COLORADO RAILCAR BITES THE DUST!

[Ocklawaha]

CRC DEMONSTRATOR UNIT

From the Seattle Transit Blog:

Colorado Railcar Gone: What is next?
by Brian Bundridge
With the sudden end to Colorado Railcar Manufacturing LLC, announced on December 23rd, 2008, left a huge hole in a unique market; The end of the only Ultra Dome passenger cars and the end of the only known FRA-Compliant Diesel-Multiple-Unit.

The rest after the jump


The last DMU’s under CRM was the last DMU for Tri-Rail and a joint venture between Alaska Railroad and the U.S. Forest Service’s bi-level DMU, which is sitting at Denver, Colorado’s Union Station, awaiting the final decision of whom will deliver the car to Seattle for its barge ride to Alaska.

Several agencies who won voter approval in November 2008, such as Hawaii, SMART in Somona - Marlin, CA, Amtrak in Vermont, and various other agencies were seeking use of the CRM DMU’s. With no FRA-compliant DMU available this leaves the door open to a small market that seemed to be growing rapidly. Bombardier, Siemens, Stadler Bussnang AG, and Alstom offer DMU’s but are not available for the U.S. Market due to the strict FRA rules. If these rules were to lessen or to be changed with the Obama Administration to allow these light passenger rail vehicles to operate with freight traffic, they could very well change the foundation of how we commute and travel, and how railroads can save money.

RDC CAR MODEL

Well, it's sad when a company with promise bites the dust. Certainly CRC was financially unstable, connected to passenger car building, CRC and GranDeluxe Tours. I think stretched too thin and way too fast. Just as orders were coming in, the bank? pulled the plug. I suspected trouble when I did the test drive in the Miami area. It was obvious that these new vehicles had a lot of bugs... and it sounded like they were bowling in the center of the car - complete with pin strikes! Talk about your clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk! But still there was promise, it MIGHT HAVE been another Rail Diesel Car (RDC) classic vehicle. The RDC's themselves had a rough start until they found and corrected the errors, then they darn near took over the whole industry.

Would CRC have morphed into the next RDC? Sadly, we'll never know.

OCKLAWAHA