North Carolina's Missing Trains: Where are Amtrak Piedmont’s New Trains?

A month ago, I took a ride on North Carolina’s aging fleet of Amtrak trains from Raleigh to Charlotte. The trains are lovely but old and with so much investment in passenger rail in recent years I wanted to see if there were any new trains on order. Little did I know the rabbit hole I would be diving into. For the last month I've been looking through records, financials, and talking with folks to find the answer. This is that story: North Carolina’s Missing Trains. 

Photo by Malcolm K (flickr)

Multiple Grants are Announced 

In 2019, North Carolina’s Department of Transportation (NCDOT) was awarded a nearly $77 million grant to purchase new rail cars. Documents showed that the grant would support a fleet of 13 new passenger coaches, intended to phase out the oldest rail cars in the Piedmont service, which currently operates four times daily between Raleigh and Charlotte. 

As the Covid pandemic struck and ridership fell, the NCDOT announced it was reevaluating whether they would move forward with the grant but towards the end of 2019, applied for and received a second grant for $80 million for 13 more rail cars and 6 new locomotives. These are listed as Phase II of the Piedmont Improvement Project, which has no website, and no press release. 

The promise of new trains is a major deal for the Piedmont service. Historically, all of the Piedmont’s rail cars have been purchased, used, from other railroads. The current rolling stock, built in the 1950s and 60s, all served former lives and were retrofitted for service for the NCDOT. While the retrofits are highly regarded as being comfy, having free coffee, and Wi-Fi onboard, they are aging, and the oldest ones need replacement. 

North Carolina Buys Circus Cars 

One attempt to replace the oldest parts of the fleet came in 2017: NCDOT purchased nine Barnum and Bailey Circus train cars for $383,000, aiming to refurbish them for use on the state-supported Piedmont route. Following the grants in 2019 and 2020, NCDOT decided to auction the cars off to recoup costs, but there were no buyers. In 2022, the rail cars, stored on a rail spur in Nash County, caught fire from suspected arson and due to their remote location, firefighters couldn’t get to the train, meaning four of the cars burned and had to be scrapped.  

photo by Eli Christman (flickr)

Photo from Nash County Sheriff's Office of the 2022 Circus Train Fire

Photo from Nash County Sheriff's Office of the 2022 Circus Train Fire

Photo from Nash County Sheriff's Office of the 2022 Circus Train Fire.

The remaining five were put up for sale online, with two being sent to tourist train companies in New Hampshire and Virginia, and three sold to a company planning to scrap them. The total final sales amounted to $55,051. 

So, if the 2019 and 2020 grants prompted a sale of the purchased 2017 circus train cars, where are the new railcars for NCDOT’s Piedmont? 

The Other North Carolina Train 

Progress is being made on NCDOT’s other train. New railcars for the Carolinian, which runs between Charlotte and New York, are expected as early as 2026, according to NCDOT spokesperson Lauren Haviland. These were purchased as part of Amtrak’s major Siemens contract in 2021 for the new Amtrak Airo trainset. 

The Piedmont will receive its new train cars sometime after that according to NCDOT in one interview. 

While riding on the Piedmont trains, a crew member said that the new rail cars will be produced at Siemen’s advanced manufacturing and rail services facility in Lexington, North Carolina, though we have not been able to confirm this with NCDOT or Amtrak. The Siemens facility will primarily produce passenger cars and is slated to open in mid-2025 following delays from its original planned opening in late 2024 which is still listed on Siemen’s project status website.  

The State of North Carolina has the new trains listed to start construction in 2026 on its State Transportation Improvement Program but has yet to announce any comments for the project, commitments with Siemens, or an estimated completion date. Between the trains and a new maintenance facility the state expects an additional funding need of $212 million for the program. Not too far in the future, North Carolina may have new trains on its rails.

North Carolina's proposed and existing rail service

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Additional Note 

The need for railcars will likely grow in the future. NCDOT is evaluating seven new passenger rail corridors via the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor ID grant program: 

• Atlanta to Charlotte 

• Charlotte to Kings Mountain 

• Charlotte to Washington, D.C. 

• Fayetteville to Raleigh 

• Salisbury to Asheville 

• Wilmington to Raleigh 

• Winston-Salem to Raleigh