MARC at Marble Hill. The debut of leased MARC (Maryland Area Rail Commuter) cars on Amtrak crew qualification train to Grand Central Terminal occurred on March 31, 2018. Due to prior planned construction work, all Amtrak Empire Service trains were operated out of GCT during the summer of 2018, and crew training began months in advance. The cab cars were not to carry passengers but to provide a front facing egress for the engineer, which the Amtrak P32AC-DM fleet did not then have, though they have since been modified. MARC 7755 (Nippon Sharyo/Sumitomo, 1985-1987) leads the short test train, with 43376 (AmFleet I Cafe, Budd 1975-1977) and 716 (P32AC-DM, GE, 1993-1995, Phase III) under the Broadway Bridge in the Manhattan neighborhood of Marble Hill. There were a sufficient number of modified P32s within a few weeks, and the MARC cars were returned to Maryland.
