🚀 go-pugleaf

Pierre A Plauzoles wrote:
> 
> Hello.
> 
> The subject of electrification of Metrolink has come up ocasionally and
> San Francisco's Peninsula line will probably be electrified within a few
> years.  When this is done, new locomotives will have to be bought.

Not necessarily.  Locomotive-hauled passenger trains are, by and large,
a thing of the past.  (Yes, I know, that would make them a perfect match
for the Caltrain Historical Theme Park.)

> Has the decision been made as to what model to buy for San Francisco?

No, and it would be entirely inappropriate to do so.  It should be up
to bidders, as part of putting together a package to meet _performance_-
based specifications, to decide what sort of rolling stock to provide.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the way Caltrain (the people
responsible for the single-bid historical gallery car procurement fiasco,
the effectively-single-bid historical locomotive proccurement fiasco
and the non-working-overhauled-locomotives fiasco) and its consultants
are pushing really hard to just buy locomotives to haul the gallery cars
around, and pushing hard to buy something like the Adtranz (now Bombardier)
ALP-46 which is on order by (but not delivered to) NJTC.

This of course would be a huge mistake.
 
> While I realize that the E60C has its short-comings, it did do a fairly
> respectable job of getting cars and their passenger loads from Point A
> to Point B on the Northeast Corridor (as far as I know at least, we
> haven't heard of it blowing a traction motor every other month)..

It depends on what you want to accomplish.  If you want to spend a few
hundred million dollars stringing wires just so you can say "look! electric
trains!" then buying an overweight, inefficient, high-operating-cost,
obsolete, low-performance, unmaintainable, unsuccessful locomotive at close
to scrap value may be the way to go.

If you want to improve transportation on the Peninsula and operate attractive
services and care about total cost of ownership and about total return on
investment you'd probably do what every other rail system in the world
(including Amtrak, even) has done and pass on them.

> [...] Now to the nitty-gritty: Have all the Mexican E60Cs been sold (they
> were returned to the US, apparently, last year; there were 20 left
> unsold in August of last year)?

11 unused locomotives available in original collectible wrapping.

> [...] Would the idea of using some (or all) of those units for the
> time being -- while the system absorbs some of the
> electrification-related costs -- not have some advantages?

None I can see.

> On the other hand, how long would the project take?

Eighteen months if world class contractors were doing it and Caltrain
were behind it.

Officially six years at Caltrain -- though there isn't actually funding
for any of this, so it's all rather academic at this point.

In reality?  I'm not holding my breath.

> Would there be any advantage in that at all?

No.  Perhaps you'll "save" $40m (compared to buying 10 modern locomotives,
but there are ways to save even more by not buying any locomotives at all)
but the smart money (which has passed on this fabulous opportunity so far)
says the total amortized costs would be higher.