Amtrak unveils first rail car funded by stimulus

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By RANDALL CHASE

BEAR, Del. (AP) - Amtrak has wasted little time using its $1.3 billion slice of the federal stimulus package, unveiling the first of 81 passenger cars to be restored with the help of economic recovery funds.

Passenger car no. 25103, damaged a few years ago in a yard collision but now completely refurbished - complete with that "new car" interior smell - was shown off Monday at Amtrak's maintenance facility in Bear. More than 100 hard-hatted workers joined Amtrak president and CEO Joseph Boardman in celebrating completion of its restoration.

The car, refitted at a cost of about $687,000, will rejoin the Amtrak fleet next week and will be used on long-distance routes stretching from Toronto to Miami.

With ridership increasing by about 25 percent over the past three years, Amtrak is welcoming the additional seating capacity that will be provided by cars brought out of storage for repairs. Cars like the one displayed Monday can seat 60.

Read more: http://www.omaha.com/article/20090713/AP09/307139834

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[marybourg]

2. No picture? Rats!.nt.

[DJ13]

6. Here

[kirby]

11. Wow, it runs Linux! n/t

[glinda]

26. LMAO!!!!!!! Thank you!

[4_TN_TITANS]

34. LMAO....

That's about what we could expect in this country for around $600,000!

[clustered.puck]

43. thats an easy $1M

If I put my long-retired consultant hat on, you have to spend at least $500K in hiring one of the Big 5 to decide how many wheels, what kind of wood (or should it be wood), the angle of the curve on the penguins, the dimensions of the seating deck and more.
And once you have that design, you fire them for an improper design job since they did not specify the use of superglue (am sure that with the right set of staffing mix, they can botch it up worse) and then hire one more from the Big 5 who offers to do it for $499K since they have to restart the design.
And when the second design his ready, you go to a Dollar Store supplier and pick up 10K pieces of it for $999 @9.99 cents each.
SUCCESS - did not use up the full budget. $1 savings.
WIN WIN SITUATION for everyone. The two Big Five claims success for having designed it and puts it on their list of clients served. The company claims they produced 10x times more widgets than the planned 1000 and still saved money. Well, guess they are all true claims....

-clustered.puck

[medeak]

3. good find! thanks! n/t

[liberal N proud]

4. This is one of those pork items the right was all enraged about

Money being spent to create American jobs building American products to run on American rails, cutting Americas dependence on foreign OIL!

We need more Amtraks

[MajorChode]

5. Not in time to get mooned, though

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-296660

[Omaha Steve]

8. Great post

Loved it. BUTT, I love all things trains. :-)

[MajorChode]

19. And what is a train without a caboose?

[clustered.puck]

44. lol - a freight train

[Control-Z]

7. I wonder how many jobs

have been (and will be) created by this restoration program. Would love to see that it's providing jobs along with the additional cars.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. There's a photo in a link here

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20090713/NEWS/90713040&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

[ohio2007]

14. wow nice comment section posts at the link.

How much time and cost was put into that new car smell makeover ?

Hope it was low six figures, being that it was a 60 seat model

[tomm2thumbs]

17. thanks - anyone wondering who is going to 'buy photo' at that link?

Buehler? Anyone? Anyone?

[BumRushDaShow]

23. LOL

:rofl:

[Cha]

45. Thanks! I wanted a pic,

too!

[Jkid]

10. Good, they should also order new rail cars.

Amtrak's railcars are so 1980's.

[ohio2007]

15. That rebuild was almost $700,000. how much do two new ones cost?

Are they built in Delaware ?

[bloomington-lib]

12. That is a hell of a lot of money for refitting an old or damaged

car. How much to build a brand new one. I thought RR money was going to be used for putting down more or better tracks, not for giving it a new car smell.

Reminds me of where I live. The city has spent 5 million dollars building a rails to trails from downtown to....well it's still downtown. Less than a mile. Don't get me wrong, it's nice. New bridge, amphitheater, tons of artwork with fountains and whatnot. My problem is I live 2 miles from the starting point. I would be much happier if we got more bike path that I can actually use for that money.

That's how I see this Amtrak story.

[Omaha Steve]

13. $2.5 million and 2 years to deliver the first car

http://www.dot.ca.gov/rail/go/amtrak/index.cfm?LinkServID=CC92E811-4086-4C61-88A31ABC7B372143&showMeta=0

[tomm2thumbs]

16. thanks for link - it was worded strangely - got the impression it was 2 years for the first car BUT

'These two coach cars, built in the late 1970s for Amtrak by Pullman-Standard, sustained moderate damage in separate derailments several years ago, and have been in storage at Amtrak’s heavy repair facility in Beech Grove, Indiana, awaiting repairs. Rebuild cost for the cars was $1.5 million and took approximately six months to complete. Cost to acquire new California Cars instead of rehabilitating Superliner coaches would have been approximately $2.5 million'

- so sounds like 1.25 million a piece if they were talking about 2 cars in the article and quoted the cost as plural. Seems like a lot o' money either way you slice it.

Definitely can't tell from rereading it so 'Not sure' for me.

[tomreedtoon]

18. 60 seats? That'll cover Amtrak for the next decade!

I mean, they only have about 15 riders a week right now. That's four times their capacity!

Seriously, in the old days they would have taken a car with a few dents in it, repainted it, and put it back on the rails. What is all this refit crap?

If they want to make a committment to rebuilding the railroads, start with the damn rails!

[FarCenter]

21. I rode Amtrack from NY to North Carolina recentely and it was crowded

Down on a Sunday and back on a Tuesday. Both trains were pretty full.

They definitely need more cars, but they need priority over freight trains to keep on schedule.

They did not keep on schedule south of Washington. I think that Norfolk Southern makes them follow freights.

[harun]

22. The need more trains, more tracks, more cars and more schedules. Also need to be

cheaper, tried to take them back from D.C. to Philly the other day and it would have been over 100 bux. I took greyhound instead.

Amtrak could be awesome for the NE, but so many issues right now. There are certainly those here who want to use it much much more than we do.

[FarCenter]

31. The Acela Express is over $100, but the Northeast Regional is only $63

For Washington to Phladelphia. The regional is about 20 minutes longer in scheduled time.

[harun]

32. It was a holiday weekend so maybe the $63 was sold out.

[HeisenbergUncertain]

38. The Acela is mostly marketing hype.

The seats in the Northeast Regional coaches are much more comfortable than the Acela's. The price differential between the two comes down to marketing. The Acela is aimed at "the briefcase crowd" -- businesspeople willing to pay a premium for supposedly greater amenities. I think soft drinks are free and the seats are bigger. Nonetheless, the Acela's wings are clipped by the aging infrastructure. There are a few stretches where Acelas can hit around 150 for briefly sustained periods (mainly Rhode Island), but all-in-all, it's really not that much faster than the AEM-7 fronted trains. The Acelas are also crippled by design flaws limiting their maximum speeds on the NEC. Your best bet is to upgrade to business class on the Regionals (free soft drinks with your stub). The legroom is the same if not better, although the ride isn't as smooth. That's never bothered me, though.

[tomreedtoon]

36. They actually have two operating trains???

That's one more than I understood that Amtrak posessed.

And passenger trains need more than priority over freight. They need new rails - a friend of mine says "welded rails" so they run smoother - and separate tracks from freight, and new road beds, and passenger cars that aren't sweatboxes, and so much more.

And that would require a genuine investment by the government, who after doing all this work, should OWN the passenger railroad and be required to run it in the public interest. Like they do in countries that have thriving rail lines. But spending a couple of million on refurbishing one bent-up passenger car is not going to do a freaking thing.

[HeisenbergUncertain]

20. I'm glad they're finally getting some new rolling stock out...

But as an Amtrak insider for the past five years, you'd be appalled at how skillfully the director-level employees piss away vast sums of money on dead-end vanity projects. Amtrak also has a talent for fucking itself by alienating sole-source legacy app vendors, leaving the railroad stranded with mission-critical systems with zero documentation and absolutely no means to support it (e.g. ARROW). The Maximo project (run by a bible-thumping "true believer" hell-bent on building a kind of Jesus-land with a piece of shit IBM product) is something your C-level execs won't discuss publicly, but was essentially fucked from jumpstreet.

The "true believer" wound up in the revolving employee <-> consultant door, now on the employee side where he festers like a cancer and HR won't do a fucking thing to unload him. He brought with him a set of grossly overcompensated SAIC apostles (remaining as consultants), the majority of whom are mediocre at best, despite Mr. Maximo's adamant belief in their talent. (They aren't, trust me -- Mr. Maximo views loyalty and malleability above all other qualities). Several long-time, much more qualified employees who deserve to be promoted to that project are demoralized and resentful (rightfully so) as they watch winged cluelessness sponsored by your tax dollars pay fly in from all over the country each week to accomplish nothing of significant value to the business. He even imported a Canadian to fill what should be a high-paying American job (and there is NOTHING gifted about this Canadian -- his constant expression of stupefaction like a cow chewing cud, in addition to a fundamental inability to understand anything related to railroads, project management, or even simple technological concepts reveals the naked emperor). Mr. Maximo also has a disdain for "brown" people. An IT consultant (not one of Mr. M's cronies) requested Friday afternoons off to attend Mosque (this consultant was a peaceful, gentle, vegetarian Islamist) provided he work extra hours in the week to compensate for it. A reasonable request and his manager approved it. Mr. M's "functional lead" or "technical lead" flipped out and screamed that only terrorists go to mosque on Friday. Great group of guys, no?

Then there's the CIO's Accenture-run S(c)AM project. Clusterfuck cubed. I visited their Wilmington location and the vast majority of Accenture personnel were snickering recent college grads playing with a collage of disconnected facts tagged with "WHAT IF?" in huge black letters plastered all over a wall. It was like watching a bunch of supposedly intelligent grown ups trying to replicate the Manhattan Project with coloring, fingerpainint, and Power Point. They're all a bunch of SAP zealots, despite the fact that SAP is utter garbage for anything transportation related. The Maximo vs. SAP pissing contest is fun to watch, though. None of this, however, really does Amtrak any good. Particularly the culture there.

It's interesting that the IG was essentially forced into retirement recently. I've seen what amounts to bid rigging at the hands of an overpriced scheduler from the south who isn't even an employee (definitely a dog that don't hunt) -- that was several years ago when the Maximo virus took hold. Mr. Scheduler was the disease vector bringing with him his good 'ole southern boy connection to Mr. M. Other IT support outsourcing agreements were definitely NOT scored objectively. If you're interested, I'll spin the narrative later, perhaps naming names.

Save for a few white collar exceptions, the union guys are the only ones worth their weight in gold. They keep the rolling stock rolling and the fixed infrastructure fixed, in spite of all the fuckery from management above. Without them, Amtrak would be dead in the water. These guys take pride in their work and for certain occupations, the FRA can actually hold individual inspectors legally liable for train derailments and accidents. That's almost a frightening responsibility, but these guys take it in stride. For every bad union apple you anti-union pricks can summon, I can point out 5x as many useless directors. At Amtrak, everyone's a director. It's kind of a joke.

Curious to hear what the rest of you have to say.

[FarCenter]

29. Disfunctional IT organizations aren't peculiar to Amtrak

The Accenture characterization sounds right. A frend of my son's, who was a serious young engineer, joined Accenture and then left because she didn't like the frat/sorority party atmosphere.

I've worked with SAIC. Heavily military oriented, they make up for mediocrity by throwing LOTS of consultants at a project.

[HeisenbergUncertain]

39. Trust me...Amtrak IT is in a class by itself.

For instance, up until about two or three years ago, they had a SINGLE T1 linking ALL sites (including Philly, Boston, NYC, and more) to the headquarters in DC. And this wasn't just the LAN. All Internet access was funneled through this puny little pipe, so around noon when everyone was web surfing, the network would just grind to a halt making it impossible to do anything. No traffic shaping. No web proxy. No nothing. For non techies, a T1 is 1.544Mb/sec, which is about 12x slower than Comcast's home offering. This was for several hundred to a little over a thousand users. To make matters worse, the datacenter, where they wanted to consolidate everything, was ALSO around DC. Networking is run by a bunch of dusty old dumbasses -- perfect Harry Reid clones. They'd just crumple over like cardboard in a torrent of piss. Plus, the network deployment was so fucked that people printing in Boston had to hit Philly print servers, which then went back up to Boston. People gave up and just wound up with ink jets on their desk.

The datacenter has actually lost 10k+ HP servers for months at a time. One was jokingly referred to as "Waldo" as in Where's Waldo? The MDC sure as hell doesn't know.

I'll reveal more as the week goes on.

[Ignis]

35. Funny re: Accenture. But tell us more about SAP.

I've been involved with Oracle vs. SAP wars in IT for 15+ years, but I've never worked in transportation, so I'd like to hear more along those lines.

[HeisenbergUncertain]

40. The SAP vs. Maximo war is outta hand.

When I have time to type up a worthy summary later this week, I'll spill the beans.

[clustered.puck]

42. give us more on the SAP vs. Maximo

curious on the politics behind Maximo vs SAP in Amtrak....from what i have seen its always a political decision...wonder how it is at amtrak.

[Common Sense Party]

24. So, are they suggesting that it took "100 hard-hatted workers" to refurbish

this one car? I doubt that is the case. Perhaps 100 to work on all 81 cars.

Do they mention how many jobs were created by this one project?

[snappyturtle]

25. As much as I would rather see a complete overhaul of the passenger

rail system, I am glad to see where some of the stimulus has gone which is more than I can say for the banking stimulus(li)!

[Phoonzang]

27. Another car that I'm not going to ride on because

the tickets cost so damn much.

[Pacifist Patriot]

28. Fantastic, but...

There's always a "but" isn't there.

Dedicated tracks, more cars, faster rail. No reason why our country, even as big as it is, couldn't have effective and efficient passenger rail service.

[FarCenter]

30. They can't afford to have dedicated tracks

The local property taxes on dedicated tracks make it too expensive.

The railroads have ripped out all the tracks that they don't absolutely need to save on taxes.

Note that roads don't pay property taxes.

[Wednesdays]

33. K&R

:kick:

[babylonsister]

37. Great news! nt

[midnight]

41. OS this is exciting news. I did have one thought though, is this

the NAFTA route?