HOME | DD

Description
About an hour after going south, the test train returned north. The consist made several such runs over the course of the day.

One potential question about the new routing is speed. Amtrak recently selected Siemens to manufacture 83 new "Inter-City Trainsets" for use on multiple corridors, including the Cascades, replacing the retired Talgo VI cars (although Oregon plans to continue using its Talgo VIII cars). If these new sets are like the existing Venture cars built for the Midwest and Brightline, they will not be tilting cars. Consequently, they'll have to run at the standard passenger speed rather than the higher Talgo speed, which will certainly eat into trip times. On the other hand, I've heard that Amtrak has been running the substitute Horizon cars at the higher speed as well, so who knows?

Description
About an hour after going south, the test train returned north. The consist made several such runs over the course of the day.

One potential question about the new routing is speed. Amtrak recently selected Siemens to manufacture 83 new "Inter-City Trainsets" for use on multiple corridors, including the Cascades, replacing the retired Talgo VI cars (although Oregon plans to continue using its Talgo VIII cars). If these new sets are like the existing Venture cars built for the Midwest and Brightline, they will not be tilting cars. Consequently, they'll have to run at the standard passenger speed rather than the higher Talgo speed, which will certainly eat into trip times. On the other hand, I've heard that Amtrak has been running the substitute Horizon cars at the higher speed as well, so who knows?