Today Amtrak announced plans to invest $7.3 bil­lion in up to eighty-three new trains, a wel­come devel­op­ment that will bring across-the-board improve­ments to train trav­el’s pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence and car­bon footprint.

Ren­der­ing of a loco­mo­tive being built in the U.S. by Siemens Mobil­i­ty for Amtrak (Siemens Mobility)

Accord­ing to the new con­tract, trains will be made by the Ger­man firm Siemens in Sacra­men­to, California.

The new pow­er units will include a hybrid pow­er sys­tem, mak­ing train trav­el much bet­ter than diesel-guz­zling loco­mo­tives for the environment.

Siemens’ Cal­i­for­nia fac­to­ry is also most­ly pow­ered by a 2.1 megawatt solar pan­el complex.

Trav­el­ers can expect mod­ern ameni­ties aboard the new trains.

More self-ser­vice din­ing options reflect the chang­ing con­sumer demands of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. Dig­i­tized seat-reser­va­tion and nav­i­ga­tion­al dis­plays will bring the pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence in line with con­tem­po­rary air­line travel.

Excit­ing­ly, the very first of the new rail­cars will be rolled out in Wash­ing­ton, on the pop­u­lar region­al Cas­cades route between Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia and Eugene, Oregon.

“We look for­ward to the deliv­ery of the new trains for Amtrak Cas­cades ser­vice,” said Ron Pate, Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (WSDOT) Direc­tor of Rail, Freight and Ports. “Since our trains will be the first off the assem­bly line, it’s excit­ing they’ll be unveiled in the Pacif­ic Northwest.”

Since the 1990s, WSDOT has oper­at­ed Amtrak Cas­cades ser­vice in Wash­ing­ton with Tal­go Series VI rail­cars. They were paint­ed in the icon­ic green, maroon, and white Cas­cades liv­ery which invokes the ever­green forests that cov­er the route’s name­sake moun­tain range. Fea­tur­ing dark, wood­en hues, the inte­ri­or was sim­i­lar­ly North­west-inspired. There was even a ceil­ing map of Cas­ca­dia in some din­ing cars.

Amtrak’s Empire Builder in Mon­tana, head­ing east­bound at Two Med­i­cine Tres­tle (Pho­to: Loco Steve, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

These com­fort­able train cars were most­ly retired in 2020, hav­ing neared the end of their use­ful lives. Right now, WSDOT is bor­row­ing con­ven­tion­al train­sets from Amtrak.

These are the sil­ver train cars you usu­al­ly find on long-dis­tance trains from Chica­go and Los Ange­les. They are ser­vice­able, but they lack the Cas­cades identity.

When the Series VI sets were retired, WSDOT did not announce imme­di­ate­ly a plan to replace them.

Now, Cas­cades is at the front of the line to receive new train­sets from Siemens. Man­u­fac­tur­ing will begin in 2023; the first train­sets are expect­ed to be oper­a­tional by 2024.

After its ini­tial roll­out in Wash­ing­ton, the new equip­ment will replace rolling stock on more Amtrak ser­vices, includ­ing on the Empire Builder, which con­nects Chica­go to Seat­tle and Port­land. Deliv­er­ies will run through 2030.

Cur­rent­ly, Amtrak has around $200 mil­lion already approved by Congress.

The rest of the pack­age — already approved by Amtrak’s board of direc­tors — still will require con­gres­sion­al approval. 

Main­te­nance costs and $2 bil­lion in facil­i­ty upgrades are also includ­ed in the $7.3 bil­lion price tag, in addi­tion to loco­mo­tives and train cars.

Pri­or to the pan­dem­ic, Amtrak Cas­cades was one of the most pop­u­lar train routes in the coun­try. Fre­quent trains con­nect region­al trav­el­ers in Ore­gon, Wash­ing­ton, and British Columbia.

As trav­el begins to pick up again, demand for Cas­cades ser­vice remains strong. Already, four dai­ly round-trips con­nect Seat­tle to Port­land and Eugene, just two shy of the pre-pan­dem­ic benchmark.