Anyone able to catch the meeting and see if there was an update on the new rolling stock?
New Red and Orange Line Cars
- Thread starter bostoneophyte
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Anyone able to catch the meeting and see if there was an update on the new rolling stock?
HelloBostonHi
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I saw part of it and they had a slide announcing that the red line test track is finally officially done, which is crazy because I swear that was supposed to be finished in 2019.... So I guess that's progress on the red line car rollout, kinda. But notable absence of an update on the OL cars.
Jahvon09
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Found out that the old rust buckets are back, but not the new trains for at least another 3 weeks, until it is determined whether the new trains are at fault, or the tracks or the switch. I think it was the switch. They were supposed to replace them anyway, so It's their fault for not doing so immediately. 
Equilibria
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Bad news: It was the cars.
Good news: They know what part is to blame.
HelloBostonHi
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No set return to service date and the next update will be given June 7th is all they said. And yes, it's right next to the part they had issues with in November 2019 that had them out of service for months. One must wonder if the truck assembler will have to pay for all this. I'm betting no.
bigeman312
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Who pays for this, then? CRRC?
F-Line to Dudley
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Warranty.
HelloBostonHi
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The actual repairs probably CRRC although I wouldn't be surprised to see a contract amendment come to the MBTA when this procurement inevitably goes over it's set length. But the MBTA will pay for the added project management cost and all the resulting disruption, shuttles, track repairs, maintenance for the old vehicles, etc. I have no doubt.
This thread was convinced for weeks that it wasn’t the cars.
I never understood that rationale that people thought the MBTA was willingly keeping the new trains off the tracks just for the hell of it. They want the new cars out there just as much as everyone else. They weren’t going to keep them off the tracks if they knew they weren’t the problem.
This comment is kind of "tongue in cheek", but maybe need they need some old school grease fittings instead of the new way of "maintenance free lubrication for life"
Uh oh, F-Line is confirmed to be human like the rest of us all. Quickly: Shut down the forum, even the architecture threads. The center is collaps... run for your li... save...
Jahvon09
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I think that the MBTA didn't do their homework enough before hiring this co to make the new trains. They haven't even been in service for a year, & already they seem very problematic. Seems all that they were doing was yanking the trains off the tracks off & on. It's still their fault because they should've known better. I think that we're stuck with the old trains for probably another year or so before any of them are put out to pasture.
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F-Line to Dudley
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Careful. This 116-page threadmonument to histrionic overreaction is the last place on all of aB anyone should be finger-wagging about over-simplistic comeuppance. All those years of bandwidth expended by posters doing the pee-pee dance about why these virgin-design cars aren't being deployed sooner and invocations of "rustbuckets! rustbuckets! rustbuckets!" And whoda thunk it...complex machines needs lots of teething to shake the bugs out. Exactly as it's been before every time we've broken in new-generation cars, and exactly as it is in other cities.
Where here do we have conclusive confirmation that it was 100.00% the trucks and 0.00% literally any other factor on the whole system??? Nowhere. People are assuming such because...I don't know, sports? Like: gotta root for/against laundry on the Internet because reasons.
If this were truly a matter of TRUCKS BAD TRACK GOOD beyond shadow of doubt, they wouldn't have aborted the entire mission and bustituted the line for 3 straight weeks to blitz-replace all the infrastructure. The 46-year-old switch it derailed on--original 1975-installation infrastructure--was a known vulnerability, way past replacement age and being pressed into all-day service with each alternating movement. It's quite very unlikely its impact on the derailment probabilities was zero-dot-zero. If it were they could've just cleaned up and restarted the next day with the 01200's instead of summoning the shuttle buses. It's almost as if things aren't nihilistically over-simplistic, and confluence of events tickled the wrong probabilities. The trucks had a design flaw that increased wheel resistance over time. That escalated truck resistance was likeliest to manifest itself passing through crossover switches. If *any old* crossover switches were to serve up the potential hazard, it was the ones at Oak Grove and Forest Hills used on every single revenue turnback all-day/every-day. But the end-of-line crossovers are overbuilt for the punishment of all-day use and aren't malingering many many years past rated end-of-life. So we didn't get the whole-enchilada fleet pulled over that risk. No...the immediate scramble with the bustitution was to blitz-replace the past-end-of-life switches.
OK? Just because the true nature of the fault was ultimately ID'd to the individual component level does not automatically exonerate all other factors. It was probably still an unwise top-level decision to single-track the ops around the construction zone and overtask such past-prime infrastructure...because that's where the exploit ended up getting triggered rather than any regular-service switch. Complex systems: why they be all complex and shit?!?!
Jesus Christ, this thread.
Duly noted. However, sometimes I think people are just looking to catch you with your pants down like you're God and not just a very knowledgeable and thorough person.
Highwayguy
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Does anyone more informed in the procurement process than l know if these bearing pads were designed bespoke for the T? I’d imagine these are pretty “off the shelf” parts. If so, is the bottom end (or third, or 3 quarters) of the normal wear band insufficient to handle the abrupt yank to the left traversing some of these old high angle switches or sharp curves in the yard?
If these pads aren’t anything special, lm guessing its because the tracks are worse than designed for. Either way, not a great look.
If these pads aren’t anything special, lm guessing its because the tracks are worse than designed for. Either way, not a great look.
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F-Line to Dudley
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Can't imagine they'd be anything but off-shelf. The post-'75/87 Orange Line is about four-fifths modern-era infrastructure with far and away the gentlest curve tolerances on our rapid transit network because of its modernity (plus the remaining 1908 tunnel is neglibly tame for what few curves it has). And the rail of varying ages isn't crap-riding or anything because both the north and south line relocations are too new for the trackbed substrate to decay over generations and require a new round of resurfacing (i.e. like the D line is getting a lot of subgrade work now). But trucks--let alone parts of trucks--are just one component in hugely integrated overall virgin car design. If something specific to a CRRC body's weight distribution on the axles is going to inform parts selection, they need to get those matchups of off-shelf parts exactly right or there could be trouble.
It's like how Breda wasn't the first one ever to do an articulated floating truck section on a low-floor LRV...nor have the derivative designs (like the CAF Type 9's) fared anywhere near as poorly as Breda's particular trucks. Breda just played the component matchups spectacularly poorly on its stab at the understood design, and their craptacular quality control couldn't cope with the troubleshoots. That one was the worst-case; this one very likely is not. But you can quite easily fuck up even the most consensus-unfuckable design by choosing your off-shelf parts poorly and being in over your head on the systems integration of all that off-shelviness. Rolling stock manufacturers on the global market end up proving that truth on more or less continuous basis. Hell...just here look at the stratospheric reliability difference Boston experienced with the All-Electric PCC's (very bad) vs. the Wartimes (still very good to this day). Sometimes it doesn't even have to involve much in the way of design deviation...just way crappier systems integration within the design.