The cars are over 30 years old. They were based on a commuter car design that is even older. They likely got less maintenance than required, and ran in fairly bad climates. Are they stainless steel like the Amfleet or are they aluminum with steel frames? Yes, I know, Wikipedia has the answers.

Couple questions that probably can't be answered right now (or won't be, corporate and government CYA being what it is):

• What's the effect on Surfliner operations? Supposedly Horizon cars were assigned to that, but I don't know how many.


• Does the problem extend to the Comets themselves? Is there any history of corrosion in commuter use in the Northeast? Caltrans has several old Comet trainsets that were rebuilt for San Joaquin service. Perhaps any corrosion in them was addressed during the rebuild?

Anyway, not a great look for Amtrak. But if it's a case of having found it in a few cars during routine inspections caused them to pull the whole fleet for a look, then it's being proactive. Would that some freight railroads would be so, though of course what maintenance failure let the corrosion happen in the first place? Will NTSB and/or FRA be investigating, or will the current "management" just follow current political trends and use it as an excuse ("totally incompetent Amtrak") to shut down the whole system?