March 1, 2026 - TRA Newswire -

Ride 'em in Texas while they are still around for a few years if you're a nostalgic person, but Amtrak now has a path forward to order replacement trains for its aging double-deck Superliner fleet with new modern single-level cars.

The Superliners, running on the Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited, Heartland Flyer and other Western trains, have rambled around the countryside for over 40 years and they are showing their age, long-past time to replace them. SIngle-level cars are predominate east of the Mississippi while the older Santa Fe style bi-levels have served western trains for some forty years. With low tunnel clearances in the East, the Superliners could not be used nationwide.

A procurement for replacement bi-level trains that kicked off in 2022 was suspended last year at the request of the Federal Railroad Administration after car builders balked about new onerous Amtrak requirements that would have meant semi-permanent coupled trainsets with elevators in every car, causing accessibility contraints.

The Request for Proposal from Amtrak sent manufacturers replying that designs for the trains would result in complicated, expensive buildouts and that cars would be hard to deliver in a timely way. According to Jim Mathews, President and CEO at Washington D.C.-based Rail Passengers Association "When the carbuilders tell you they can’t build them, or can’t build and deliver them reliably on a reasonable schedule and at a reasonable cost per car, you have to take a breath."

The order for long-distance trains can come none to soon. If the Amtrak board could approve an off-the-shelf service proven design or adopt a simpler, interoperable train, it could be early to mid-2030's before the public would see the trains built and running. 

 "Assuming FRA and Amtrak’s top leadership don’t run into any last-minute issues, we can probably expect a Request For Proposals to come out pretty shortly; the objective is to be under contract by the end of 2027," according to Mathews.

"Reissuing the proposal for bids for single-level cars that could be used in a national railcar pool is a smart move," according to Texas Rail Advocates President Peter LeCody. "Well designed single level trains can still have wide windows in coaches and sleeper and dining service amenities that are needed on overnight trains. A new design for Amtrak Western trains like the Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited should mimic our friends to the north at VIA Rail in Canada and add a dome-car look for passenger enjoyment."

Amtrak has already announced a new "Airo" diesel multiple-unit fleet from Siemens for regional service and the "NextGen Acela" build by Alstom has started operating on the Northeast Corridor.

Mathews also said that Amtrak is looking hard at service-life extension programs for the fleet that it has, with the idea that while a lot of cars are already past their useful lives, others might have enough left in them to justify some extension investment, or at least enough to bridge the gap until enough new cars are on the road to retire the existing fleet. The deployment strategy is phased: first replacing Amfleet II coaches and cafés (roughly 120 cars), then shifting production to western routes, and ultimately replacing sleepers and diners later. Sleepers and diners are deliberately not on the critical path.

Another significant shift is from fixed trainsets to loose cars, which preserves capacity roughly equivalent to prior assumptions but increases operational flexibility.

Start and stop funding from Congress and changes in Administrations has limited the investment and capacity for new cars in this country in the past. Amtrak just started having serious conversations with car builders five years ago with the passage of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the largest investment in U.S. passenger rai since Amtrak's creation in the 1970's.

Mathews said that "both Siemens and Alstom making enormous high-tech investments in New York, North Carolina, and California...investments that ripple out throughout the country. The new Siemens Airo trainsets, for example, come from components made in 31 states. But that’s a supply chain that didn’t exist before there was an Airo procurement to spur on that investment. And it’s a supply chain that will fade away unless there’s more work coming down the pipeline to keep those plants humming. And it’s the same story for Alstom, which just commissioned what it says is the most sophisticated car building plant in North America, in Hornell, New York."

Photo credit: Amtrak