ALBANY, N.Y. — Sleek, shiny and built for speed, the two reconditioned Turboliner trains sit idle outside Amtrak’s local maintenance shop, the Albany Times Union reported.
After laying out millions for Super Steel Schenectady to rebuild seven of the 1970s-era trains, State Transportation Commissioner Joseph Boardman is restless to get them moving on New York’s Empire Corridor. The Turboliners are the centerpiece of a high-speed rail program announced by Gov. George Pataki in September 1998, and the trains were supposed to be in service by early 2001, shortening the trip between Rensselaer and New York City by about 20 minutes.
But Amtrak officials aren’t ready to start running the trains and have no start time in sight. And with some $140 million in track improvements yet to begin, the turbos’ higher speed capabilities are worth little. Until the tracks can handle the speed, the new trains will likely maintain the typical 2 hour, 25 minute trip time between Rensselaer and New York City for the foreseeable future.
The first of the trains was delivered to Amtrak for final testing in August and is considered ready for service by DOT. The state also considers the second train, delivered this month and undergoing final testing, nearly ready to go.
“They desperately need equipment, and this equipment is a lot better than what they have,” Boardman fumed during an interview earlier this month.
Amtrak officials insist on more time for testing and crew training — along with the parts, catalogs and manuals they say are necessary for their maintenance crews to keep the trains running.
“We’re talking about a 30-year-old piece of equipment, where many of the parts were made from scratch and aren’t available as standard parts in catalogs,” said Dan Stessel, an Amtrak spokesman in Washington, D.C., who recently toured one of the new Turboliners in Rensselaer with a reporter and other staffers from Amtrak and state DOT.
“We need to have an inventory of critical parts on hand,” Stessel said. ” A, the parts are rare and come from a variety of sources and, B, we don’t have the part numbers from Super Steel.”
For now, DOT plans to keep the Turboliners rolling over to Rensselaer as soon as Super Steel finishes them at the company’s Glenville plant under a $74.4 million contract. A third train is slated for delivery by early April, if not sooner.
“They’d better make room for them because they’re going to keep coming,” said DOT spokesman Peter Graves.
DOT plans to approve the fourth train for testing by late June, with three more to be ready by early 2004. That schedule, however, will be worth little unless Amtrak is satisfied enough to start using them to carry passengers.
The reconditioned Turboliners were designed to be high-performance additions to Amtrak’s fleet along the Empire Corridor between New York City and Niagara Falls. With their compact turbine engines in locomotives at both ends, they were conceived as a unique diesel-fueled cousin to Amtrak’s high-speed, electric Acela trains.
Amtrak’s specialists say that during testing, the first train reached 144 mph, far faster than the 125 mph originally expected.
Even without the higher speed, the unusual configuration of the five-car “train sets” — made up of a locomotive/power car with passenger seating at each end, two full-size passenger cars and a cafe car in the middle — could shorten turnaround times in some cases. The dual-locomotive design allows the engineer and crew to simply move to the other end of the train, rather than turning it around.
But the trains’ five-car “fixed consist” also will make it difficult for Amtrak to add cars. The Turboliners will seat approximately 260 passengers, but during busy times, such as the Thanksgiving holiday, “it’s not uncommon to have 350 passengers” on trains between Rensselaer and New York City, said Amtrak’s district superintendent for the region, Phillip Larson.
Inside, the refurbished passenger cars are much like the newest Metroliner cars Amtrak already uses for about half of its upstate New York runs. Interiors are more plush than on older trains, with more leg room, electrical plugs for laptop computers, and lighted message boards that can display information about upcoming stops.
The main changes are mechanical. The new turbine engines are smaller, more powerful and more fuel-efficient than those they replaced. An alternate power system also allows the trains to run on third-rail electrical power in the New York City tunnel system.
Because of the engine’s compact, portable design, Jim Shelgren, general foreman of Amtrak’s Rensselaer maintenance facility, said, “if the engine blows up, you can replace it in a few hours.” On other trains, repair jobs can take a locomotive out of commission for several days or more, he said.
But Amtrak officials and technicians say the very complexity and uniqueness of the new trains make them cautious about adding them to the regular fleet too soon.
“A lot of the technology is going to be new to us,” said Shelgren. “We don’t know how it’s going to hold up.”
One Amtrak machinist, who asked not to be identified, said detailed mechanical blueprints and manuals are all-the-more essential in unfamiliar equipment. “Otherwise, we don’t know how to troubleshoot,” he said.
Amtrak’s Stessel declined to predict just when the trains will start carrying passengers.
“New York state wants these trains; they will have these trains,” Stessel said, “but as the operator, we need to make sure we have the parts, the manuals and the training we need to operate these trains safely, reliably and efficiently.”