I for one think the F125s look better, but hey, the chargers are built here in Sac and I know one of the Siemens VPs that made the happen. So I'm glad to see them do well.
An old Grade School friend of mine who works the Chicago shops for Amtrak just took delivery of one last week.
Well, I would not exactly rate these as being handsome beasts. But they will be interesting for many railfans.
I don't understand why they aren't in phase V like the p42s. That is one of the worst paint schemes I have seen in a while, and with the Viewliner baggage cars in IIIb as well, the Amtrak fleet is starting to look a little mismatched. Almost like a reverse Rainbow era...
I have spotted several units on galsburg web cam as well as on state trains through potiac as a second unit p40 on front sounded like it was in idle they will be leading soon on regular trains I have noticed Oregon and California units are painted different
unfortunately one had a battery fire breaking in on a Hiawatha train this morning it was second unit in consist
charger units starting to lead trains on their own several seen on Hiawatha trains between Chicago and milwauke. probly see them on longer runs soon I keep watching chi - stl trains, might be leading on galsburg trains on trains Carbondale first
Caltrans bought their Charger units for instate trains operated by Amtrak. F40PH units are aging and will eventually be replaced. Also there is a political twist in that Siemens has it's North American plant just outside of Sacramento encouraging the "buy local" folks. The transition to high level faring would look a little funny if run back to back. Also Surfliners are currently all low level cars. Capital route, San Joaquin route, Surfliner (San Luis Obispo to San Diego) trains are fairly frequent and popular. Now we need a model.
That'll be a challenge. With those struts connecting the truck frames to the underframe, expect either those details to be wrong, or the model to be unable to take all but the broadest model railroad curves.
Wait Surfliner isn't all low level unless something really drastic has changed. They have one set of amfleet cars they run as surge, but the main trainsets are all bilevel. Also, Coltrane has noF40s. They will replace/sapient F59phi...Calera in, the bay area commuter has F40s. Metrolink in LA bought EMD F125s instead of Chargers. Sent from my SM-T377V using Tapatalk