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| Seattle Portland Amtrak |
Darling daughter took the train to Seattle this weekend. Click the pic to see a bigger version. The train has two engines, one at either end. The Northern engine pulls the train to Seattle, and the Southern engine pulls it back to Portland. The engines are normal height, but the cars are low slung. The baggage car (right in front of the camera) has a aerodynamic swoop on top to ease the transition between the lower cars and the taller engine. Wouldn't want the wind to get upset or nothing.
Update September 2016 replaced missing picture.
Pergy:
ReplyDeleteIf these are the Sound Transit trains, they are push-pull ... so it would seem that only reason for having a locomotive at both ends is so the train engineer can see where he's going ... and it would be a pain to have an old-fashioned roundhouse at the end of the line. Rather extravagant... because it seems unlikely that a single locomotive is insufficient to power an entire train -- even with the current epidemic of obesity.
http://www.soundtransit.org/Riding-Sound-Transit/Our-Vehicles/Sounder-commuter-rail.xml#work
From the website: "Sounder’s “push-pull” trains consist of bi-level cars from Bombardier and locomotives from General Motors. The cars were manufactured in Thunder Bay, Ontario and assembled in Barre, VT and Plattsburg, NY.
Sounder’s GM Electro-Motive Diesels F59PHI diesel-electric locomotives are common to passenger trains in North America. They were manufactured and assembled in Hornell, NY."