Why the future of Caltrain is being built in Salt Lake City
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Originally Posted by Hatman
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Once it’s complete, proponents say, the difference between the new electric trains and the current diesel ones will be like Teslas versus gas guzzlers: nimbler, smoother and far more energy efficient.
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The electrification project is aimed at getting more people to ride the rail. The new trains will still run at 79 mph, the same as the current maximum speed, but they’ll be much faster at stopping and starting. That means they can fit in more stops in less time.
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Another plus: The ride will be a lot smoother than today’s sometimes bone-shaking experience, thanks to the electric acceleration and special air cushioning around the wheels.
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Signs of progress were clear on a recent afternoon at Stadler’s Salt Lake City facility. Six bright and shiny red-and-white train cars stood out on the assembly floor, skeletons waiting to be filled with the guts of the train’s interior. Workers in bright orange vests aimed laser trackers to mark locations for bolts and screws and started to install stairs and other components.
Even as the work progressed, construction continued on the facility itself, which includes a massive warehouse for hundreds of train parts and special rooms to work on different pieces of the new trains. Big Swiss and U.S. flags hung from the walls.
“In March last year, we literally had cows grazing out here,” said Jacob Splan, the energetic construction manager, as he gave a whirlwind tour of the sprawling plant. “It’s a mad dash right now to finish it.”
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The car shells make an impressive journey from Stadler’s factory in Altenrhein, Switzerland: They’re trucked to Basel, boated down the Rhine River to Antwerp, shipped across the Atlantic to Houston and then delivered via rail to Salt Lake City.
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Why Salt Lake City? Utah has a big logistics and transportation industry, and Stadler also is receiving generous tax incentives from the city and the state. Thanks to the Mormon Church’s wide-ranging missionary program, the region also has a lot of bilingual people — German and English can both be heard on the factory floor.
And the folks from Switzerland feel at home among the mountain peaks and snow of the Salt Lake Valley region. “It looks almost the same to me,” said Christoph Brocker, the project manager, who had worked on similar train projects in Austria and Switzerland before coming to the U.S. to build Caltrains.
One difference between working in Switzerland and Utah: “Don’t ask your people to come to work on a Sunday here — they won’t show up,” Brocker said. “But they’ll work twice as hard on a Saturday.”
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Originally Posted by Hatman
It will be such an awesome day when Stadler delivers a fleet of these trains to FrontRunner! Minus the strange double-door thing.
(CalTrain is equipping their cars with both low and high platform doors so that they can transition their stations from low-level platforms that require stairs to board, to high-level platforms compatible with the High Speed Trains... that were recently *delayed* by the governor...)
I need to get over there and get some pictures! These new shells and finished cars will be my new white whales.
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