A special Brightline train is set to complete its more than 3,000-mile journey from California to south Florida this week. The train was on Florida East Coast rails for the first time today in Jacksonville, Fla., with FEC milepost 0 immediately behind the train.
Eric Hendrickson
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The first new trainset for a private intercity rail company is now on home rails. The first Siemens-built passenger trainset is on Florida East Coast tracks near Jacksonville and headed south to Miami for additional testing. Pulled by Union Pacific SD70M No. 4418, the Brightline special departed Siemens’ Sacramento, Calif., shops overnight on Dec. 8 and moved along Union Pacific tracks through Southern California, through Houston, Texas, and New Orleans, where it railed on to CSX Transportation tracks.
Florida East Coast is the freight railroad that hosts and is the sister company of the All Aboard Florida private passenger service which is slated to one day move passengers at more than 100 mph between Miami and Orlando, Fla. Brightline is All Aboard Florida’s brand name for the trains and service.
Siemens has an exclusive contract to build the coaches and locomotives, which are based on the German company’s successful Charger diesel passenger locomotives.
Rail officials tell Trains News Wire that the train’s scheduling unintentionally helped it pass through dense urban areas mostly at night until Tuesday.
This is the most exciting, consequential train development in the country!
http://www.thenextmiami.com/construction-continues-massive-miamicentral-complex-photos/
Not so surprising at all. Amtrak manages to pack its trains full in spite of high fares and lousy service. Why wouldn’t somebody try to compete with them.
“. . . Where it railed on to. . .” What sort of grammar and wordsmithing is this??? The incorrect sort.
Al, actually, your examples ARE standand English…and specific to boot. This “fad” is continuing on since Shakespeare’s era. “Took” a photo? Who purloined it?.
Great looking equipment. Hard to imagine that in 1963 the fec would endure a strike to exit it’s long haul passenger service and to update work rules. It always about the bottom line.
Amtrak should order some of these train sets for medium distance daylight trains. The idea that a “short haul” route is one under 750 miles in length is nonsense. 400 to 500 miles or less would be a more appropriate definition of “short haul.” That would encourage Amtrak to add some badly needed and politically wise daylight routes such as NY-Cleveland through Pittsburgh or Chicago to Memphis on existing lines as part of the national system. That would be a great way to increase ridership at modest operating cost and big “red state” political impact.
It “RAILED” onto CSX tracks? Enough already of this stupid fad of converting nouns into verbs; i.e. he “lensed” the photo; he “helmed” the company. Standard English works very well, thank you!
This video, by the FECRS’s Jim Kovalsky, gives a good close up of the train as it arrives in West Palm Beach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEqmZy1nAb0
I like the giant window things on the locomotives!
Here’s it going through Cove Road, Stuart, just over a mile from where I live (no, I didn’t take this, I didn’t find out about it until this morning 🙁 ) Stuart is the hub of the NIMBY anti-train fanatics. Shame it couldn’t have gone through during the day…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dV73CjPsI8
Sooooooooo… COOL!
Can’t wait to see and ride this. I wish FEC much success with this service and hope eventually to see it run to Jacksonville, too, with an intermediate stop somewhere along the Space Coast.
Awesome. Just wish they would have named the service something else oh like perhaps SunLine. Since Florida is the sunshine state. Just feels more fitting.
Amen Mr. Benson!
This is a great day. I never thought I would see the day when a private railroad would have it’s own passenger service again. I am going to make a special trip down there just to ride it.