Passenger Trains > Viewliner II – Decade long timeline now

From the NRPC Annual Report: “On August 3, 2010, the Company entered into a contract with a contractor to purchase 130 new long-distance single level cars. The Company issued an NTP to the contractor on September 7, 2010. As of September 30, 2017, the base price of the contract with change orders is $299.5 million. The Company makes payments to the contractor pursuant to an approved payment schedule upon the contractor's successful completion of certain tasks (milestones), e.g. design, fabrication, testing and manufacturing of the cars, during the contract.

As of September 30, 2017, the Company has incurred $214.4 million in project-related costs. Deliveries of the cars started in December 2014. As of September 30, 2017, the Company has taken delive1y of 78 cars. The contractor's most recent delivery schedule shows delivery of the final cars in December 2020.” (To be fair, some of the project related costs are NRPC project administration costs).

Revised Order: 70 baggage cars, 25 dining cars, 25 sleepers, and 10 baggage-dorms
Delivered To Date (1/2018): 70 baggage cars and 14 dining cars

http://on-track-on-line.com/amtkrinf-amtrakbythenumbers.shtml#viewliner

Links below to 2015 and 2016 OIG reports on the procurement questions:

https://www.amtrakoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/oig-e-2015-001.pdf

https://www.amtrakoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/CAF%20Final%20Report%2020160201.pdf



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/18 10:11 by District.

...and counting, with the months passing by on an obsolescent design whose design roots go way back around forty years, and which is too costly and too difficult to build.

I remember an Amtrak executive in the late 1990s saying that a Viewliner I sleeping car cost about as much to build as a Superliner sleeper.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/18 16:08 by GenePoon.

Having pumped out 14 diners, practice evidently does not make perfect. Lucky if they can pump out 2 a month - still.

The Viewliner already bankrupted one carbuider (though Bill Agee admittedly had overextended his company and underbid the job). CAF as an international company has deep enough pockets though a separate corporate structure could allow CAF America to go under by itself. The only reasons for continuing with the Viewliner design were its appearance, uniform with the older sleepers; and its being Amtrak-invented. They are really not enough to continue with a 1970s design for delivery in the 2010s to last for many decades beyond; but it is too late, now.