Have you ever taken an Amtrak train?
Maybe you were just trying to travel a short distance between cities. Maybe you
live somewhere where there isn’t an airport, but there’s a train station. Maybe you’re one
of the few who enjoys taking the train because of the sites to be seen. No matter
who you are, if you’ve taken Amtrak, you probably know that it’s objectively not the
best way to get around. Whether it’s the delays, ancient equipment, or maybe just the fact that
it can take twice as long as driving, it’s clear that there’s much better ways to get around. As
Amtrak continues on into its 50th year of service, it seems that America is getting back into trains.
Not only are higher-speed trains pretty efficient for travelling distances of under 300 miles,
but they’re also better for the environment than almost any other mode of transportation. Look at
almost every other country. They have fast, clean, and efficient passenger trains connecting most
of their major cities. Luckily, after years of Amtrak’s trains feeling like a time capsule of a
time before planes, it seems that they’re finally starting to improve their services and equipment.
In this video, I’ll go over a few of Amtrak’s biggest projects to improve their national
passenger rail network. This video is split into a few sections, such as new locomotives, new
railcars, the Avelia Liberty high speed trains, and more. If you want to learn only about one of
these specific topics, feel free to skip to that section using the timestamps in the description,
but if you want to learn about everything Amtrak is doing, just sit back and relax as we
learn about the future of Amtrak’s fleet. Chapter 1: New ALC-42 Locomotives My favorite era of Amtrak was the late 90s and
early 2000s. Not because I’m nostalgic for it or anything, heck, I wasn’t even alive then, but
I just wish that I could have been a railfan during this era, because unlike the current
day of Amtrak’s equipment being the homogeneous mixture of Phase V equipment, back then, one
could still see equipment from the 1980s, meaning that you could see as many as 4
different Amtrak paint schemes on one train. As the 2000s progressed, Amtrak eventually
repainted or retired all equipment that still sported retro paint schemes, leaving us
with the boring fleet we have now. Of course, there were a few examples of original old-school
paint schemes still in service across the system, but they were extremely rare. The last authentic
Phase III piece of equipment, NPCU #90368 was repainted in 2017, and the last authentic Phase
IV piece of equipment, Dash 8 #515 was repainted in the same year. If you didn’t live in Chicago,
where these locomotives stayed most of the time, Phase V was the only paint scheme you’d
be able to see on Amtrak trains, but this is all gonna change soon when Amtrak gets new
locomotives. After years of nothing but Phase V, Amtrak is beginning to receive new long-distance
locomotives, which means that we’re about to enter another transitional period between Amtrak
paint schemes, but before I get ahead of myself, let’s see where this all started. Our story begins
back in 2014 when Amtrak wanted to replace the aging locomotives used on their corridor routes
such as the Surfliner and Midwest Services. This was in a strange period in the mid-2010s
when there were almost no good diesel passenger locomotive offerings from EMD and GE, but Amtrak
had just begun to receive Siemens ACS-64 electric locomotives for service on the Northeast Corridor.
Although Siemens had lots of experience around the world building quality locomotives, the ACS-64
“Cities Sprinter” locomotives were among the first Siemens locomotives to be operated in the
U.S. The Sprinters were found to be pretty decent workhorses, so Amtrak decided to give Siemens
another opportunity to build something great for them. In 2014, Illinois, California, Michigan,
Missouri, and Washington State worked with Siemens to design an all-new locomotive based on diesels
built by Siemens in Europe. These new locomotives were to be called SC-44 “Charger” locomotives,
with features such as Tier 4 diesel emissions, a top speed of 125MPH, 4400HP, and faster
acceleration and deceleration than the outgoing F59PHI and P42 locomotives previously
used on these corridor routes. Additionally, these locomotives would have removable noses,
making for easy repairs in the case of collisions. Amtrak had learned this lesson the hard way on the
General Electric Genesis locomotives, which had a body that was basically just one big shell. This
meant that in the case of a damaged front end, the locomotives would need an entirely new shell,
which was costly and hard to repair. Eventually, Amtrak fitted the Genesis locomotives with bolt-on
noses, which were easier to repair, but prior to that, the noses were a big issue. A total of 34
brand new Siemens SC-44 “Charger” diesels were ordered for Amtrak’s state-funded corridor
routes around the country. Of these, 21 were for the Midwest, 6 were for Northern California,
and 7 were for the Pacific Northwest. Eventually, the order for 34 locomotives was upgraded
to 63 once an additional 29 were ordered for these same routes. The classification of these new
locomotives was a standard Siemens classification with the S standing for Siemens, the C standing
for Charger, the series of locomotive, and the 44 representing the 4400HP. Nice and straightforward.
About 2 years after Amtrak placed the first orders for these new Chargers, footage surfaced
of Charger #4601 testing at TTCI in Pueblo, CO in August of 2016. This was the first time
anyone had seen footage of one of these testing, and it made a sound different from almost any
other diesel locomotive around. Since Siemens doesn’t have a diesel engine of their own, they
used the Cummins QSK95 turbocharged V16 to power the Charger locomotives. This essentially
made them sound like giant Dodge Rams. The first charger was also seen in a new paint
scheme, which at the time people thought was just for testing, but eventually, it just became
the paint scheme for Amtrak Midwest trains. Less than a month later, 4604, another SC-44 made
its way east from the Siemens Mobility plant in Florin, CA, to Washington D.C., where it began
high-speed testing on the Northeast Corridor with speeds of up to 125MPH. For the next few
years, Chargers began to enter service on many corridor routes such as the Cascades, Surfliner,
Northern California service, and Midwest service. The SC-44s were found to be decent locomotives,
but they had a lot of issues being implemented in the Midwest for some reason. There were two
variations of the SC-44 that Amtrak received, both with the same classification. The SC-44s assigned
to Midwest and Cascades service had a flat roof, but the SC-44s in California had an aerodynamic
"spoiler" so that the locomotives would match the height of the bi-level cars they would often pull,
decreasing drag, and thus increasing fuel mileage. The SC-44s succeeded for the most part, retiring
the F59PHIs in Cascades and Surfliner service, and supplementing the F59PHIs in Northern
California. As for the Midwest, SC-44s are slowly replacing the P42s that previously powered
these trains, and said P42s are being entered into long-distance service, but this is happening
pretty slowly with the issues that the Chargers are having there. Along with Amtrak, many other
railroads were in need of new locomotives too, so the Altamont Corridor Express, Coaster,
MARC, Long Island Railroad, and Metro-North have variants of the SC-44 on order, or even already
in service. Specifically, Metro-North and Long Island Railroad will receive unique dual-mode
Chargers capable of switching from Diesel power to third-rail power for Penn Station and Grand
Central Terminal. I wouldn’t be surprised if these are called something like SC-32DMs, similar to
the P32AC-DMs that Metro-North is currently using. Long Island Railroad has even gone as far as
to fit Siemens electric dual-mode systems onto one of its current DM30ACs for testing. Speaking
of unique Chargers that railroads have ordered, the SC-44 isn’t the only kind of Charger
locomotive currently in service. In 2014, around the same time that Amtrak ordered their
SC-44s, privately-owned higher-speed rail company Brightline ordered 10 SCB-40 locomotives to power
their trains. These engines are essentially just SC-44s detuned to 4000HP with a streamlined front
end. Canada’s VIA Rail followed suit in 2018, ordering 32 similar bi-directional trainsets
that are to be powered by SC-44s with streamlined noses. These locomotives are classified as SC-44s,
although they have a completely different front end than the traditional SC-44s. Finally, the last
variant of Charger is the Amtrak Long-Distance variant, which is what I originally wanted to talk
about in this video. On December 21, 2018, Amtrak placed an order for 75 modified Chargers, capable
of replacing the current fleet of GE Genesis locomotives. The first was scheduled to enter
service in 2021, with the last entering service in 2024. Originally, these were to look identical to
the SC-44s, but have 4200HP and be more optimized for long-distance service, meaning they’d have
larger fuel tanks, and other features that would make them preferable to SC-44s for long-distance
trains. The original order specified for 75, meaning that these new long-distance Chargers
would not fully replace the Genesis locomotives, rather replace the out-of-service Genesis units,
as a large portion of the fleet is wrecked and or stored. The contract had options for an additional
100, so I guess if Amtrak decides that they like these engines, they’ll eventually fully replace
the P40s and P42s. For a while, most people expected these long-distance Chargers would look
identical to the current SC-44s we see on corridor routes, but by 2020, official Amtrak renderings
of the long-distance Chargers were revealed, and they were very different from the unofficial
renderings we had seen previously. Not only were the new Chargers in a completely different
paint scheme, but they had an ACS-64 style cab, as opposed to that weird cab seen on the SC-44s.
It was also announced that these new engines were to be called “ALC-42s,” which was as to be
expected, as they definitely would not be SC-44s, considering that they had 4200HP, not 4400.
The ALC stood for Amtrak Long-Distance Charger, and the 42 represented the 4200HP. These
ALC-42s would have a top speed of 125MPH, ACSES, PTC, and other signaling systems, and
adhere to the EPA’s Tier 4 emissions standards, which is a huge improvement from the P42s, which
are, well, up to the standards of the 1990s. These new units are expected to be numbered #300-#374,
but if Amtrak ends up going for the additional 100 units from Siemens in the future, they’ll
be #300-#474. Yes, that means that either NPCU #406 or ALC-42 #406 will have to be renumbered.
Notably, on Mar 16, 2021, it was also announced that Amtrak would be painting a few of these
new ALC-42s into heritage paint schemes for the railroad’s 50th anniversary. Right now, #300
wears the brand new Phase VI paint scheme, #301 wears a one-of-a-kind “Day 1” heritage paint
scheme, paying homage to Amtrak’s first-ever paint scheme, only ever seen before on E8 #4316 to
commemorate their first day of service in 1971, #302-305 will wear the Phase VI paint scheme,
and finally #306-374 will wear the Phase VII paint scheme similar to the Phase VI paint
scheme. In other paint scheme news, Amtrak will be repainting a few existing P42s into heritage
paint schemes for the railroad’s 50th anniversary. In the summer of 2021, the first few ALC-42s were
released from the Siemens plant in California, and shipped east to Washington D.C. for testing. Later
in the summer, Amtrak announced a $7.3 billion deal with Siemens to purchase even more equipment
from them, including Siemens Venture cars, which I’ll talk about in a minute, and also even more
Chargers, some of which will be dual-mode like those of Long Island Railroad and Metro North,
and some of which will be battery-powered. Details right now are pretty scarce, so unfortunately,
that’s all we know as of when this video is coming out. With Amtrak’s new ALC-42s on the horizon,
we’re once again entering a transitional period like the 1990s. Amtrak’s tired Phase V paint is
finally on its way out, and I can’t wait to start seeing mixed paint-scheme equipment on trains.
More importantly, we’re entering a golden era of Amtrak getting new equipment, most of which
is built by Siemens. When all is said and done, Amtrak’s fleet of locomotives will be mostly
built by Siemens, including ACS-64s, SC-44s, ALC-42s, and the dual-mode and battery-powered
Chargers. Honestly, I don’t mind this new era of Siemens locomotives replacing GEs, as I’ve never
been a big fan of the Genesis series locomotives, but now that we’re done talking about the
locomotives, let’s focus on something more passenger-oriented. Amtrak’s plans for what
to do with their massive fleet of railcars. Chapter 2: New Siemens Venture Cars Another pretty massive project that Amtrak has
been taking on with Siemens is the acquisition of new cars that will be used on many of their
busiest routes. Similar to the SC-44 story, the story of these cars begins in 2014, but that’s
where the similarities end. This story doesn’t begin with Amtrak. It starts with privately-owned
railroad Brightline, which was in need of cars to run with their SCB-40s for their new service
between Miami and West Palm Beach, FL. These cars were to be capable of 125MPH, have sliding
doors, and have spacious and modern interiors. When Siemens received this order from Brightline,
instead of designing a completely new car from scratch, they realized that they had a car
that was up to all these standards called the Viaggio Comfort. Viaggio Comfort cars had
been in service all around Europe since 2008, so it was as easy as taking that design and
modifying it slightly to better fit American standards. Luckily for Siemens, the first order
that they received for these cars was a small one, with Brightline only ordering 20 cars in total.
The Rockwell Group design studio was contracted to adapt the Viaggio design for America, and by
2015, the first car was completed. This new car had a modern and welcoming interior, and it was
named the Siemens Venture car. 6 months later, the first full trainset was completed for Brightline.
A year or two before this first car was completed, a group of states including California, Illinois,
Michigan, and Missouri announced that they were in need of new cars for their Amtrak-ran Midwest
and Northern California services. Originally, Nippon-Sharyo was to build these cars for
Amtrak, but when the first car built in 2015 started testing, it became evident that
it was not a good option for Amtrak. In August of 2015, a Nippon-Sharyo prototype
car failed a buff strength test, and in turn, the deal with Amtrak was canceled. At this point,
it was 2018 and the Venture Cars had already proved themselves on Brightline. Amtrak turned
to Siemens, realizing that their plant in Florin, CA was very close to their Northern California
services, making them a more convenient company to order cars from anyways. The group of states
placed an order for 49 cars for California and 88 for the Midwest for a grand total of 137 cars.
These cars were to be styled to match the SC-44s that would pull them on these trains. The first of
these 3 cars were completed in February of 2020, and one was sent to the Northeast to test at speed
on the Northeast Corridor. I was actually lucky enough to see this test extra. The first of these
cars entered service in California in the summer of 2020, with the Midwest cars entering service
about a year later after issues with the trucks. This on it’s own was a pretty minor project,
but it turned out that Amtrak liked these cars, so on July 7, 2021, when Amtrak announced its
$7.3 billion deal with Siemens for next-generation equipment, it was announced that Siemens would be
building 83 trainsets, which are to be made up of Venture Cars. These trainsets will replace the
50 year old Amfleet Is, which really have been showing their age lately. Unfortunately, much
like the dual-mode and battery-powered Chargers, specific details about this order are still pretty
scarce, but word on the street is that there will be cab cars to replace the aging Metroliner cab
cars used on the Keystone and Shuttle routes, in addition to just regular cars that’ll probably be
identical to the Venture cars seen in the midwest and NorCal. Other than that, there really isn’t
much information about these cars, but once again, these big orders for equipment continue to show
that Siemens is going to be the future of Amtrak. Chapter 3: New Viewliner II Sleeper Cars Amtrak’s long distance system is an expansive one,
and services often run overnight requiring the availability of sleeper cars where passengers can
get a good night’s sleep. Amtrak has always had a fleet of designated sleeping cars fitted with
bedrooms and roomettes, but not everyone knows that there are two completely separate fleets of
cars that seldom mix. Generally, west of Chicago, Amtrak stations use low-level platforms and there
are less tunnels and bridges with low clearances, so for these services, Amtrak uses their iconic
Superliners, which are bilevel cars that you’ll see quite often on trains such as the California
Zephyr, Texas Eagle, and Empire Builder. These cars have low-level doors, meaning that if they’re
at a station with high level platforms, this will happen. Generally though, high level platforms are
mostly in the Northeast, so for this, Amtrak has another type of sleeper called the Viewliner.
These cars are used mostly on the Lakeshore Limited and any long-distance service that goes
through New York Penn Station, because Superliners are too tall to fit in there. These Viewliner
cars are single-level cars that have high-level platform boarding capabilities, but they also
have trap doors for low-level platform boarding. More importantly, they’re not nearly as tall as
the Superliners, so they can run under the wires on the Northeast Corridor. Built in 1988, Amtrak’s
Viewliner I cars have served the Northeast well for over 30 years. Amtrak’s fleet of Superliners,
known as Superliner IIs was built between 1991 and 1996, so they’re getting old, but not quite as old
as the Viewliner Is. Plus the Viewliner routes get much more ridership, causing more wear and tear
to these cars, and also providing more funding, as almost every Superliner-based route loses
money for every passenger, but there are a few Viewliner-based routes that make a little bit
of money, or at least don’t lose hundreds per passenger. Anyways, in reaction to the Viewliners
seeming somewhat old and tired, Amtrak decided to order a fleet of new Viewliners to not replace,
but supplement the current ones, as they begin to be used less. In July of 2010, Amtrak placed an
order with Spanish Manufacturer, CAF to build a fleet of 130 Viewliner-based cars. In this order,
55 were to be baggage cars to replace the ancient heritage baggage cars, 25 were to be dining cars,
25 were to be sleepers, and 25 were to be baggage dorms, which are cars that are half sleeper, and
half baggage car, often used for crews of trains to sleep in. These cars were to be painted in a
modernized version of Amtrak’s Phase III paint scheme. All of these 130 cars were expected to be
delivered by 2015, but due to many reasons, Amtrak had only begun to receive some of the first
baggage cars in late 2015. As of 2021, all cars have been delivered, except for a few of
the sleepers, which should be delivered by the end of the year. Despite being an extremely-delayed
project, the Viewliner IIs should be a nice way to refresh the aging Viewliner Is. I know this
section of the video was pretty short, mostly because there’s not that much interesting stuff to
talk about in relation to these cars, but still, the Viewliner II program is not really mentioned
much when talking about Amtrak’s plans for modernization, mostly just because this project
was supposed to be completed over 5 years ago. Chapter 4: Refreshed Superliner Cars As I mentioned in the last section, Amtrak has
two types of sleeper cars, the single-level Viewliners, and the bilevel Superliners.
Although the Viewliners are getting replaced, or at least relieved of some duties very
soon, the Superliners are almost just as old, but with no plans of replacement on the horizon.
Unfortunately, if you look at the numbers, the routes that use Superliners aren’t profitable
enough to warrant spending money on new cars, but that doesn’t mean that Amtrak won’t do anything to
keep these aging cars feeling fresh. On June 16th, 2021, Amtrak announced that they would begin to
refresh the interiors of all of their Superliner cars with upgrades including new seats, lighting,
carpets, and upholstery. This program is projected to be completed by 2024, but the first refreshed
cars are already in service right now. Again, this was another pretty short section of the video,
but still I think that it’s worth mentioning, because although they don’t get much ridership,
and they certainly aren’t profitable, Amtrak’s Western long-distance routes are a very important
part of their system, and thus worth mentioning. Chapter 5: New Avelia Liberty High Speed Trains Generally when people talk about Amtrak’s
modernization, one of the projects that stands out the most as being the future of
American passenger rail is the procurement of brand new Acela trains to replace the current
ones. Nowadays, the Acela Express, America’s fastest train, uses 20 year old trainsets that are
really starting to show their age. Just look at that color palette, those interiors, and the fact
that one snapped in half in New York. Not a great look. This portion of the video will talk about
the replacement for the current Acela trains that will be entering service on the Northeast Corridor
very soon. Before I get into talking about the gen 2 Acelas, I want to preface this by saying that I
really won’t be getting too deep into the details here because I already made an entire video
about this. Instead of telling the entire story, I’m just gonna quickly recap the history, and
then talk about some recent developments in the testing process of the new Acelas. So here we
go. A one-minute history of the Acela Express. The current fleet of Acela trains entered
service in 2000 to celebrate the new millennium and the completion of the New Haven to Boston
electrification project. These trains served on the Acela Express route between Boston and
Washington D.C. from 2000, until the current day. By the time that the Acelas were about 15 years
old in 2015, they were beginning to show their age, with dated interiors and exteriors, and the
occasional mechanical failure. Realizing the state of the Acela trainsets, Amtrak placed an order for
28 brand new Alstom “Avelia Liberty” trainsets. In 2020, the first two trainsets were completed,
with the first one being sent to Pueblo, CO for government testing, and the second one going
to Philadelphia for testing on the Northeast Corridor. Soon enough, the two trainsets began
testing in their respective parts of the country, and after a few months, the trainset that was in
Colorado was approved for passenger service by the FRA and returned to Alstom for final touches.
The Philadelphia-based trainset continued testing all over the corridor, mostly staying in the
New York area. And that’s your recap. Since the last video I made talking about the Avelia
Liberty in October, some good news has come out, but also some unfortunate news has come out. The
good news is that we finally found more details about the trains themselves, such as the fact that
they’re built to run with only one pantograph up, as when they’re doing speeds of up to 165MPH, the
first pantograph would cause the wire to bounce, meaning that the trailing pantograph wouldn’t
be able to get that much power anyways. The unfortunate news that came out though, was that
the Avelias wouldn’t enter service until 2022, as opposed to 2021 as originally planned because
testing found that there were upgrades that needed to be made to the pantographs. This means that
everything will be delayed by about a year, and the last OG Acela trainset will probably be
retired in 2023. I wonder what that means for their lease, as the Acelas were originally leased
from Alstom with their contract ending in 2022. I guess we’ll have to see what happens. Until then,
the Avelias will continue to be built by Alstom, and the one Philadelphia-based trainset will
continue to do nightly testing along the Northeast Corridor until Amtrak decides that
it’s done enough testing. Although this is a slower-moving project in terms of how things are
getting done, the Avelias won’t be slow at all, eventually having a top speed of 220MPH once
proper high-speed infrastructure is implemented. It’s still a very important project that will
definitely bring a lot of ridership to Amtrak. As for the old Acelas, they’ll stay in service for
next few years, until the fully-furnished Avelias are delivered to Amtrak for revenue service
in 2022. As the Avelias are slowly phased into service, the first-gen Acela trainsets
will be stored in Delaware with the HHP-8s until late 2022, when their 20-year lease from
Alstom will expire, meaning that some of the Acelas and all of the similar-looking HHP-8s
will be returned to Alstom for the most part, except for a few of the Acela Trainsets that
Amtrak owns flat out. I bet at least one Acela will be donated to a museum, just because of how
historically significant the original Acelas are, but as for many of the other OG Acelas,
some will probably be scrapped, and maybe some will be sold off to private high-speed
railroads, either to be used for testing, or to be rebuilt and used for service. No
matter what happens, the first-gen Acelas will continue to serve the Northeast for a
few more years, but soon they’ll be replaced by much more modern and technologically
advanced Alstom trainsets very soon. Chapter 6: Timeline Well there you go, those are all of the
improvements Amtrak is making to its fleet of equipment in one video. I think that to wrap
up this video, I should talk about the timeline of all of these things happening, so let's start
right now in the summer of 2021. In early summer, the first Siemens ALC-42 was delivered for
testing. Later in the summer, the Siemens Venture cars will fully enter service on Amtrak
Midwest Services and Northern California Services. Later on, the last Viewliner IIs remaining in the
order from almost 10 years ago will be delivered. Around the end of 2021, the first Siemens
ALC-42 will enter revenue service. In 2022, the first Avelia Liberty train will enter
service, and throughout the course of the year, a fleet of 28 trainsets in total will be delivered
to Amtrak, allowing for the full retirement of the original Acelas in 2023. In 2024, the entire
fleet of Superliners will have been refurbished and the final ALC-42 of Amtrak’s original order
of 75 will have been delivered. By this point, Amtrak most likely will have chosen to
order an additional 100 from Siemens, allowing for the complete retirement of
the Genesis Locomotives by 2030. In 2025, the first Amfleet I replacements will arrive,
along with cab cars to replace the Metroliners. Also in that year, the dual-mode Chargers will
be delivered, allowing for the retirement of the P32s in New York. Finally, by 2030, Amfleet Is and
all GE Genesis locomotives will have been retired, for the most part, leaving Amtrak with a much
newer fleet of Siemens railcars and locomotives. Over the next 10 years, we’ll begin to see a full
overhaul of Amtrak’s fleet, and there sure is a lot to look forward to. With that said, I suggest
that you follow along on my YouTube channel with my monthly news series called This Month on
the Railroad. In this series I’ll make sure to mention every piece of news that comes out from
Amtrak about the modernization of their fleet, so anyways, thanks for watching, and
I’ll see you soon in another video!
