Passenger Trains in Switzerland and the USA

Just returned from a 4 week trip to Switzerland - it was a family vacation, so I didn’t really do any real railfanning, but we traveled car-less, which is no problem at all in Switzerland and therefore I rode a lot of trains anyway. We got back last Thursday night and today, we did a quick trip on Caltrain to Menlo Park to have brunch, etc….

First impression after getting on the train here and feeling it start? Boy these things are slow … and bumpy. Note that it was an old gallery car trainset, so not the newer Bombardier bilevels. I mean, if you look at the track, it looks very straight and smooth. How can these things ride so badly? And the acceleration is terrible … I really hope that they will be able to push through the new crash standards that they’re shooting for so that when they (Caltrain) electrify the line, they will be able to buy nice modern off-the-shelf (European) EMUs … something like this one maybe:

Posted in: Uncategorized | July 29, 2007 8:50 pm

2 Comments »

Peter, on August 7, 2007 @ 2:04 pm

Well, the EMUs are quite expensive to operate since the whole EMU must go thru 92-day-maintenance. I would opt for the cheaper trains consisting of locomotives with bilevel cars for push-pull-operation. Actually the NJT ALP-46 with bilevels should also fit in California.