DENVER — Colorado Railcar, the luxury rail car builder, unveils today its solution to the nation’s traffic woes — a $2.9 million self-propelled commuter rail car that rides on ordinary freight-line tracks, the Rocky Mountain News reported.
The Fort Lupton company is showing a prototype of the dome-nosed, diesel-powered rail car at Union Station before heading to Pueblo for a three-week stopover at the Transportaton Technology Center test site.
The 92-seat DMU – for “diesel multiple unit” – is the first self-propelled passenger rail car to meet the Federal Railroad Administration’s new rules for structural safety, a crucial step in the company’s plans to break into the $500 million-a-year commuter rail car business.
Among the potential customers: Denver’s Regional Transportation District, which has proposed high-speed lines to Denver International Airport and Boulder from Denver’s Union Station.
Liz Rao, planning director at the Regional Transportation District, said the 165,000-pound prototype is drawing keen interest among transit officials nationwide because it uses existing mixed freight tracks, unlike light-rail systems that require specially built passenger car tracks.
“The implications are pretty significant,” Rao said. “You can mitigate the cost of building commuter rail type lines just by sharing the same track with the freight railroads.”
European rail car manufacturers have built their own DMU commuter cars, which don’t need a locomotive but are powerful enough to pull one or more additional passenger cabs. But they have yet to produce a product that meets U.S. government standards.
Colorado Railcar Vice President Tom Janaky said the Colorado-built DMU is designed with enough horsepower to pull at least two trailer cars. The company envisions selling single- and double-story trailer cars – similar to its popular glass-dome-topped luxury rail cars used by railroads in Canada and Alaska – to DMU customers starting at $1.9 million each.
Janaky said privately held Colorado Railcar, formerly known as Rader Railcar, has invested $3 million in development research on the DMU power cars.
RTD is considering the DMUs for two of its proposed transit corridors – Denver to Boulder and the line from Union Station to DIA Airport. The certification could spare RTD the multimillion-dollar expense of having to build parallel passenger-only tracks in those corridors.
The Denver-Boulder commuter rail corridor follows the Burlington Northern tracks between the cities, while the DIA line would follow the Union Pacific right-of-way to PeÑa Boulevard.
Light rail, the electric-powered train system RTD already uses between downtown and Littleton, isn’t practical over the long distances on the Boulder and DIA routes.
Rao said the need for quick acceleration, stopping and higher operating speeds favors the use of so-called “heavy rail” over the electric light-rail system.
“This works better for the longer corridors with fewer stops,” Rao said.
The diesel units can operate up to 90 mph and there are fewer stops planned on the airport and Boulder lines.
“We need to be competitive with auto traffic in I-70 to the airport,” Rao said.
RTD hasn’t made a decision whether to choose the self-propelled diesel multiple units over the more traditional inter-city commuter train arrangement of diesel locomotive-passenger cars.
But the development by Colorado Railcar of a safety-certified DMU makes the playing field a lot more level.
Another advantage the DMU has over traditional locomotive-passenger car commuter trains is that the arrangement is more flexible to demand.
A single DMU car can be used during off-peak times without tying up use of a large locomotive to haul one or two cars.
It’s like a bus on the railroad tracks, or as some insiders call it, “cordless light rail.” The driver sits in a control cab at the front of the vehicle. An engineless unit can be attached to make a two-car train.