It was supposed to happen by now. But 10 months after the coming-out party, the Silverliner V remains a shy diva with three or four trains - 24 railcars - making rare guest appearances all over the Regional Rail system, still far outnumbered by those 73 relics from the '60s that ride like cattle cars in an old western.
Although reasonably modern Silverliner IVs make up much of the Regional Rail fleet, the terrible IIs and IIIs show up often enough to make you wonder what the holdup is all about. Published reports indicate that delays in Silverliner V production have been due to culture clashes between American workers here who've never built a railcar and their native Korean advisers from the Hyundai Rotem factory in South Philly.
After months of Silverliner whining, is there a silver lining?
Luther Diggs, the no-nonsense, former-Marine, SEPTA operations manager who has honchoed the Silverliner V project since its 2006 birth in Korea, told the Daily News that, yes, the rollout is a year behind schedule, but don't get your boxers in a bunch.
"If you think there's not going to be problems when you buy 120 railcars that were designed starting with a blank sheet of paper," Diggs said, "you're not living in the real world."
Ramrod straight, wearing a pressed SEPTA dress shirt so white it glowed, Diggs stood in the middle of the 13-acre Hyundai Rotem USA factory on Weccacoe Avenue near Snyder, surrounded by 200 local workers building and testing 63 Silverliner V railcars.
