Passenger Trains > Story on TRIMET , Westsider, Colorado Railcar, AOE

Oregonian story on how TRIMET had to bail out Colorado Railcar to get there Westsider cars done and how some was diverted to the AOE. As usual Portland involved in another wonderful circus.

http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2008/12/trimet.html

David Kb7uns

This sure says a lot about what happened to the AOE/Grande Luxe. Another crooked (or completly stupid) businessman. WHY did we seem to worship them in this country?????

Ed

Four words.

I told you so.

Hate to say it, but as someone who was tucked firmly into the middle of this whole debacle, I'd have to say that this story is about as one-sided and incomplete as it could possibly be. The Oregonian has produced no money trail on where exactly this $5 million overage was spent, or on what. They merely portray TriMet as a helpless victim in this whole exercise, and take their word as gospel.

I'm not going to pretend that CRM hasn't done wrong - a good portion of the business dealings outlined in this article appear to be accurate. But at the same time, TriMet has its hands at least as dirty up to this point. And a good portion of the true business dealings that have been part of this have been omitted or edited for content to prevent TriMet from looking bad.

As sideways as this whole thing is, there are a few things that should be public knowledge that are conspicuously missing. For instance, at one point all four of the TriMet vehicles were operational and ready for service, but were subsequently made non-operational by outside vendors hired by TriMet.

This story implies that TriMet has paid every penny of the overages to Colorado Railcar, and continues to do so. Neither statement is factually accurate. If the Oregonian really wants to show a balanced reporting of this issue, they'll start following the money trail out of TriMet, see how much of it went to third party vendors, and examine the role of those unauthorized vendors in preventing the cars from entering service.

potb101,

I can appreciate you have a better insight on what has been happening with Colorado Railcar, BUT I
would be more open to the problems that have come up if Mr. Rader didn't have such a poor record
of past ventures. I didn't know about the Florida Fun Train connection. The staff at the factory
not having the tools needed to do the work, and having to drag the carbodies across the cement as
no proper means were available. Tri Met will have orphen equipment that there may be no parts or
tech support for, if CRM goes away.

Keith A

Story makes it pretty clear TriMet should have done their homework and never signed the contract. They were too desperate to reinvent the wheel.

Its just another brick in the wall these goof balls in Portland are building between them and the real world, like the contracts for the Bio diesel they are paying over $6 a gallon for to be politically correct. Also other things like wanting to spend millions to move old bridges to be reused by bikes and pedestrians, and wanting to put tolls on the new I5 bridge to promote carpooling and light rail use....it is an interstate bridge,they need a reality check up there.

David Kb7uns

Now hopefully Vermont will get "real" and start figuring out ways to fill its 5 car train rather than try to acquire this play thing.

The concept of DMU is good, but not from them, and not appropriate anywhere.

What suprises me is that the FTA hasn't come knocking on the door at Tri-Met to find out what is going on with their grant money.

Explains why CRC didn't show at the APTA Expo this year. Anyone familiar with the westside project -- is the line going to be used by freight? And, if not, why didn't Tri-Met just go with off-the-shelf DMU equipment like the cars on North County's Sprinter or NJ Transit's River Line?

Yeesh! Here's their bi-level (ex Metra or Espee gallery car, I'd guess) demonstrator at the APTA Expo in Dallas, October 2005.

timecruncher

---

This reminds me of the original Superliner car order in 1976. In the diner Amtrak selected the "low bid" company to build the elevators. Yes, the company went under and Amtrak virtually bought the company to get the elevators completed for the 38 diners.

And then of course you have no company, no service and NO parts.......

I think this takes the whole DMU project out of Vermont's hands thankfully due to Colorado Railcar Manufacturing (CRM) state of affairs. Part of the whole DMU project relied on tech and financial support (to a degree) from not only CRM but also through Amtrak.

timecruncher Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What suprises me is that the FTA hasn't come
> knocking on the door at Tri-Met to find out what
> is going on with their grant money.

TriMet is a shining star at the FTA. Nevermind that TriMet hasn't asked the FTA for any bus money in years...considering that 2/3rds of TriMet ridership is on the bus, one would think THAT would raise some questions.

> Anyone familiar with the westside project
> -- is the line going to be used by freight? And,
> if not, why didn't Tri-Met just go with
> off-the-shelf DMU equipment like the cars on North
> County's Sprinter or NJ Transit's River Line?

Yes, the line IS being used by the Portland & Western Railroad. It still will. Four to six freight trains a day, if not more.

The Sprinter and River Line use equipment made by Stadler and Siemens which is proven in Europe (Bombardier makes a fine model as well) but there's just one problem with all of them.

They don't meet FRA Crashworthiness regulations (49 CFR 229.141).

A waiver can be obtained under certain conditions; specifically that freight and passenger trains don't operate on the same track at the same time. For the two examples (NJT RiverLine and NCTD Sprinter), the freight railroad was willing to do this due to only needing to run one train a day - running the freight at night wasn't a big deal.

But for WES, this is a major part of the P&W's operation and thus P&W wouldn't agree to such a restriction. So, using the Stadler or Siemens or Bombardier car was off-limits.

This reduced TriMet's choices to the CRC DMU, a grandfathered Budd RDC, or a locomotive hauled trainset. TriMet has no interest in running locomotive hauled trainsets. And TriMet didn't like the RDCs. So it bought into the Colorado Railcar solution - in fact even early TriMet proproganda proudly proclaimed "We are working with Colorado Railcar to design the vehicle" - even before TriMet put the spec out for competitive bid.

Clearly, there was only one company that could win the bid.

wigwagfan Wrote:
> This reduced TriMet's choices to the CRC DMU, a
> grandfathered Budd RDC, or a locomotive hauled
> trainset. TriMet has no interest in running
> locomotive hauled trainsets. And TriMet didn't
> like the RDCs. So it bought into the Colorado
> Railcar solution - in fact even early TriMet
> proproganda proudly proclaimed "We are working
> with Colorado Railcar to design the vehicle" -
> even before TriMet put the spec out for
> competitive bid.
>
> Clearly, there was only one company that could win
> the bid.

I'm curious - what would have been the best way to do this without going with Colorado Rail Car?

Indecline Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm curious - what would have been the best way to
> do this without going with Colorado Rail Car?


Pray another company bid the contract with a similar specification-meeting vehicle.

Strangely I'd think that if the concept had the potential to "Take Off" that other companies (Primarily Bombardier and Alstom) would have bought into it. With that thought in mind something must have obviously occured... Either the other companies realized there was not a market and thus the market was doomed to fail from the start, or the bid spec was custom-tailored to CRC's manufacturing capabilities. I'm thinking it was a combination of both frankly.

Now I wonder if TriMet and ARR will keep CRC on life support for their own use until it's back to self sufficiency, or once it's served its purpose if they'll just jettison it and let it writhe and close. I'm thinking we haven't seen the last of this entire thing, I'm hoping that with some proper management the company could grow its business and become self-suffiecient again, because it has some great potential.

That worship will have ended when the current financial crisis sorts itself out and the congressional investigations start.

< why didn't Tri-Met just go with off-the-shelf DMU equipment like the cars on North County's Sprinter or NJ Transit's River Line? >

Those are Diesel LRT, not DMU. (No FRA buffer requirement at least).

Thats Buff strenght not buffer requirments

Okay, people -- that is exactly why I asked about whether freight operations existed on the line.

I am fully aware of how the FTA burdens public transit (both bus and rail) in this country with rules and regulations designed primarily to increase costs rather than enhance service to the public.

The FRA crush-standard rules are designed to try and buffer not only the occasional collision with an errant freight train but also to buffer the many lawyers who would love to get a bite at any transit agency for any kind of accident that might involve other train movements.

The linked article pointed out some of Colorado Railcar's financial woes and how they got to them, but the failure of Triangle Transit Authority down in Raleigh/Durham to get their regional commuter rail line started was not mentioned. TTA was another agency that had ordered, and then cancelled that order -- for CRC DMU cars. Again, CRC was probably the only responsive bidder on that RFP, an operation which would have operated on NS trackage along with freight trains.

Doesn't Tri-Rail down in Florida have a couple of CRC units running?

timecruncher

I think the ARR and the cruise ship companies in Alaska are done with railcar purchases. Doesn't look to good for future orders for CR. I don't know if the ARR ordered their DMU yet. 1 was suppose to be purchased for the U.S. Forest Service stuff going on up here. The ARR put up 4 RDC for sale, I think they wanted to replace them with DMUs.

Hello

There is a reason why new papers are losing so much readership to other forms of news media.

As Jody stated above, the article was written completely biased towards TriMet.

Its a shame so many negative things have been said about the TriMet cars in the news papers and even here on this forum, all that without the cars even having run in revenue service.

I find it so convenient the news article didn't include the growing pains TriMet is going through learning how to operate and maintain a DMU, as compared to light rail vehicles.
For example: The work force hired by TriMet, were so under qualified, that to electrically troubleshoot a problem with the cab console, the workers blamed the indicator light bulbs and changed them out with the wrong voltage bulbs. Brilliant! Nearly burned up the cab with that gaff.

As an employee of Colorado Railcar Manufacturing, LLC (not CRC!), I can tell you that there was and still is a great deal of pride in the work and engineering that the our team put into the TriMet's DMU's.

Please note: The last American manufactured DMU's were last built back in the late 70's, and engineering and building DMU's almost had to be re-learned from scratch. There will always be teething pains whenever a new design concept is engineered and developed. Just to re-engineer and make a simply designed inexpensive car, look how many years it took GM develop Saturn.
Admittedly, as DMU technology is concerned, we as Americans are behind the curve with respect to the development of DMU's as a viable transportation alternative to commuter trains, when compared to the Europeans or Japanese.
We Americans just love our cars too much.
It is tempting to think that Someone like TriMET could just buy DMU's from abroad, but the FRA has established standards which must be adhered to when operating commuter rail trains which share tracks with freight trains.

CRM is the last U.S. owned passenger railcar manufacturer presently in the U.S., and it would be a shame to see us go away, leaving the U.S. market only capable of buying Canadian (Bombardier) European and Japanese made railcars.

RosevilleBill
Longmont, Co.