which Stadler is to open in the USA. Stadler CEO Peter Spuhler and Martin Ritter, the future CEO of Stadler US, are currently in the country examining possible locations for the plant.
Here is TEX and Flirt's application for waiver to the FRA:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/09/18/2017-19687/petition-for-waiver-of-compliance
It has ostensibly been approved, I'll search for that later.
Where's Metrolinx's application to TC? How about VIA? I thought Garneau et al were there to help VIA.
As I'm told by a Gov't insider, what the brass and Minister state, and what the middle management at TC allow are two separate universes.
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robmausser
Senior Member
Fixed your sentence for you
steveintoronto
Superstar
It's coming, but TC had better start singing a new train song, the Libs, both federally and in Ontario will have to crack down on the slugs in TC's middle management when BBD Transportation (specifically Rail) is either bought or merges with CRRC...who just happen to produce every rail vehicle imaginable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRRC_Qingdao_Sifang#Diesel_Multiple_Unit
Some of these units have been problematic, ostensibly now remedied, but Nippon Sharyo has obviously had problems too.
Images for crrc diesel multiple units
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smallspy
Senior Member
The jigs still exist. They were also used for the building the hundreds upon hundreds of commuter cars that they'd built for Metra, Caltrain, South Shore and VRE. They were also going to be used for building the bodyshells of the new CEM-enabled Superliner-based cars that they horribly botched the production of.
And that's the point. The jigs are simply fixtures used to hold everything in place. The space still exists because Nippon Sharyo's facility still exists. It isn't tooling that can only be used to make one thing over and over and over again. There is some tooling like that, for things like the end caps of the carbodies, but not nearly to the same scale as for automotive production and certainly not for the same design and reasons, either.
The price doesn't even matter, because it doesn't change the fact that the cars can in fact still be made. Yes, the price went up after the cut0ff date, but that's not the crux of the argument here.
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
steveintoronto
Superstar
I didn't state otherwise. I stated "reassembled". And I'm going by what Nippon Sharyo themselves have stated.
The price doesn't matter?
According to whom?
smallspy
Senior Member
If that was true, than they would not be able to build any railcars at all. And considering that their primary product and market is to produce railcars, I don't think that's likely to be the case.
For the record, where have they stated such a thing?
You're talking about the tooling not existing. In this precise context, the cost of the vehicles isn't a factor.
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
nfitz
Superstar
Sure about that? Do you have a reference?
The SMART service near San Francisco/Oakland added cars to their order as recently as April 2016 (I'm surprised Metrolinx didn't do similar at the same time). They had an unused option for over 100 more cars (after selling options to Metrolinx and Boston). Not sure when that expires though.
Very expensive to begin with? They came in below the engineer's estimate, and much lower than the next bid. Where are you getting this?
There's been some teething problems, but they are in service every day. Doesn't seem any worse than the LRC introduction - or heck, the Turbo introduction.