Alaska 751 by Brian Bundridge
The final car built by Colorado Railcar is Alaska Railroad DMU 751 shown above at BNSF’s Stacy Street Yard. The U.S. Forest Service and Alaska Railroad have teamed up for a new whistle stop service (pdf) that will allow the DMU to be used for recreation and transportation opportunities for users of the Chugach National Forest. It is a very interesting and forward thinking concept to take on and should be interesting to see the outcome of the project.
The DMU is scheduled to be moved from Stacy Street Yard today for Harbor Island where it will be loaded onto a barge to Alaska. It is scheduled to depart sometime Wednesday or Thursday morning. Check out the video of the Alaska Railroad DMU (Quicktime Video). Not bad acceleration for something so big and tall!
There is good news though. Value Recovery Group e-mailed us stating they are in the process in talks to purchase Colorado Railcar and continue development of the program. I am not sure if this also includes the Ultra-Dome cars that are very popular in Alaska as well. This could mean that agencies, such as Portland’s Tri-Met, could expand their fleet, if the company is returned. I’ll be watching this very closely.
Value Recovery Group seems like a bit of an odd duck of a company. They don’t seem to have anything in the way of industrial or manufacturing experience. I hope it works out.
I was kind of hoping someone like Oregon Iron Works would purchase the rights to produce and service Colorado Railcar’s designs.
It would have been interesting if the FRA had pulled the Alaska Railroad BUDD RDCs from service earlier than they did. Might have seen some more orders, as the handful of BUDDs the ARR had were for a flag-stop service out of Talkeetna. That would have been 2-3 new ones needed right there, and then there is the proposed Commmuter Train in Anchorage, that a demo might be tried with this particular car during the off-season.
Another interesting development in Alaska Railroad Passenger operations recently. It looks like a few weekends ago, the weekly Anchorage-Fairbanks Aurora had something interesting leaving Ship Creek Depot in Anchorage on the back. Freight! The FRA has rules on what kind of freight a passenger train can carry, if at all. The Alaska Railroad has a waiver from the FRA to do that, but has not exercised in in the 20+ years of State Ownership, as the last time they did it was in the 1970s. The passenger end looked heavy, but from what I heard, those cars were not empty, 160 going in one direction, 250 in the other. Also, the Alaska Railroad might be the only railroad in the US with the ability to do this kind of operation, with their special model SD70MAC locomotives that have HEP Inverters. Up until the early 1980s, the Georgia Railroad was running Mixed Trains, but the few passengers they carried were often offered accommodation in the Caboose, as there was no heat in the coach(no generator).
http://www.alaskarails.org/sf/mixed/index.html
Sounds very similar to the Perurail tourist train service between Cusco and Machu Picchu. Perurail also uses DMUs, and negotiates quite a few switchbacks on parts of the journey. http://www.perurail.com/web/tper/tper_a2a_home.jsp
Value Recovery Group looks like a firm hired by debtors in possesion to return whatever cash value it can from remaining assets. I understand Seimens has an FRA compliant DMU in the wings (I’ve held a brochure in my hands). I was also told Bombardier has a design in the works and that’s why there was no interest in Colorada Railcar’s IP.
There are a couple PDFs on SonomaMarin Rapid Transit’s site from their RFIs. Bombardier, Nippon Sharyo, Stadler, Siemens, AnsaldoBreda, and CAF.
http://www.sonomamarintrain.org/
Nippon Sharyo actually proposed their own US DMU at least a decade or two ago, based on the EMU they built for the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District. I think some in the Northeast are looking at the Bombardier AGC. The Bi-Mode and Bi-Bi-Mode versions would work good on NJT and Metro North.