Amtrak's New Outdated Trains

"Northeast Corridor, meet your new locomotives: Amtrak’s Cities Sprinter, a new electric locomotive built by Siemens and commissioned in 2010 for half a billion dollars, has arrived on the East Coast for testing," writes Stephen Jacob Smith. "Like all of Amtrak’s trains, the Amtrak Cities Sprinter will be fatter, slower, more expensive and more difficult to maintain than the models that Siemens sells to other countries."

"The ACS-64, as the new model is known, is based on Siemens’ EuroSprinter, but has been modified to meet American regulators’ globally-unique crash safety standards," he adds. "Many railroads across the world order changes to their trains, but the special requirements of the Federal Railroad Administration go far beyond what others ask."