Just saw the following article on Railway Gazette news that Siemens has replaced Nippon Sharyo to build the next generation of short-distance passenger cars for Caltrain, Illinois Department of Transportation, Maryland & Washington state. Nippon Sharyo was awarded the PRIIA (Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008) contract in 2012 to make double-deck cars at their Rochelle, IL plant, where they made the Metra Bi-Level cars. The deliveries were scheduled to run from late 2015 to early 2018. But there were news articles in the last few years related to Nippon Sharyo laying off a lot of employees at Rochelle due to some difficulty in meeting the structural strength requirements for these cars.
So Siemens has the contract to supply both the commuter locomotives (Charger) & the passenger cars but it will be single-level, most likely, similar to their Viaggio line for All-Aboard Florida.
Here is a link to the latest article
http://www.railwaygazette.com/...ate-coach-order.html
These are just my opinion
Thanks,
Naveen Rajan
Clarification: I used the term “short distance” to describe these cars as they were not intended to replace commuter railroad, passenger cars like the Metra Bi-Level, NJ Transit cars, etc but also not supposed to replace long distance passenger cars like the Amtrak Superliners. These PRIIA cars were for short-distance inter-city trains like Caltrain Capitol Corridor, Surfliner, Amtrak Chicago – St. Louis, trains.
