What the heck are these things being used for? I was at the unofficial Amtrak Photo site and I saw them, freshly rebuilt. They were at the Super Steal plant in an Acela based paint sceme with a State Crest (??) near the cab on the powered unit. Thanks, Dane
The New York State Dept. of Transportation, Amtrak and the FRA are funding the refurbishment of the RTL trainset that were originally built by Rohr Industries in the 1970. The RTL-II was rebuilt in 1995, and featured higher horsepower turbines than the original equipment. The first RTL-III was completed by Super Steel in Schenectady, NY, in mid-2000. Each five-car trainset consists of a Turbopower car-Coach-Cafe-Coach-Turbopower car. On the RTL-III, one of the Turbopower cars is configured for Business Class, while the other is configured for Coach. These trainsets are in the process of being renumbered to make room for new P42s. The configuration of the RTL-II is: 2131-2279-2380-2281-2139 The configuration of the RTL-III is: 2135-2270-2383-2272-2138 That is from http://comminities.prodigy.net/trains/amtrak00 Happy Railroading! Dane N.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by BC Rail King: What the heck are these things being used for? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Last that I had heard is that they are actually going to put these back into commuter service. Russ/NYC
Have only seen pictures of these in books since they are more less east coast only. I wonder how they hold up under the Feds crash worthy stats. They have pulled a set of Talgo equipment out, to retrofit them to meet the reg's. and are suppose to have them all done by August I think. This has caused a couple of things to happen. Amtrak is no longer turning the trains to get away from operating out of cab cars, also has put out some ugly looking train sets. Saw a shortened Bell. train come in with a mix of cascade green and the ugly blue cars all mixed up.
The turbo trains are to return to their original service, between New York City and Buffalo, NY, under NYDOT sponsored Empire Service. As to the question of meeting FRA requirements, these trains were designed and built in the USA, only the power plant was French.
