02Pilot said:In reply to NickD :
I recall reading something about Amtrak actively cultivating the private rail car hauling side of the business. I'm guessing it's quite profitable, and Amtrak being Amtrak, anything profitable is good.
Huh. I would've figured it was just extra hassle they wouldn't want to deal with. But if it makes money...
There's been a bunch of private passenger cars through here, but it's always when I'm at work so I've never actually caught them going through.
In reply to NickD :
I've seen one or two on the Hudson Line over the years.
FYI, here's the rate schedule. It not exactly cheap.
In reply to 02Pilot :
I mean, I guess if you can afford your own passenger car and it's up to Amtrak standards (roller bearings, alignment control couplers, 480V head end power, etc) then you can probably pay whatever they're asking.
Photos have surface of Reading #2102 getting it's completed paint job. They went with the '59-'64 Iron Horse Rambles scheme with the yellow hand rails and running boards and lettering. The only difference is that they tender is lettered for Reading & Northern, instead of Reading. There's a rumor that something is happening April 26th with the #2102, and considering that Andy Muller has said he wants #2102's debut run to be hauling a freight train, I'd have to imagine it's that.
Andy Muller also continues to invest more money into Carbon County, with the $2 million purchase of the old Kovatch Mobile Equipment complex at Nesquehoning, PA. KME was a company that outfitted fire trucks and other first responder vehicles, and was purchased 6 years ago by the REV Group. REV Group decided to consolidate production at their Louisiana site and is closing down the Nesquehoning facility.
Andy Muller announced yesterday that Reading & Northern is purchasing the factory to turn into a maintenance facility. With over 1,600 freight cars, a continually growing fleet of passenger cars, now up to 47 cars, plus over 70 motor vehicles and numerous other pieces of equipment for their track department and other departments, they were running out of space to keep their equipment well maintained. The KME campus is right alongside the tracks that R&N purchased off Carbon County last year, and they already have huge gantries mounted inside, so lifting cars up should be no issue.
In 2020, Reading & Northern finished the construction of the new Nesquehoning Bridge Phase 2 at a total cost of $14 million. After it purchased the Carbon County rail line for $4.7 million, Reading & Northern spent over $5 million to upgrade the track. So, Andy is putting plenty of money back into the local economy. R&N also saw record coal traffic last year, and with sanctions on Russia, coal traffic is already up even further, resulting in them building more coal transloading facilities and purchasing another 200 hopper cars.
The T1 Trust has announced that the construction of the boiler for PRR #5550 is as done as it is going to get until final assembly begins, so now they are moving onto construction of the frame. On the original T1s, it was a big single casting done by General Steel Castings, but GSC is no longer and, surprise, not many places really do castings of that size anymore. They found three foundries that had the capability to do a casting that large, but all three of them said that they could not guarantee they would get it right on the first, or even the second, pour. All of them said it would likely take at least three attempts to get right, and as a result they all wanted to charge in the neighborhood of $2.5 million.
So the plan is to cast the frame in several smaller weldments and then weld them all together. The overall price is cheaper, more foundries are willing and able to cast them, doing the finish machine work is much easier when you're working with individual chunks, and there's no loss of strength if welded properly.
Union Pacific #8444, in the two-tone "Greyhound" passenger livery it wore from '87-'96, hustles through Colton, California, with an excursion train on its way to Los Angeles to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal. Despite this being a Santa Fe line, on which Union Pacific has trackage rights, the small structure on the right is a Union Pacific depot. This is a relic from when UP operated Colton to San Bernardino commuter trains in the early 1900s.
The red Mars light was added to all the FEFs in 1946, along with the FEF-3s ditching the subpar Sellers exhaust steam injector for a Worthington SA feedwater heater. #844 lost her Mars light in 2013, a couple years after Ed Dickens took over. The mounting bolts had supposedly deteriorated and so it was removed and has never been reinstalled, much to the chagrin of the rivet counters.
SP #4449 and UP #8444 side by side at the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal 50th anniversary event.
UP #8444 and UP #3985 crossing the Bonneville Salt Flats on ex-Western Pacific trackage at Wendover, Utah in April of 1991
Well, two weeks after announcing the PNW tour for UP #4014, they cancelled said tour, citing traffic concerns due to supply chain issues and not wanting to tie up the rails. I'm a little bit baffled because I feel like things haven't changed that much in two weeks. I could see if they announced it back in January and three months later changed their mind, but the situation that caused them to cancel today had to have been the same two weeks ago when they made the announcement. Also kind of a bummer that they fired up #4014 in 2019 and it's only run two years. It ran in '19, was parked in '20, ran in '21, now will be parked for '22. Can't imagine #844 will be out and about either.
In reply to NickD :
I was surprised when I saw that email too. Something must be up. I'm wondering it it might be related to all the military aid promised to Ukraine? Maybe that could bump up freight traffic enough to potentially cause problems.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
I also learned that the STB has been getting a ton of complaints about rail service reliability, particularly over fuel and agriculture shipments, and they're spitting nails over it. They're dragging all the Class Is before the principle in a couple weeks and going to give them a ration of E36 M3. UP might have decided it would be wise not to be grandstanding with a PR tour that's going to disrupt traffic.
Plus there is about 500 container ships queued up in Shanghai due to the Chinese lockdowns, that once things resume there, getting those ships to the US, unloaded and back on there way to China is top priority.
Andy Mueller made my local newsweb this morning. Funny that I find out about something pretty significant and local on GRM several days prior. https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/entertainment/2022/04/railroad-that-runs-jim-thorpe-train-buys-shuttering-firetruck-factory.html
NickD said:Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to NickD :
Intriguing, I'd not heard any of that but it certainly explains the delay.
I'm not sure I buy the argument about freight traffic though. On a busy day we might have a half-dozen trains pass the house. Often there's less.
Amtrak is now streaming on Twitch to show how little traffic is on the Gulf Coast Line that CSX is saying is too busy to accomodate two Amtrak trains a day. Delightfully petty.
https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/k7w9n9/amtrak-is-streaming-an-empty-railroad-on-twitch-to-beef-with-freight-rail-companies
Well I'm not sure what happened, but traffic has drastically picked up over the last few days, and especially today.
There's currently a train passing by now, which is pretty rare for them to come through town at night. While I've not kept a close count, this is at least the 8th one today, which again is very rare, especially for a weekend.
Two passed by within a half hour of each other this afternoon while I was working on the RV, which also hasn't happened in quite a while.
Also, apparently Delay In Block was filming nearby earlier this year.
Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:NickD said:Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to NickD :
Intriguing, I'd not heard any of that but it certainly explains the delay.
I'm not sure I buy the argument about freight traffic though. On a busy day we might have a half-dozen trains pass the house. Often there's less.
Amtrak is now streaming on Twitch to show how little traffic is on the Gulf Coast Line that CSX is saying is too busy to accomodate two Amtrak trains a day. Delightfully petty.
https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/k7w9n9/amtrak-is-streaming-an-empty-railroad-on-twitch-to-beef-with-freight-rail-companies
Well I'm not sure what happened, but traffic has drastically picked up over the last few days, and especially today.
There's currently a train passing by now, which is pretty rare for them to come through town at night. While I've not kept a close count, this is at least the 8th one today, which again is very rare, especially for a weekend.
Two passed by within a half hour of each other this afternoon while I was working on the RV, which also hasn't happened in quite a while.
I wonder if it's a ploy to justify their reasons to not allow Amtrak to run, or an attempt to smooth things over before the STB tears strips off them over customer service reliability at the upcoming hearings.
In reply to NickD :
I'd guess at least a little of both lol.
Word is that Reading #2102 is making a run tomorrow to Jim Thorpe with 50 loaded coal hoppers, which would be the official return to service that Andy Muller wanted. I'm sure lineside will be mobbed. I'm actually a little concerned about trackside crowds when I go down May 28th to chase it.
A little #425 for 4/25. That's the larger auxiliary tender that was built from a PRR E6s Heavy Atlantic tender. I knew they didn't use it much for some reason, preferring the smaller canteen built from a Reading Camelback tender that they inherited from George Hart, but only recently learned the reason why. They can fit #425 and the small auxiliary tender on the turntable at Jim Thorpe at the same time, whereas the larger tender had to be uncoupled and turned separately. That's not really an issue now though, with the new bridge at Coalport allowing them to wye the locomotive, tenders, and cars all at once but they still seem to prefer the smaller tender.
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