PATCO reveals refurbished rail cars

The Port Authority Transit Corp. (PATCO) unveiled the first two of 120 refurbished rail cars earlier this week at the Lindenwold maintenance yard.

PATCO will conduct functional and on-track evaluations of the two prototype cars, along with six others yet to arrive from the Alstom assembly facility in Hornell, N.Y., agency officials said in a press release.

The agency will introduce the cars into revenue service and use them as templates for the rest of the production run, which is scheduled for completion by the end of fall 2016. Federal funding will cover about $70 million of the $194 million project, which is the largest rolling stock capital expenditure since PATCO’s inception in 1969.

"Our first cars have come home for the holidays, and they look great," said PATCO General Manager John Rink. "They're bright, spacious, gleaming and furnished with new equipment that promises to make PATCO travel more comfortable, reliable and secure than ever."

In 2012, PATCO separated 26 cars from their undercarriages and transported them by truck to Alstom, where they were stripped down to their steel outer shells and rebuilt.