Some new information about the single-level cars ordered from Siemens for both Illinois and California, but from behind a paywall of
Trains Magazine:
- California has ordered enough equpiment for seven trainsets, including seven cab-cars.
- Illinois has purchased no cab cars, but will run their trains between two Charger locomotives.
- California will run their equipment as semi-perminently coupled trainsets - just as Brightline does - while Illinois has opted to use their cars as individual units so that they can mix and match their consists to match demand.
- Wheelchair lifts will be built into cafe cars - not cab cars - making at least one door per trainset accessible.
- The seating arrangement will be the same as on the BrightLine, with narrower seats and wider isles, allowing wheelchair-users to have full acess to the entire train.
My speculation:
I think California will use all seven of their All-Siemens trainsets on the
San Joaquin corridor, and not on the
Capitol Corridor or the
Surfliners, since those corridors are busier and dwell times are very important for schedule-keeping. There are already two single-level trainsets in use on the
San Joaquins, so clearly single-level equipment will not slow down service along that route. This will leave five trainset's worth of bilevel equipment to be redistributed on the
Capitol Corridor and
Surfliner routes (I'm assuming full replacement of their two comet-car consists), allowing Amtrak to run consists of all-matching equipment again on those routes instead of adding a Superliner into every train, as they currently do.
In Illinois, I would hope that the new equipment is kept separated from the old Hermitage equipment, but I really see no incentive for Amtrak or IDOT to do so. I think it would be really cool to have the equivalent of BrightLine consists zipping along the Lincoln Service (at the same speeds as Brightline!) and have the Hermitage cars and P-42's assigned to slower services, but I realize that would require much more discipline in equipment management that really doesn't benefit Amtrak or IDOT in any real way.
It will be interesting to see what happens.