TRAINS: Steve Sweeney/ Source: Amtrak
BEECH GROVE, Ind. — Amtrak on Wednesday announced that it is soliciting bids for 48 pieces of equipment located at its Beech Grove, Ind., and Bear and Wilmington, Del., shops that it now considers surplus. The lot made up mostly of diesel locomotives and baggage cars, as well as all five former Pacific Parlour Cars, and seven Horizon cars. The closing date for bids on these pieces is Nov. 14, 2018.
Included in the sale are 12 P40, eight F40, and three P42 diesel locomotives. Seventeen locomotives are located in Beech Grove, five are in Bear and one is in Wilmington. Also up for auction are eight Heritage baggage cars of the 1700 series, five located in Beech Grove, and three in Wilmington. There are also five Hi-Level former Pacific Parlour Cars available, all in Beech Grove.
Rounding out the lot for sale are seven Horizon cars, all but one of which are at Beech Grove: one Club Dinette, one full Dinette and five coaches, as well as three material handling cars and two Army flat cars.
More information is available online.
Walter: Amtrak changed some of the F40’s were converted into what has become known as, “Franken 40’s”.They became part of the push-pulls.
Amtrak: Hey everybody come buy a private car.
You: Awesome. I’ll take one.
Amtrak: Pleasure doing business with you. Now hire a truck to get it off our property because we’ll never move a private car.
August Hahn: The accidental hitting of the “post comment” button is an simple mistake, especially if you were born with fat fingers, such as I. Several contributors, including myself, have asked that Trains blog sites be modified so we cancorrect our own mistakes when they occure, to no avail. Since Trains reserves the right to Delete any or all of our comments, why can’t we?
If you check out the documents on the Amtrak procurement page they are accepting donation requests. So a museum may be able to secure some of the equipment but at their own cost of transport/interchange. And on a side note and I know this horse has been beaten to death but considering Amtrak claims to have a shortage of serviceable diesel locomotives it seems odd to write off the F40s. Amtrak still maintains and has parts to support their GP40s and most any locomotive shop could perform running repairs if necessary.
This might be incentive enough to buy that lottery ticket.
I hope that some of this equipment that Amtrak is putting up for bidding including some of P40s, F40s end up in a museum, unless depending on their condition such as missing parts, bad condition, etc, then museums might not want them, but I understand they could get picked up by someone else.
Hopefully the Parlour Cars will end up in museums or could be picked up by private car owners although I don’t see how they can be used in excursion service as the doors at the end of the Parlour Cars are on the 2nd floor and not at the bottom like all other private cars.
The old heritage Baggage cars will hopefully wind up in museums or private car owners, but yes I understand that some of this equipment will probably end up being scrapped especially the wrecked equipment.
Plus another thing that the old baggage cars could be used for are tool cars for steam engines.
P.S. This is the rest of what I was going to say as I accidentally hit the post comment button by mistake earlier.
The best use for the PPCs might have been as cars for charter from Amtrak itself or other operators s for daylight use on Superliner trains.
I hope that some of this equipment that Amtrak is putting up for bidding including some of the P40s, F40s end up in a museum, unless depending on their condition
When was the last time Amtrak used any of those F40s. They probably should have sold them years ago. Some of the P-40s might also have been surplus for several years.
According to a poster on the Amtrak Unlimited site,P42 #21 involved in collision with bulldozer,#49 & #70
had fuel system fires.Probably all 3 deemed not worth repairing and parted out.Let the buyer beware.
Maybe the P42z from States that got new Locos (Hiawatha) maybe.
What is wrong with the P42s? Wrecks?
Interesting to speculate on who would want those parlour cars. Via Rail Canada? Rocky Mountaineer? Alaska? If one of the big steam operators thought they could be profitably sold in excursion trains, how would you handle the transition to high-level from standard cars?
F40z!! I hope they’re all bought and used!! P40z, cut em up!! Maybe Metra will pick the F40z, ya never know
Perhaps Via Rail will acquire some of these.