Passenger Trains > Smoothest riding Amtrak car

Is the Amfleet II.

This car, and it\'s smaller windowed predecessor, has taken a recent beating about the alleged poor ride quality. I really don\'t know what the writers of these opininions were thinking about.

Amfleet II is the smoothest Amtrak car in the fleet. This railcar can absorb Himilayan/Mt. Everest sized bumps. A surgeon can do eye and heart operations in this car.

I hope these great vehicles of ultimate travel will be around \'til the day I die.

933-
You\'re joking right? Dude, an SD70 MAC is a smoother ride....

Dean

Ditchlite wrote:

> 933-
> You\'re joking right? Dude, an SD70 MAC is a smoother
> ride....
>

Dude....I agree with 933...Amfleets are smooth riders...........at least the ones on the NEC...

P.S. Would that SD70 be actually moving??

Yes, I was being sarcastic....By the way, you say they\'re smooth riding cars IN THE Northeast...Go figure. You have a passenger railroad there. Try riding one on a shared right of way with 6k ton freights. Rail seems a bit rougher. And the SD70Mac thing? Yeah I too was being sarcastic.

Ditchlite wrote:

> Yes, I was being sarcastic....By the way, you say they\'re
> smooth riding cars IN THE Northeast...Go figure. You have a
> passenger railroad there. Try riding one on a shared right of
> way with 6k ton freights. Rail seems a bit rougher. And the
> SD70Mac thing? Yeah I too was being sarcastic.
>

;-)

Amfleet II? You\'ve just quoted the punch line to some Jay Leno joke, right? I always enjoy the Amtrak humor on this site!

(now don\'t say I was cracked already) ;)

Listen, my fellow kin. I have memories as my backup. Riding to Florida, when getting up in the middle of the night as we barrelled along the Carolinas at 100+ behind the 2 F40\'s, that train horn and beam of light up front that was comforting as mother holding a child, nothing could do ham to me, my dreams, or whatever, inside an Amfleet II. And the rest of Amtrak for that matter.

No way! When I walked from my Viewliner sleeper to the Amfleet II lounge, there was a noticeable difference. Viewliners ride very smoothly. Amfleets "jiggle around" quite a bit.

NE933 wrote:

> when getting up in the middle of the night as we
> barrelled along the Carolinas at 100+ behind the 2 F40\'s

Maybe it felt like 100+, but is there actually any track that fast on any of the Florida trains outside the NEC??

I remember riding the Adirondack with the then-recently refurbished Heritage cars in the mid 1990s, and the cars were sometimes vibrating like they\'d fall apart going no more than 40 mph on stretches north of Albany. Once we got south of Albany, the ride was much smoother at over twice the speed.

We passed shopping malls, little towns, and road vehicles whose images whizzed by fast enough that I\'m sure it was either the century mark or either a few points behind, but not by far. This was during the early to mid 80\'s.

In a NARP news letter at least 12 years ago, mention was made that the some portions of the CSX lines had been upgraded for 90mph passenger operation.

We have a full dome car out here on the west coast that sometimes appears on the San Diegans (oops, Surfliners). Rides like a Cadillac.

You guys don\'t think it absolutely has something to do with the rails? Of course you do.

When you ride the Canadian along CN\'s "concrete slabway" the ride is like skiing on glass..and that\'s in 60 yr old Budd streamliners..

Dean

Talgo and the Amtrak California cars.. both I can fall asleep like a baby in.

Brian

It all depends on track conditions, truck conditions, position of the car in the consist, and the speed of the train.

I have experienced Talgo leaving PDX for the north, and they rock like boats in the terminal trackage there on jointed rail and frogs. Take them on the Harrisburg line at 70 MPH (jointed rail), and everyone would be throwing up.

I was once on a California Zephyr that got re-routed through Iowa and put on some tracks that I don\'t think ANYONE had used in a long time(judging from all the stares we got from the people in the towns along the way) Even though we were only going about 10mph, the cars were swaying like something out of "The Poseidon Adventure". Some of the other passengers were pretty upset, but I thought it was a hoot.

The roughest ride I have ever had on rails occurred on the e.b. "Capitol Limited," coming out of Chicago on the NS ex-NYC track in Sept., 2001. In the first 40-or-so miles there were several times I was sure we were going to leave the rails. One really violent lurch deposited the dining car steward smack in the middle of our table. Although the track condition contributed, it is my HO that the S-liners are too tall and thus subject to excessive swaying and rocking, even on good track. Give me the single-level LSL any day. Jim in Wapak, OH.

Refurbished Amfleet I, Amfleet II, and Viewliners all get high marks based on my personal experiences. The Acela Express is very smooth when you\'re sitting, but not when you\'re standing. But the smoothest ride I\'ve ever had on an Amtrak train was when I rode a set of Metroliner MU\'s on the Northeast Corridor on the concrete ties. Those cars were like Sherman Tanks-solid, heavy, and rode like glass wherever there were concrete ties.

I beleive the stories about 100 MPH running in the Carolinas because when ACL and SAL ran competitive services, 100 MPH was frequently attained on both RR\'s, and this is with many, many grade crossings!!

Amfleet wrote:

> It all depends on track conditions, truck conditions,
> position of the car in the consist, and the speed of the
> train.

Yes, there are lots of variables, but after lots of riding, some patterns emerge. Amfleet II ride quality is like night and day compared to the horribly-riding Amfleet I. Another thing I like about Amfleet II is no annoying overhead lights at night.

I don\'t care how Viewliners ride. The room charges are too expensive. Another reason to be thankful for the smooth-riding Amfleet II for overnite travel.

There were even ride quality differences between heritage coach classes. I thought that the ex-SP Sunset Limited coaches were the quietest and smoothest. Bob

NE933 wrote:

> In a NARP news letter at least 12 years ago, mention was made
> that the some portions of the CSX lines had been upgraded for
> 90mph passenger operation.
>

NARP and news are two widely divergent concepts, but I digress.

There are only a few routes that allow over 79mph outside of Amtrak owned-routes in the Northeast and Michigan. South of DC, on the Florida trains, 79mph is the official tops although I\'ve heard a few detectors go off at speeds up to 84 mph on the Meteor in GA and the Carolinas.

The ACL was fast, but in the POSTWAR era, there were only three U.S. railroads that exceeded 90mph AUTHORIZED TIMETABLE maximum speed. They were the Illinois Central, the Burlington and a little-known railroad out west called the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Bob