Colorado Railcar DMU

But what about the poor little North Bay, disconnected from all of this railroad-y glory? Well, for a long time, since at least 2008, they had been planning to build some sort of a local rail system.

Initially, as you can see in the picture in the top left, by using the Colorado slash Raider slash US Railcar DMU.

Thankfully, they chose a vehicle that was literally anything other than that.

But what makes this corridor unique is that it actually used to be a fully-fledged railroad, the Northwestern Pacific.

So in effect, SMART also provides for freight what transit systems provide for passengers.

And really, since all transportation is subsidized no matter what, especially roads, it's actually kind of nice to see a bi-functional municipal rail infrastructure, something that provides local, convenient customer service for both passengers and freight companies.

As I mentioned earlier, Smart was originally planning to use the Colorado Railcar DMUs, but they instead chose DMUs designed by Nippon Sharyo, which is the same company that manufactures a lot of the Shinkansens in Japan, as well as produces some domestic Japanese DMUs, but then also has a foot in the American market, creating a lot of bud-like EMUs primarily in the Chicago area.

Smart's 18 Nippon Sharyu DMUs in question are specifically designed for the US market, meaning they are FRA crash-worthy compliant and can freely intermix passenger and freight trains on the same line at the same time.