![\"new](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gettyimages-2231748543.jpg#.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nAmtrak’s NextGen Acela high-speed trains are now racing passengers between Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., hitting top speeds of 160 miles per hour. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Leo Friedman and his mother, Phyllis, traveled from New Jersey to D.C. this week just to take the inaugural train north.<\/p>\n
“Ever since that first video came out, that Amtrak posted about nine years ago, I’ve been super interested and invested in this NextGen Acela,” Friedman told CBS News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Acela was a game-changer when it first launched 25 years ago, doubling Amtrak’s market share in the Northeast.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 28 new trains will hold about 80 more passengers. They offer upgraded seats, bigger windows, faster Wi-Fi and lots of charging power. All 28 trains, assembled in upstate New York, are expected to be in service by 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There’s also a self-serve food bar in the caf\u00e9 car.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The new NextGen Acela train pulls into South Station on August 27, 2025, in Boston, Massachusetts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Danielle Parhizkaran\/The Boston Globe via Getty Images<\/p>\n
“This train truly is the future of the high-speed rail in America,” Elliot Hamlisch, Amtrak chief commercial officer, told CBS News. “\u2026This is the most technologically-advanced train, not only in America, but in the world. So we’ve taken the best of what Europe has to offer and incorporated it here on our tracks.”<\/p>\n
The new trains have a top speed 10 miles per hour faster than the older Acelas, but still slower than high-speed trains in Europe and Asia. This is in part because of tracks laid over a century ago that wind through communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the new trains are designed to lean into curves, allowing them to go faster.<\/p>\n
“This is the next best step to moving us faster in the Eastern Corridor,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CBS News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The new Acela trains also meet new, stronger crashworthiness standards, guarding against\u00a0the kind of jackknife-type derailment<\/a>\u00a0that killed eight people and injured more than 200 in Northeast Philadelphia in 2015.<\/p>\n They also come online as the Department of Transportation\u00a0is pledging $43 million<\/a>\u00a0to jumpstart upgrades at New York’s Penn Station. Duffy\u00a0also announced this week<\/a>\u00a0DOT is taking direct oversight of Washington’s Union Station.<\/p>\n \n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n