Passenger Trains > Present Acela Power Car

Do the power cars on present Acela trains have passenger seating?
The power cars on the new Acela 21' do not.
Andy

No power, power cars presently on Acela DO NOT have passenger seating in them. 

This follows the French TGV pattern of having the power cars at each end.
For the French, where many "TGV" services use the high speed network for part of their trip and use the classic network, which include at-grade road crossings, for part of their trip, this gives some protection ofr passengers in case they hit a motor vehicle at a crossing.  I know of at least one case where the train driver was killed, hitting a stuck lo-boy truck carrying a transformer, but passenger injuries were mild with no fatalities.

railstiesballast Wrote:
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> This follows the French TGV pattern of having the
> power cars at each end.
> For the French, where many "TGV" services use the
> high speed network for part of their trip and use
> the classic network, which include at-grade road
> crossings, for part of their trip, this gives some
> protection ofr passengers in case they hit a motor
> vehicle at a crossing.  I know of at least one
> case where the train driver was killed, hitting a
> stuck lo-boy truck carrying a transformer, but
> passenger injuries were mild with no fatalities.

There are plenty of French non-TGV services running on the classic network that have passenger seating in the forward-most car, either due to being EMUs or push-pull consists. While it is true that SNCF has stuck with traditional power cars for their TGV services, I believe that their use on the classic network did not play any significant role in this policy. Note that the AGV -- which SNCF declined to purchase but was sold to Italy's ntv -- featured a distributed-power EMU configuration, and the Avelia Horizon -- the French counterpart to the new Acela, i.e. Avelia Liberty -- does as well.

The number of high-speed services in Europe that use new high-speed lines exclusively is actually rather small. The Spanish AVE services that do not use Talgo equipment come to mind, as these are trapped on the newly-built lines due to their being standard rather than Iberian gauge. One could argue that Eurostar largely fits the bill, at least since the completion of HS1, although they do have those special services that venture down to the French Alps and the Riviera. Pretty much everything else operates at least in part on the classic network, and that includes no shortage of EMUs with passengers right up front.