Posted on 05/25/2020 7:17:36 PM PDT by Morgana
Delivering Amtrak's New Acela High Speed Trains
In February 2020, Amtrak's first Avelia Liberty Acela set departed the Alstom factory in Hornell, NY. We made the trip to capture the action, along with the first "production" set which departed a month later to the Northeast Corridor!
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
You can drink a beer at your seat and not even see the ripples in the glass.
Are these new fangled High Speed Trains immune/exempt to current track speed limits?
When my son was about 7 or 8 (about 20 years ago), we were visiting my folks in Chester County, PA. We took the train to downtown Philly, grabbed the train to NYC, and switched to the subway at Grand Central Station. He didn’t know that I had bought NY Yankees tickets. When we came up out of the subway and he saw Yankee Stadium I thought he was just going to die! It was pre-Acela, but still a nice train ride. Lot of fun doing a day trip to NYC for a Yankees game!
What lovely machines. Named “Avelia” after a species of protozoan single-celled organism.
Like their predecessors (which will be quickly retired after just two decades), their entrance doors are for high platforms only, so if you have to stop at a station with low platforms (e.g. Washington Union Station’s lower level), have fun with that 40-inch jump. Also, the aforementioned design characteristic excludes it from operation elsewhere in the country.
When two Shinkansens pass each other at speed (going in opposite directions), it’s really something. Also, like other Japanese trains they leave on time. If you’re 10 seconds late, they’ll have left the station.
Pretty cool train movie in case you hadn’t seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCHBEN97GBs
I took a round trip from Los Angeles to Ann Arbor, Mich. on Amtrak in 1980. The train was 14 hours late getting there and 12 hours late returning. I swore at the time that I would never ride Amtrak again—and I never have.
Buy a Japan rail pass before you go. You get 7 days of rail travel for one price, which tends to be the same amount of money as one round trip fare on the Shinkansen (bullet train) between Tokyo and Kyoto (about 400 miles apart, a 3 hour trip). The train system in Japan is remarkable.
I liked ‘Train to Busan’.
Yup,I’ve ridden “regular” trains in Japan *and* Germany...you can set you watch by the schedules of both.
Amtrak’s service on the long distance trains and its service on the Northeast Corridor are nothing alike. The Northeast Corridor may not have Swiss-style service, but it’s still reliable and fast.
Thanks! Watched the trailer- it’s on my list.
When we visited Spain, we took trains everywhere, they have a good system there.
Wow! What a video! I blinked. And I blinked again. And again, and again, and again, and I DIDN’T miss it.
It’s got a revolutionary new design so that if you dropped it from the Space Shuttle it could reach speeds of a gazillon miles an hour! Of course it will go a little slower through places like Groton, Connecticut.
Between New York and New Haven, the maximum speed it 90 mph.
How fun!!
What a wonderful memory.
Nice memories for you and your son.
I treasure such memories. I remember visiting my grandma who lived in western Pennsylvania. And my uncle who lived nearby took us to old Forbes Field. I was so excited to go to the game. I still remember, a young Tom Seaver and the Mets beat the Pirates, 3 to 0, that night.
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