Vacuums used to clean Amtrak trains.

[amtraksebo1997]

In case my profile pic and username weren't dead giveaways, I am a huge fan of the Amtrak, the U.S. National Railroad Passenger Corporation. It's held a special place in my heart since I was little, and so do vacuum cleaners. Naturally, there's been a few occasions where I've wondered what vacs are used to clean the interiors of Amtrak locomotives and passenger cars. Unfortunately, I've never been on an Amtrak train myself, so I've never been able to really experience them for myself, let alone see people cleaning them. However, I can assume that they probably wouldn't use traditional commercial vacuums, due to the narrow walkways of Amtrak's passenger equipment and such. I remember seeing a post saying that Dirt Devil stick vacs were used, which would make sense for the application, but they're obviously not built up to commercial standards.My theory on what would make an ideal train vacuum would probably be an Oreck Commercial Buster B or a Hoover Commercial Portapower. They're compact, and can do both on and above the floor cleaning, but that's just my theory. If any of you guys have any anecdotes on the subject, I'd love to hear them.

 

[eurekaprince]

I imagine that the same vacs used to clean airplanes might be used to clean passenger train cars. Maybe backpack vacs?

On the other hand, maybe the trains are cleaned with very long hoses from a central vac system?

 

[tolivac]

The vacuums used on aircraft were usually 208V 3ph 400hz.Look under the seats when you board a passenger plane-you can find the outlets for the vacuums.FAA regs specified no brushed motors were to be used aboard commercial passenger planes.Since these motors ran from 400hz the induction motors ran at about the speed of AC brushed motors.Its a strange requirement-since the kereosene based fuels for planes jet engines harder to ignite than gasoline based fuels for piston engines.

 

[amtraksebo1997]

EurekaPrince

I looked it up, and on Amtrak's official blog they state that the coaches are cleaned at Amtrak's maintenance facilities, and that includes vacuuming. So that probably means that the coaches are cleaned at terminals with large coach and locomotive shops (for example, Chicago Union Station). That could very well mean that they use central vacs, possibly in a similar manner to auto repair shops. Maybe an Amtrak cleaner can give more details here, idk.

https://blog.amtrak.com/2013/02/wha...bout 130 train,waste from on-board bathrooms.