How anyone could oppose this is way beyond me but the people on the Railroad.net board have exposed themselves yet again
https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/intercity/a-two-amtrak-concept/?RAchannel=passengerSiemens Cars: Brightline vs Amtrak & Via equipment vs State-Supported Venture Cars
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,5396069,nodelay=1When discussing Siemens equipment, please keep in mind, it is all not created equal! Sure, it may look the same on the surfaces that most people can see, but open up the equipment boxes or even look at some of the material used, and you can spot differences.Brightline basically told Siemens “we want RailJet equipment” with customized interiors. Siemens built and maintains the Brightline equipment. If a train does not make pull out or fails in service, Siemens pay penalties.
Amtrak and VIA have Technical Support, Spare Supply Agreements with Siemens, which basically ensure there is a Siemens technician available to help Amtrak or VIA diagnose and repair the equipment. The agreement also gaurantees parts avalability and delivery to the failed equipment within a specified time. If for some reason, parts or technicians are not available, or can not resolve the issues in a predetermined amount of time, Siemens pays a penalty. For ACS64, Siemens has paid more penalties than cost of TSSSA contract in the first 5 years!
The State owned equipment was not able to leverage a TSSSA agreement from the start. This is because of the some of services the States already pay Amtrak for would be duplicated in the TSSSA costs. The States each have their own unique and kwirky accounting requirements, which has been a major nightmare to try and execute any sort of TSSSA.
Explains a lot with the Venture Cars vs Brightline as in why the former in the Midwest keep having issues
Diaspora is shutting down the diasp.org server at the end of the month, so I'm republishing my best posts from that server here.
Thinking Beyond Commuter Rail
...but
the funny thing is it isn't against Brightline given the bad blood at the
height of the pandemic. Instead, it's back in Sir Branson's native UK against
Eurostar. Given that the UK is renationalizing its rail network and that Virgin
also exited the domestic market on acrimonious terms, the continental European
market is the only option. I thought for sure that Branson would be determined
to prove Brightline wrong by piggybacking off another private U.S. operator
but that’s not the case.
