Amtrak California was expecting to receive new railcars. Funded through the 2009 stimulus package, the new railcars were supposed to replace antiqued models, some of which date back to the 1970’s. But production is stalled, for the usual and predictable reasons; i.e. the strict Buy-America procurement rules, and trying to debug a unique train design:

The tight restrictions on when and where the stimulus money can be spent left Nippon Sharyo with almost no room for error with a car model that it hadn’t built before and a brand-new assembly plant 80 miles west of Chicago that cost $100 million. Crashworthiness of passenger railcars has been a primary focus of car designers since collisions involving commuter and freight trains in Southern California killed 11 people in 2005 and 25 people in 2008. Nippon Sharyo’s car hasn’t been able to pass a federally mandated test for absorbing rear- and front-end compression force generated in a crash. After repeated failures, engineers are now redesigning the car’s body shell. That and additional testing will take about two more years to complete, according to people familiar with the matter. The entire job was to be finished in 2018, with the stimulus-funded portion due for completion in 2017. Now, Nippon Sharyo isn’t expected to start production until 2018, people familiar with the work say.

Nippon Sharyo isn’t the only manufacturer running into these problems. Spain’s CAF is having similar issues:

Five years after winning a $343 million contract to build 130 long-distance railcars for Amtrak, Spain’s Construcciones & Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles SA is struggling to complete the order. The work was supposed to be completed by early 2015, but as of late last year the company’s CAF USA Inc. subsidiary had turned out 70 baggage carsfrom its plant in Elmira Heights, N.Y. Nearly 400 defects were identified in the first 28 baggage cars delivered, according to an Amtrak report issued in February. The work schedule has been renegotiated, with each delay pushing delivery dates further.

Secretary LaHood announcing the Amtrak railcar order at the Nippon Sharyo plant, where he said: ” thanks to a standardized design initiated by our Federal Railroad Administration…the parts and components for passenger rail cars and locomotives lowers the costs of production and improves competition. It also makes it easier and reduces costs for operators to maintain equipment.”