Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos
F-Line -- everything sounded good up to: "Those empty late night and Sunday trains can reduce staff by only opening the front couple of bi-levels and closing off any extra cars in the consist."
that sounds like the 19th century solution -- there should be new 'BudLiners" running as single car units during those times --- it makes no sense at all dragging around empty cars
for that matter it really makes no sense dragging passenger cars from the front -- that's a remnant of steam boilers being very heavy -- they should all be elctric traction units that are self propelled with a "genarator engine" providing power to the rest of the coaches for use on the un-electrified lines or low-use branchs off the mains -- all of the mains should be electricfied as soon as practicable
They have to run a certain number of cars on the train for braking, since each car shares the braking load for the full consist. Otherwise it's a light engine move and is speed-restricted to under 30 MPH. Locomotives aren't designed to haul at full speed with less than X axles of braking. Electrics are no different here. I think 3 cars is the minimum you can do at full speed: 2 coaches, 1 rear control cab. Most of the control cabs are single-level. I agree it's senseless waste to run long consists off-peak with half the cars closed. If they are so tapped out of space at Southampton Yard that they are unable to break consists at all during the day, then they have to get on with expanding Readville yard so there's staging space to make that possible. But those 11:00pm Sunday runs? Yeah, 3 cars with an empty is what you get. It's not a bug it's a feature when the locomotive performs WORSE with fewer cars. That's the only way the existing equipment scales to run a monster 7-car bi-level Providence rush hour train. The T doesn't have any lines so low ridership like it did in the 60's where trips to Bedford or Hudson or West Medway ran once per commute with a single Budd car, so under-utilized consist on the last run of the weekend is pretty small price to pay for the revenue growth of being able to haul 7 185-seat bi-levels when it counts.
Absolutely, though, they can staff some off-peaks with just 1 conductor working the front open bi-levels with the rear cab closed off. Better solution than having 3 of 4 singles open with the mandated 2 conductors on-staff. This would work well on some lines like Fitchburg that only open the front doors at the mini-high end of the platforms well off-peak.
MU's would be great, but until there's ultra-high density "Indigo Lines" short-turning everywhere inside 128 it's cost-prohibitive to mix equipment so radically different. There's a reason why Metro North, Long Island Railroad, and SEPTA are all-EMU save for a few sparsely-trafficked diesel shuttles, but NJ Transit sandwiched in between those districts is all push-pull even in electric territory. Those systems have used their respective car types for 90 years. There's not great enough performance difference to wholesale-switch the T to MU's and build a billion-dollar maintenance facility staffed with MU-trained mechanics while the nearest such comparative facility is 100 miles away in New Haven. The T already faced this same problem when it bought its 100% Budd DMU northside from B&M and had to integrate it with the leftovers of 100% push-pull Boston & Albany and 80% push-pull New Haven RR on the southside. It took 15 years of chaos and not maintaining the track to sort out all the resources the equipment mess sucked up, and the Budds were the ones that had to go because they were most worn out and could be stretched past their self-powered lifetime by being converted into unpowered coaches. Those F40's still in service today used to pull a bunch of old de-motored Budds behind them until the last of those cars were retired in '89 or '90.
I think it would be too disruptive to go all-MU, and too far down the priority list. They can get almost as big a performance boost by using the existing coaches with electric locos on Providence and eventually Fairmount and Worcester. And it's not like they would break up over-long consists any more with DMU's than they do shrinking subway cars from 6 to 4 late at night. There's always the excuse that it's too labor-intensive for the yard crews. Some sort of DMU for the inner suburbs would be great, but that's not feasible until there's more than 2 manufacturers selling them in the U.S. and selling them in large numbers to bring the price point down. It's puzzling that nobody's picked up Budd's almost-perfect carbody design and put more modern guts in it to mass-produce on the cheap. All of Budd Co.'s patents have long expired; it's basically a public domain design for anyone who wants it. There's a reason why almost every still-operating Budd in existence is in active service on whatever small RR can get their hands on one; they're damn good cars when taken care of.
