Brightline has unveiled its USD 100 million train maintenance facility in Orlando, which is “the most advanced in the region”, situated in the south of Orlando International Airport.
The 135,805 square ft² (12.616 square metre) facility has been built on a space of 62 acres and has begun commissioning new Brightline trains and servicing existing trains.
This is “the most advanced train maintenance facility in the Southeast and I would venture to say the country – Brightline’s Basecamp. This impressive facility was developed by Brightline and is an essential component to our service from Miami to Orlando launching this year,” President of Brightline, Patrick Goddard said.
When opening the Orlando station this year, the facility will operate 24/7 and will employ 175 highly skilled workers including engineers, conductors, technicians and inspectors.
Brightline’s facility has a truck shop where coach and locomotive trucks can be disassembled, cleaned, and rebuilt for additional use, a 25-foot deep drop table that operates between the heavy maintenance track and the truck shop and can swap out trucks quickly to get trains back into service. The facility also provides a “wheel true facility” where wheels are cut or “trued” back to their original profile allowing for maximum ride quality and performance and has two fueling islands and a sand island where an 80,000 gallon (203,832 liters) of biodiesel fuel farm has been constructed. The train washing area which is using recycled water can accommodate 4 coaches and two locomotives.
The facility will also have the ability to service up to 16 trains at one time in its undercarriage pits, multiple overhead cranes, including a 30-tonne crane capable of removing 30,000 pound engines and storage tracks that extend the length of more than two football fields.
The train maintenance facility in Orlando “has everything under one roof to maintain our trains and will provide highly paid highly skilled jobs to the region and will be a bustling hub for train maintenance, maintaining eight of our 10 trains here nightly,” the Executive President for Infrastructure, Michael Cegelis, said.
The facility is 90% completed and when works will be finished it will enter rigorous certification and verification process.
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