I don't think this is really "going electric". These are new electric locomotives for two lines that already run electrified passenger service: the Northeast Corridor has since around 2000, and the Keystone Corridor (on the portion to Harrisburg) has since about 2006.
Amtrak has shown no evidence of planning to use batteries similar to what is in the Nissan Leaf or Tesla automobiles for the Richmond-DC or New Haven-Springfield portions of the Northeast Regional runs, instead apparently planning to continue to swap between diesel and electric locomotives at DC and New Haven. There should be plenty of battery powered cars on the road that can cover far longer ranges than DC-Richmond or New Haven-Springfield by the time Amtrak starts taking delivery of these locomotives.
Hmm yeah, it looks like the actual electrification was done a while ago. I had been looking at the section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Corridor#High-speed_co..., which discussed a 2005-06 project to "replac[e] diesel trains with electric" after upgrading the caternaries.
Cities sprinter should be lighter ("just" 100 tons), it's directly derived from the Siemens Eurosprinter line, which are 4-axle locomotives, and in Europe, locomotive heavier than 22.5 or so tons per axle would be almost useless. Even that is very heavy (ES engines weight about 85 tons), and a typical European EMU (locomotives are fading out of the favor in Europe, for anything else than freight, and rightly so) are even lighter (50 to 60 tons per carriage). Anyway, cities sprinter is heavier because of an additional armor required by the US regulations and it needs a lot of power (it has output of 6.4 megawatts, imagine that). Perhaps you could make a battery car to (very slowly and so-so) finish the trip from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. But you really can't expect that it'd be viable to equip a main line electric locomotive with batteries. And making it even heavier is a bad choice too, as that would (especially at higher speeds, above 160 km/h, and this engine is perfectly capable of 200 km/h trips, common in Europe) put an immense wear on the infrastructure (everywhere the locomotive is used), making it, in the long run, cheaper to just electrify the line (which is what should be done).
I thought the train equipment was a little lighter than that, and automobiles normally weigh somewhat more than 2000 pounds.
In any event, doesn't the train being heavier mean that it can carry a much bigger battery pack than the automobile?
Amtrak's newest diesels produce 4200 horsepower, which is just over 3 megawatts. 40 Roadster battery packs (at 53 kilowatt hours per battery pack, and about a thousand pounds per battery pack) would store roughly 2 megawatt hours (35-40 minutes of the diesel at full throttle), weigh 20 tons, and probably cost something under $2 million at Tesla Model S era pricing. The catenary locomotives Amtrak is buying are over $6.6 million each, so the cost to add batteries sufficient for Richmond or Springfield service might well increase the cost of the locomotive by less than 50%.
I think the right strategy for charging a locomotive battery pack would be to install a short section of 25kV catenary at the station/layover facility at the end of the route. Amtrak has some HHP-8 locomotives which are 8000 horsepower, about 5 megawatts, which demonstrate that carrying about 5 megawatts through a catenary system to a locomotive is not terribly difficult.
Recharging will take longer than refuelling a diesel, but if the recharging can be done in under an hour, that's probably tolerable.
Why are trains so fascinating to us? Every time I read a new article on new high-speed rail projects or even sometimes while riding on the trains, I find myself spending hours on Wikipedia looking up random facts about rail lines and locomotives.
A major problem with Amtrak today is that they don't own most of their own track, and thus are at scheduling and upgrade mercy of other companies (freight railways...us commercial freight railways are world class). This was also a big problem in the uk after privatization.
Step one may make sense without step two. Rails for freight, get trucks off the highways, and cars, buses, and planes for passengers between cities, with dedicated high speed rail for certain areas, and metro subway and light rail systems in the densest cities.
So the government owns the Amtrak trains but not the track ? What were they thinking ? That's exactly the opposite of what makes sense and what is already done with road and air transport.
Basically, rail travel suffered when jet aircraft became commercialized, and when the personal automobile and interstate highway system became widespread. This happened in Europe to a lesser degree (although there higher density sort of saves the rails, as well as a less-degregulated air industry until recently -- however in the 1990s and 2000s, they ended up in the same situation as the US with respect to trains).
In the 1960s and 1970s, freight lines were losing money on passenger service, and shutting it down. There were a variety of political problems with shutting it down entirely (certain constituencies, especially people in small towns with major trains running through them, religious or cultural groups who liked trains, etc.) strongly supported rail travel.
Amtrak was a political solution to let the freight lines discontinue offering passenger service (and thus be more profitable), while keeping service for political reasons. It would have taken a much larger (20x? 100x?) investment to really create a viable passenger rail service, and it still would have suffered for fundamental technological reasons. If Amtrak were not political, it would have just ended service entirely across most of the country, focusing service on specific markets where rail makes sense (Northeast corridor, essentially, and maybe some commuter services not run by states).
There are some new factors which make rail maybe more suitable today than it was 40 years ago (1. congestion at airports -- we're unwilling to build new/big ones in most cities, 2. the carbon intensive nature of air travel 3. a greater population and general increase in density due to people moving to cities and near suburbs of the biggest cities), so maybe rail makes sense for certain routes now where it didn't before.
Passenger rail, no matter what, makes absolutely no sense for genuinely long distance travel between endpoints separated by nothingness, which characterizes most long distance trips in the US.
I was glad to see that these new locomotives include regenerative braking to put power back into the grid. Is that a new feature for these routes or did the electric locomotives that are being replaced also include this feature?
As a daily rider of the Keystone line, I will be interested to see if those new top speeds materialize. Also, as others have pointed out, Amtrak has been electric on these routes for some time.
Since we moved to Boston, we've driven to New York 5 times. Each time we've spent at least some amount of time in stop-and-go traffic. I haven't taken the train, but if we weren't hauling a load of stuff on the trip I'd prefer the train in a heartbeat just to avoid the aggravation.
Boston to NYC is about 220 miles. Say a "real" high-speed train averages 180mph then the train trip is 90 minutes. Fewer would make the 4 hour drive. It would also reduce the need for those Nyc/Boston shuttle flights.
Most parts of the world have found that the current three hours from DC to NYC is already short enough to eliminate the flights except for people connecting to other flights. However, Amtrak doesn't have enough seats to absorb all the airline shuttle passengers.
The really interesting thing about a 90 minute or better Boston to New York City trip is that it opens up the possibility of daily commuting. It would also have the potential to add places like Springfield and Hartford to the set of suburbs of Boston and Manhattan. But Amtrak seems content to plan on that not happening for another 30 years.
Actually, many people do daily or semi-daily commutes already. I commute and sometimes it's hard to find seats when taking the Acela Express between New York and Boston.
At this point I think the problem is price. You only see white collar workers on the express because a round trip is $200+. If any of these people (myself included) had to foot the bill for the train tickets I doubt the trains would be nearly as full as they are.
The ridiculous thing about the Acela is that it's significantly more expensive than the "normal" train, but only cuts about 40 minutes from the trip. (Checking Amtrak.com showed me ~4:15 for the normal train, 3:36 for the Acela.) When I was commuting twice a week NYC-BOS, I couldn't possibly justify the price difference, especially if you compare it to the $20 Bolt Bus or Greyhound tickets.
Point being: the Acela (IMHO) doesn't qualify as a high-speed train if only because it doesn't "feel" high-speed compared to the other options. Commuting in 3.5 or 4 hours is emotionally irrelevant. Commuting in 1.5 hours would feel remarkably different.
Actually, the ridiculous thing about the Acela, is that in some cases, it's both cheaper and faster to take a plane. Faster, sure; but cheaper? If I've justified the price of the Acela, why wouldn't I want to take a plane, especially if it's faster.
1) Only chosen to buy 20 Acela trainsets, with one first class, one cafe, and four business class cars each, and I believe four of those are always scheduled to be undergoing maintenance at any given time.
2) Told Amtrak to try to make a profit
Given the constrains of needing to somehow decide which people get to use the inadequate number of seats, and trying to make money, how do you kill two birds with one stone?
The real problem is that the existing rail lines aren't straight enough for truly high speed rail. To build new ones, you would need broad public support (because you're going to be kicking people out of their homes with eminent domain).
I see no reason you can't build tunnels 100-200 feet underneath people's homes to avoid kicking people out, but that has the problem that you need broad public support for spending that money. Then again, if we redirected 10% of our military spending to high speed rail, that would probably address the funding issues adequately.
The other thing is that greater superelevation would increase speeds possible through the existing curves. But as you increase superelevation, you potentially increase the minimum safe speed through that segment of track, and having 0 MPH be a safe speed is desireable. There may be some maglev derivative that could help with that problem. Rubber tires on concrete also have greater friction, which may allow them to tolerate a greater amount of unbalanced superelevation.
If I could get to New York in 90 minutes, I would actually go there. I took the train from New York to Boston a few weeks ago, and it took around 4 hours. Nice trip along the coast, but barely better than driving.
