Passenger Trains > GO Commuter trains in Tacoma and Seattle WA

  #  1  GO  unit # 568 and commuter train at Tacoma WA.(  Try Rail  RTA )Rail Demo Train.Being shown off  between Tacoma WA and Seattle WA. Date Jan 1995
  #  2  GO  unit # 223 Headend Car at Seattle WA. King Street Station. Date Jan 1995
  #  3  GO  unit # 567  heading north into the tunnel from King Street Station headed to Everett WA. Date Jan. 1995
   photos by Chris Marshall

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via florida and tri rail?

Dan, no. This was part of a national tour sponsored by Bombardier's predecessor to drum up business at cities that were considering commuter rail.  I still have some of the souvenirs from the stop in Phoenix. 
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/20 09:11 by agent1522.

agent1522 Wrote:
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> Dan, no. This was part of a national tour
> sponsored by Bombasrdier's predecessor to drum up
> business at cities that were considering commuter
> rail.  I still have some of the souvenirs from
> the stop in Phoenix.

By 1995 it would have been Bombardier itself that was building these cars.  It built bilevel cars that year for San Diego's Coaster and Vancouver's West Coast Express.

Bombardier had acquired the former Urban Transport Development Corp. in 1992. UTDC  had been the successor to Hawker-Siddeley/Canadian Car & Foundry, which had designed and manufactured the original examples of these cars.

The cars shown in the photos above were in a batch of 14 that had travelled from Toronto to Vancouver in a CN stack train, reaching Vancouver on January 18, and departing for Seattle via BN the next day. The cars were GO 2010-2017 and 2019-2022 and cab cars 223-224.

Locomotives 567-568 and auxiliary power unit 911 (ex-MILW FP7A 104A) followed three days later.

The equipment was leased to Central Puget Sound RTA for demonstration runs between January 30 and March 3. From January 30 to February 10, two trains ran daily between Seattle and Everett. From February 20 to March 3, they ran between Seattle and Tacoma. This was in advance of a referendum on commuter rail held on March 14 (which was defeated in a 47% for, 53% against vote, but another referendum was held later).

The GO equipment returned to Toronto via Vancouver at the start of April. However, the coaches (but not the cab cars) used in the Seattle trials, plus 2023-2024, were sold in 1998 to Fort Worth Transportation Authority, which had bought 2000-2001 in 1997.

The cars in the 1998 Fort Worth purchase, plus cab cars 223, 224, 230 and 237, had in the meantime been used for the start-up of West Coast Express, as only five cab cars had been delivered by Bombardier for opening day, November 1, 1995.  Some lasted in WCE service until the following March.

So between the Seattle trial, WCE start-up and later Fort Worth service, those cars got in some long-distance journeys in between their usual GO service.




 



Edited 9 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/20 06:25 by railsmith.

Do the GO cars have a different HEP voltage, 560 instead of 480v ?

joemvcnj Wrote:
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> Do the GO cars have a different HEP voltage, 560
> instead of 480v ?

575 V, and a different pin arrangement on the electrical cables and receptacles.

railsmith - Thanks for the correction.  I was reconstructing this from a faulty memory. 

railsmith Wrote:
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> The equipment was leased to Central Puget Sound
> RTA for demonstration runs between January 30 and
> March 3. From January 30 to February 10, two
> trains ran daily between Seattle and Everett. From
> February 20 to March 3, they ran between Seattle
> and Tacoma. This was in advance of a referendum on
> commuter rail held on March 14 (which was defeated
> in a 47% for, 53% against vote, but another
> referendum was held later).

Actually, the first trip was January 28 and the last March 17. Here is the cover of a little book I helped create for the occasion. The bulk of the work involoved in making it happen occurred at BN. A little group of us, much to the chagrin of a big group of BN folks, hatched the idea of commuter trains in Seattle and ultimately sold the concept to the public. I met trainorders member CCDeWeese on that gig. He was a consultant for Sound Transit and I was the BN operations guy.

TAW

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See also from 10/30/90:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2616692,2616692#2616692

Gerry

Dick Steinheimer would always remind me, when we were on a job, to "police" the landscape before shooting if possible. Of course that was in the sorely missed days of Kodachrome 25. That said, very rare shots, thanks! 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/20 23:23 by RRBaron.