The Brightline inter-city rail route between Miami and West Palm Beach in Florida, US, has unveiled a new $100m modern train maintenance facility in Orlando.
The 135,805ft² Basecamp facility is constructed on 62 acres of space located south of Orlando International Airport. It has started commissioning new Brightline trains and servicing existing trains.
Upon the opening of Brightline’s Orlando station this year, the facility is expected to operate 24/7 and be staffed with 175 employees, including engineers, conductors, technicians and inspectors.
The new facility features a truck shop where the coach and locomotive trucks will be disassembled, cleaned, and rebuilt for additional use.
It also includes a 25ft deep drop table, which will run between the heavy maintenance track and the truck shop. It can swap out trucks rapidly to get trains back into service.
In addition, it houses a wheel truing facility where wheels are cut or ‘trued’ back to their original profile, as well as two fueling islands and a sand island.
The train wash facility can wash a four-coach train and two locomotives in 15 minutes by using 75% recycled water.
Other features include several overhead cranes, including a 30t crane that can remove 30,000lb engines, and storage tracks that extend the length of more than two football fields.
In addition, the facility can service up to 16 trains at one time in its undercarriage pits.
Brightline infrastructure executive president Michael Cegelis said: “This world-class facility has everything under one roof to maintain our trains, will provide highly paid highly skilled jobs to the region and will be a bustling hub for train maintenance, maintaining eight of our ten trains here nightly.”
“Currently we are more than 90% complete with our construction to Orlando and once completed, we will follow a rigorous certification and verification process.
