Recently added back to the site are 15 reactivated P40s coming out of Beech Grove, which as of April 2011 are believed to all be in active service. The next to last one, #822, has special paint, and was reserved for use on the 40 year anniversary train. The announced locations for the museum train were in the Washington, D.C. - Philadelphia area, for May-June, 2011, and then to New England and Scranton, Pannsylvania. Finally, late in the year, the train visited Galesburg, St. Louis, Chicago, and Jackson, Michigan. By December it had finally gotten west of St. Louis, going to Milwaukee on the Empire Builder route, and then to Seattle and Portland. A California stop was made at Bakersfield, and scheduled in December were Los Angeles and San Diego. Depending on Amtrak's budget, it may get further play later in 2012. Running with it has been a de-powered EMD F40, road number 406. As of summer 2011, for the New England schedule, the train, minus the F40, went through the New York tunnels to Albany, New York. The F40 had to go by way of Chicago, since it is too tall for the tunnels. The most recent opinions are that the train will end up in the south, sometime in March.
Amtrak repainted 26 P42's in fiscal year 2011. Two were done by a subcontractor (#7 and #200), and 24 at Beech Grove. Noses were also converted on #7 #17 #32 #78 #142 and #177. The 26 figure doesn't count the last of the P40's. A group of seven P42's were repainted during 2010 for Amtrak's 40th year, mostly because they were damaged and/or needed paint anyway. Interestingly, different paint schemes were applied to several of them. Engine #156 is in the retro-1971 "red nose" and #66 and #145 received versions of the late 70's bicentennial stripe treatment. A restored P40, brought out of retirement by George W. Bush when he was running for re-election in 2008, also was painted like #145, and is being used on the aforementioned museum train. Engine #182 had the short-lived 1997-vintage "northeast direct" applied, and numbers 22 and 148 got spiffed up in the 2001 style bluenose paint. Amtrak's original website comments had #163 getting the treatment for National Train Day, so apparently 22 and 148 replaced her.
We were a fan of the F units from EMD, including the F40's that these new GE products replaced during the time period of 1996-2001. The early GE Genesis Series are on our 800 pages, since the road numbers originally assigned were #800-843. Can't help but note some religious connotations here, since GE called this the "Genesis" series. Engine #800, now retired, was the first P40, and #1 is thus the first and oldest of the Genesis P42 locomotives, first of the first so to speak!
These P42's are what we've got now...love them or not! The road numbers of the P42's started at #1 and ran through #207, which was also an interesting feature, since few railroads have low numbered locomotives these days. You can scroll through all of them by clicking anywhere on the picture, or every 10-20 pages or so there is a link back to the home page where you can click on an individual road number. Amtrak purchased the lion's share of the Genesis locomotives. The other two buyers were Via-Rail Canada and Metro North (New York).
Amtrak's P42's were purchased from General Electric at the bargain rates of approximately $3 million each, and are now 10-15 years of age. They are referred to as cab units because the unibody is part of the structure. There have been few passenger locomotives built in North America recently, but it is anticipated that the next orders will cost at least twice as much. Currently only MPI (Idaho) and Brookville (Pennsylvania) build passenger train locomotives in North America, and have produced just a limited number for Chicago's Metra and other commuters. Brookville has a design, but no actual production of its BL36PH as of yet. So what is Amtrak going to do? It is instructive to note that New Jersey Transit, which has a much larger budget than Amtrak, placed an order for 26 new dualmode locomotives in Februry 2008, at a cost of more than $8 million each. These engines are not being built in North America, but rather at Bombardier's plant in Kassel, Germany. While the blunt nose arrangement of the NJT units works on the northeast, it will not be suitable for service on Amtrak's wild and wooly grade-crossing infested 19th century infrastructure. If Amtrak does order any new locomotives to replace these P42's, they will need to be bulletproof.
In late 2009, GE and the Pennsylvania congressional delegation were pushing an appropriation for 54 new Amtrak locos in Washington. GE builds its locomotives at Erie, PA. While GE was not assurred of getting any eventual order, it still felt it was an appropriate use of stimulus money, and might forestall additional layoffs at the Erie factor. GE had laid off more than 1500 employees in recent months. In 2011, Caterpillar began building a new facility at Muncie, Indiana, in which it says it's Progress Rail subsidiary will begin to be able to produce passenger locomotives in 2012. Progress Rail now owns the remnants of Electromotive Diesel, once a General Motors subsidiary, and once the largest producer of diesels in the world. EMD had a plant in Canada, but like most of the other world-competitors out there in the railroad business, could not meet the probably "buy-US" requirements of any eventual Amtrak order.
Amtrak has of this writing not ordered any new diesel road locomotives since 2001. In 2010 the company put out a fleet management strategy, which called for gradual replacement of the P42's at the rate of 15 per year, beginning in 2012. But rather than place an order, a committee was established to come up with the guidelines for an eventual bid solicitation. As of April 2011, the committee had not yet completed a plan. That month, perhaps realizing that its original plan was unrealistic, the fleet strategy was revised to postpone any action on replacing the diesel fleet until 2015 or later. As usual, the emphasis within Amtrak's beltway offices, is on the 457-mile electrified northeast corridor, rather than on the 21,000 mile diesel network in the other 43 western states. In July 2011 the company exhausted its credit line with a loan to purchase 70 new electrics for the northeast corridor, the real money pit for passenger raill in the United States.
RN #1 is of course the first, and oldest Genesis P42. Road number 1 at Amtrak was, quite fittingly, previously assigned to the New Orleans switcher back in the early days of the company. Fittingly, because many of the photos on this website are from the New Orleans area. This #1 dates from 1996. It is currently in its third paint scheme, and as noted in this photo, was missing a builder data sticker on this side. It has acquired a new nose cone and a cosmetic paint job recently. In November 2009 #1 was running with #147 back and forth on the Sunset Limited between New Orleans and Los Angeles. In the past it has literally been all over the country. In December it was on the Texas Eagle. During February 2010 it was on the Silver Meteor, Crescent, and Capitol Limited. Our later reports have been moved to a link at the bottom of this page page.
In this photo #1 is shown on the City of New Orleans at Hammond, Louisiana. It has its original nose, which has subsequently been replaced. Since this photo was taken, the locomotive has had another repaint job as well. The other active ones in this 1-9 group were cosmetically updated in 2009, with #9 being the last, released in January 2010. The last former NOL unit to get a bolty nose was #17, in April 2011. In July 2011, all of the seven operable in this group had the matching new number boards and the latest "scoop" style of bolt-on nose.
In the road number group 1-9, three have been out of service recently (#3 due to an electrical fire on the Crescent, and #7 and #8 because of wrecks. The serial number block #49320-49349 (#1-30) date from August-November 1996. Engine #4 also was reportedly having trouble on the Crescent during February 2009, and was hit by a truck in California in September. By December 2009 it was repaired and back on duty. In early 2010 #3 also came back into service for a while, and #7 was shipped to Albion, Iowa for repairs by a contractor. In early 2011, #3 started having problems again, and was at least temporarily out of service from March 2011 until December. Late in 2011, #7 was reported back in Chicago, but as of our latest update in December, she was apparently not back into full regular service. She is believed to have run a test trip on Lincoln Service. Engine #8 was still sitting at Beech Grove, and apparently will not be repaired. It was damaged November 30, 2007 in the Norfolk Southern yard approaches to the south end of Chicago's Union Station. In a much-publicized incident, #8, leading the Pere Marquette inbound from Grand Rapids, Michigan, over-ran the rearmost flat car of an NS freight train. Engine #3 made a test trip on the Hoosier State from Beech Grove on December 9, 2011, usually an indication that an engine is about to come back into service.
Well, back to the main subject: #1. She returned to Chicago after a stint on the Heartland Flyer in Texas and Oklahoma. She worked with P32 #500, which is a 1991-era P32 converted freight platform, now converted to run on biodiesel. Originally Amtrak had planned to get rid of its 20 P32's, but in view of continuing equipment shortages, their saga is a tale for another time and another web page. She was in the east for a while, and showed up on the Autotrain. Then in late November 2010 she was reportedly making a couple of trips on the California Zephyr, trains #5 and #6. For almost the entire month of December, she was on the Empire Builder, shuttling between Chicago and Seattle. In April 2011, #1 and #134 were selected to haul three music groups from California across the Sunset Route to New Orleans. The Railroad Revival Tour made several stops along the way, including Tempe, Arizona and Austin, Texas for sold out concerts. After Independence Day, 2011, it went south on the Texas Eagle.
A series of fires cost Amtrak six more of its P42's in late 2010 and early 2011. Reportedly the culprit was faulty fuel injector parts. A number of other engines had leaking fuel in the engine compartments, but were fixed before they could burn. Whether the sidelined engines will be repaired or not is unknown at this time. Several are nearly 20 years old and past their prime, it is doubtful that all will be. Engine #32 was returned to service in 2011 in a fresh paint job, counting against the quota of 24 that Amtrak was scheduled to repaint in its fiscal year that ended September 30. One of the newest locomotives to catch fire, #200, also came back to life in 2011 after repairs at RELCO in Iowa.
As we update this page again late in 2011, #1's most recent assignment has been on the Southwest Chief. She also did some commuter duty in California in October and November. At Christmas 2011 she was doing City of New Orleans and Texas Eagle rotations. We have moved the latest reports to the link at the bottom of the page.
Amtrak runs a 21,000 mile network, most of the mileage of which is diesel-powered. We will have a lot more to say about that in later pages. The network serves 43 states, and there are two major bases for the locomotives, Chicago and Washington D.C., about which there will also be more later on. The lion's share of the locomotive fleet is devoted to commuter trains, of which there are six minor networks within the whole. Washington, D.C. has Virginia regional trains which connect to the electrified northeastern corridor at Washington Union Station. Chicago Union Station is the hub of three Illinois routes and two Michigan routes. Albany (Rensselaer), New York and New Haven, Connecticut are hubs connecting the northeast corridor to commuter routes that service Montreal, Toronto, and intervening points such as Springfield, Albany, and Buffalo. One commuter train, the Heartland Flyer, connects to the Amtrak system at Fort Worth, Texas, and Missouri River Runners connect at Kansas City and St. Louis. Out west, Amtrak California commuter routes tie in at Los Angeles, Emeryville, and other points. The Cascades duplicate the Coast Starlight route, providing additional commuter frequencies between Eugene, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Two of the Cascades continue on to reach Vancover, Canada.
There are still ten or so longer distance overnight trains operating in the United States every day, the remnants of a once-vast network that had withered in the 1950's and 1960's due to taxpaper subsidies diverting traffic to highways and airlines. There was no taxpayer involvement in passenger railroads until 1971, when Amtrak was created by the U.S. Congress under the Richard Nixon administration. Most commentators at the time felt that Nixon intended for the system to operate a year or two, and then go out of business. Of course, it hasn't happened that way, although one of the fallacies of the way the program was established is that it must be "re-authorized" from time to time, and scrap for funding every year. Currently, Amtrak ticket sales covers the operations of its trains, but don't quite cover the costs of the infrastructure between Washington, D.C. and Boston, which the government now owns. The previous owners, private railroad company Pennsylvanian and its successor Penn-Central, failed in the 1960's and went bankrupt. Amtrak also owns a short piece of trackage mostly in Michigan, but otherwise its trains must lease trackage routes from private operators. This sort of public-private cooperative venture is exactly what the U.S. Congress and bi-partisan successions of US presidential administrations have always said they wanted for everything else that government gets involved in. But, as you probably already know, politicians do not do in actuality what they say they are going to do when the run for office, and currently mass transit (and many other worthy programs as well) remains a whipping-boy for a few influential Republican office holders.
So, if you are under the impression that passenger trains are an obsolete technology and always "lose money," please don't believe it. Amtrak does take about $1 billion per year in taxpayer subsidy, and it is true that its network can be speeded up if anyone would bother to believe in the potential. But the sum is paltry when compared to the more massive taxpayer subsidies to airlines and highways, more than a trillion dollars per year. Our opion, based on facts, are that rail transportation is the most energy-efficient and environmentally friendly form there is. Airlines, on the other hand, are the least energy-efficient and and the other end of the environmental spectrum. Airlines do not make profits, and never have, absent these massive taxpayer subsidies, facts also conveniently overlooked by most politicians. We were reminded of this recently when American Airlines went bankrupt. Air transportation is not necesarily faster either, particularly between points less than 500 miles apart. Will have more to say about this later on also.
December 23, 2011 Revision