CORRODED HORIZONS.

As if Amtrak isn't self-destructing without any help from the DOGE boys already, now the Horizon Fleet coaches are self-destructing.

Amtrak trains on several routes have been cancelled after the company removed its fleet of Horizon passenger cars from service because of concerns over corrosion, raising the possibility of long-term service disruptions.

In a statement issued at 9 a.m. today (March 26, 2025), the company said, “We discovered corrosion in several Horizon railcars and, while working with the manufacturer, decided to remove the equipment from service after learning of additional areas of concern from intensive inspections of multiple cars. The removal of this equipment from service will affect services on several routes: Downeaster, Hiawatha, Borealis, and Amtrak Cascades. Some trains, such as the Downeaster, will operate with fewer cars, while other services will be provided substitute transportation until a long-term plan is developed.”

A total of 70 cars — 61 coaches and nine food-service cars — are affected. They are the active fleet from a group of 104 cars ordered from Bombardier — now part of Alstom — in 1988, with delivery completed by 1990. Those cars are based on Comet commuter rail cars built for NJ Transit and its predecessors. The key difference is that the Horizon cars have end vestibules while the commuter cars use a center door for entry and exit.

The more important door might be the end-bulkhead door that these cars lack.  On the northern routes, Amtrak sometimes marshal a formation with Amfleet cars that do have end-bulkhead doors, the better to keep the ice and dust out.  The reports are not yet detailed enough to establish any connection between ice and water and electrolytically incompatible metals at cars' ends.  Whatever the cause, the effect is not winning Amtrak any friends.

Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, operator of the Downeaster, said in an email to Trains News Wire that the train had been operating for several months with one Horizon car and three Amfleet cars. “I was informed last night that the Horizons were being pulled from the service immediately due to the corrosion issue,” Quinn wrote. “Effective today, Downeaster service is operating five round trips daily with three Amfleet coaches in each consist.”

Today’s Borealis has been cancelled in both directions between Chicago and St. Paul, Minn., according to the train status feature on Amtrak’s website, with alternate bus transportation provided because of “equipment unavailability.” Those trains have mostly operated with Horizon coaches along with an Amfleet cafe car, although some recent service has seen substitution of a Superliner trainset. Three of the six Hiawatha round trips between Chicago and Milwaukee have also been cancelled with a bus substitution. The Hiawatha fleet has included a mix of Siemens Venture, Horizon, and Amfleet cars.

The Venture series of coaches for the Midwest regional services (other than Borealis) are slowly coming into service, although not fast enough to replace the Horizons, and there are Horizon cars in the Pacific Northwest replacing the Talgo trains that were taken out of service as unsafe a while ago.