Yes, rehab whatever is still sitting around.

But what would be so hard about hiring almost any large fabrication shop to make any number of more RDC car-bodies, mostly from original plans. From that point on, adding the components, such as wiring, gensets, traction motors, train controls, whatever; would be no more cost and effort than a major rehab anyway.

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Also, to correct someone's mis-statement a ways back, The RDCs were judged by the ICC to comply with it's crash worthiness standards of the time, as were all passenger cars of that era, that were ever allowed on the railroads. Although somewhat modernized, current FRA standards are not materially different; as the FRA merely took over enforcement of existing safety regs when Carter abolished the ICC. Safety was not deregulated. It was considered by congress that those regulations were the result of harsh experience in the past - literally being written in blood. They were therefore passed to the FRA pretty much as is; while much diminished economic regulations were assigned to the newly formed STB.

I think the current confusion stems from the fact that the ICC had never attempted to regulate local transit operations, such as Muni or NYCTA. But when the FRA took over safety enforcement, it did attempt to do so. But they got their ears pinned back, resulting in the regulatory ruling that rail systems that have no functional connection to the general freight railroad system are outside the purview the FRA.. Thus such transit systems specifically became exempt.

Now fast forward a couple of decades. Some light rail transit systems, which would have otherwise been isolated from the freight railroad system, wanted to save money by not duplicating trackage used for local freight service. The current silliness about "temporal separation" then came into play as a seemingly good compromise.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the differential strengths of freight vs passenger vehicles. It is a jurisdictional issue. Who's rules shall apply, APTA or FRA. Technically, such trackage is functionally connected, and so comes under the legal jurisdiction of the FRA. But I guess they wanted to play nice in the sandbox. It is actually the jurisdiction that is temporally separated.

All this, from a realist standpoint, is stupid and banal. The same laws of physics apply to all. Weak carbody structure will kill today just as certainly on a transit line as it did before on a federally regulated railroad. Those original regulations were put into place so that competing railroads could afford the extra cost in a competitive environment, while still keeping the economic playing field level.

Since these regulations have already saved thousands of lives; It borders on criminal that any transit agency running high speed trains should not also comply. As speeds increase, the risk of passenger compartment penetration increases (largest single cause of death), thus requiring more structural strength as speeds rise. Moreover, temporal separation will save no lives whatever, if two weak transit trains come together on a temporally separated line under FRA jurisdiction.

Therefore, this temporal separation silliness should be dropped, and FRAs structural standards applied based upon the highest speed attained by the fastest train on any given line, whether freight or passenger, at anything over 35-40mph.

OPB