However, Amtrak’s Surfliner is the most-ridden and popular regional passenger train on the west coast, in the nation’s most populous state . The Siemens Chargers that pull them are relatively new. It seems that selling at least 200 of the locomotives and a 5 passenger car set to go with them would not be that difficult, theoretically speaking, of course. I would certainly buy the locomotive and matching cars and I don’t even live in California (anymore). 😊
it just seems kind of pointless to me, to buy a new road-specific modern passenger train diesel locomotive with no available matching cars to go with it.
Your logic makes complete sense. Unfortunately it's also pointless to tool up at great expense and then find out that your marketing analysis, intuition, or gut feel was wrong and you can't cover your costs much less make a small profit.
Design, development, and manufacturing are easy compared to marketing. Most businesses that fail do so because they didn't ask a simple marketing question "In their mind why is it that a customer must absolutely, positively have one of these?".
A set of cars for a new Charger might appear to be no-brainer to the average train enthusiast, but the question is still a good one, and it's not easy to get a firm quantified answer, especially by intuition or gut feel.
Mike