Better Days Ahead For Clean Trains

by Jim Mathews / President & CEO

Passengers disappointed with dirty train exteriors – dirty enough to take away the out-the-window views that make train travel so attractive for so many – are about to get some relief, with new wash racks coming into service this Summer and Fall.

Through a series of equipment failures, Amtrak wound up this winter with all but one wash rack for trains broken and out of service. There was no commonality as to why they were broken, so the problem was not solvable by just expediting deliveries of a particular set of spare parts, for example, or designing a single repair.

A capital program to replace all the wash racks was deemed too expensive, so the Mechanical forces had to fall back on a Plan B built around a mix of replacement wash racks and targeted repairs for other wash racks, plus a temporary work around of having workers manually squeegee cars at certain stations.

We learned this week that the first new wash rack will go online in New Orleans this month, followed by Boston next month, and Chicago and Seattle this Fall.

It’s part of a larger cleanliness initiative underway in response to clear disappointment with cleanliness across the board. The temporary measure of cleaning car exteriors by hand at certain stations is only the most visible. In addition to the new and improved facilities for cleaning trains, Amtrak leadership is reorganizing some of its forces so that there is more and better onboard cleaning at the terminals, as well as some of the stations along a route if there’s enough dwell time to make it work.