WormtownNative
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New Red and Orange Line Cars
- Thread starter bostoneophyte
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F-Line to Dudley
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You rang?
On a more serious note, at least it's a step in the right direction.
And if not, we break out the dancing Bredas:
WormtownNative
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And if not, we break out the dancing Bredas:
You win.
bigeman312
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Springfield's NBC affiliate ran a piece on the progress of the factory in Springfield:
Factory to build MBTA railcars in Springfield
It seems like everything is on schedule right now.
Factory to build MBTA railcars in Springfield
It seems like everything is on schedule right now.
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Are there signal system upgrades coming to increase Red & Orange frequencies to go with the new orders?
F-Line to Dudley
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Orange doesn't need any signal upgrades to get better headways. It's equipped to do more than it is today. It's just been short on cars for 2-1/2 decades ever since the move to 6-car trains created the artificial shortage, so feed it more bodies and it does more. Red's fleet size isn't increasing at all. Base order is 1:1 replacement for the ancient circa- 1969-71 01500/01600 series cars, option order is 1:1 replacement for the circa- 1988 01700 series cars. Service levels are stet before and after.
Signaling's a whole different animal that's led more by state-of-repair. Red's Braintree Branch ATO system JFK-Quincy Ctr. dates to 1971, Quincy-Ctr.-Braintree to 1980, Harvard-Alewife to 1981, and Ashmont-Harvard to 1988. Orange's ATO system Forest Hills-Haymarket dates to 1987; Haymarket-Oak Grove to 2004. Blue's mechanical trip-arm + wayside signals system is of widely varying age but old early-20th c. tech that's very maintenance-intensive and very weather-susceptible. New CBTC signaling has the primary advantage of being more software than hardware, with mass simplification of the trackside signaling hardware and most of the train control functions moved into a back-office server room. So any state-of-repair work rising to a level big/invasive enough as replacing miles of decaying copper with new fiber is going to mean they take the CBTC plunge instead of rebuilding the old. If they have to send guys in hardhats to trench new fiber, they're going to simplify the whole works while they're at it. So the CBTC server room gets set up regardless. What you choose to do with train spacing happens entirely in code in that server room...every time you want to change the train spacing.
As far as Blue and Orange are concerned, they can be programmed any which way in the server room and it won't change TPH. It takes more cars to take advantage of that. For Blue there's not much demand to do that. For Orange, these +32 cars are immediate enough relief that supplemental orders are not going to be at top of the list for another 15 years. The resignaling happens independent of that...because the copper and mechanical junk out in the field is getting old and worn (and Haymarket-north having newer fiber means it can get cheaply modded when the rest of the line's redone instead of needing a another do-over).
Red's more complicated. Harvard curve still sets the ruling limit on TPH to point where that can't increase much, so more cars and super-dense spacing don't pack more runs. However, the downtown signal block layout isn't keeping up with the sharply increasing dwell times from overload at Park/DTX/SS. Because it's all-'hardware' it's in a frozen layout, still living by future-growth assumptions about downtown made way back in the mid-80's that proved to be way off on the low end. So there's epidemic bunching and schedule unreliability at peak--where notions of 'average' headway starts to lose all meaning--and a positive feedback loop at those crowded stations further worsening dwell times. Problems closer to what's plaguing the Green Line than simply the straight-up 'not enough TPH' issue on Orange. Going CTBC lets them roll back all that recent attrition and toughens Red's overall resiliency against dwell-induced decay. It's a "capacity" and "headway" improvement inasmuch as the crowds are distributed and the avg. headway actually means something on a stopwatch for swallowing those crowds before nobody on the platform can move. All of which bails out the bulk of Red's problems with only incidental TPH change and no real trigger for buying additional cars.
Signaling's a whole different animal that's led more by state-of-repair. Red's Braintree Branch ATO system JFK-Quincy Ctr. dates to 1971, Quincy-Ctr.-Braintree to 1980, Harvard-Alewife to 1981, and Ashmont-Harvard to 1988. Orange's ATO system Forest Hills-Haymarket dates to 1987; Haymarket-Oak Grove to 2004. Blue's mechanical trip-arm + wayside signals system is of widely varying age but old early-20th c. tech that's very maintenance-intensive and very weather-susceptible. New CBTC signaling has the primary advantage of being more software than hardware, with mass simplification of the trackside signaling hardware and most of the train control functions moved into a back-office server room. So any state-of-repair work rising to a level big/invasive enough as replacing miles of decaying copper with new fiber is going to mean they take the CBTC plunge instead of rebuilding the old. If they have to send guys in hardhats to trench new fiber, they're going to simplify the whole works while they're at it. So the CBTC server room gets set up regardless. What you choose to do with train spacing happens entirely in code in that server room...every time you want to change the train spacing.
As far as Blue and Orange are concerned, they can be programmed any which way in the server room and it won't change TPH. It takes more cars to take advantage of that. For Blue there's not much demand to do that. For Orange, these +32 cars are immediate enough relief that supplemental orders are not going to be at top of the list for another 15 years. The resignaling happens independent of that...because the copper and mechanical junk out in the field is getting old and worn (and Haymarket-north having newer fiber means it can get cheaply modded when the rest of the line's redone instead of needing a another do-over).
Red's more complicated. Harvard curve still sets the ruling limit on TPH to point where that can't increase much, so more cars and super-dense spacing don't pack more runs. However, the downtown signal block layout isn't keeping up with the sharply increasing dwell times from overload at Park/DTX/SS. Because it's all-'hardware' it's in a frozen layout, still living by future-growth assumptions about downtown made way back in the mid-80's that proved to be way off on the low end. So there's epidemic bunching and schedule unreliability at peak--where notions of 'average' headway starts to lose all meaning--and a positive feedback loop at those crowded stations further worsening dwell times. Problems closer to what's plaguing the Green Line than simply the straight-up 'not enough TPH' issue on Orange. Going CTBC lets them roll back all that recent attrition and toughens Red's overall resiliency against dwell-induced decay. It's a "capacity" and "headway" improvement inasmuch as the crowds are distributed and the avg. headway actually means something on a stopwatch for swallowing those crowds before nobody on the platform can move. All of which bails out the bulk of Red's problems with only incidental TPH change and no real trigger for buying additional cars.
BostonUrbEx
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Was it during rush hour? If they already have one set out of service for the rush, then they have no spare sets for peak service...
Jahvon09
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This was mid day during non-peak hours, around noon or a little after. I was on the way home from my lawyer's office.
The car was so hot inside that you'd almost swear that the heat was on!
Last edited:
This was mid day during non-peak hours. I was on the way home from my lawyer's office.
The car was so hot inside that you'd almost swear that the heat was on!
It may have just broken down. I've been on trains (Red and Orange) that have stopped and reset the system (their words... I have no idea what they really did unless that's how they actually handle it) because the AC shut off.
This was mid day during non-peak hours. I was on the way home from my lawyer's office.
The car was so hot inside that you'd almost swear that the heat was on!
There are few experiences worse than being on a packed Red Line car on a hot summer day and the AC is not working.
Jahvon09
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Yes! Being on a crowded MBTA bus in the sweltering heat of the sun on a torridly hot summer day and the a/c isn't working.
Jahvon09
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Yes!
Being on a crowded MBTA bus in the sweltering heat of the sun on a torridly hot summer day and the a/c isn't working.
The CRRC factory is breaking ground in two days
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php...break-ground-in-massachusetts.html?channel=62
Biggest news for Springfield
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php...break-ground-in-massachusetts.html?channel=62
Biggest news for Springfield
Equilibria
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Boring-looking render, ho!
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They will be flush. The render is just sloppy.
Idk why we're even talking about the render. It's the same one as the bid render.
Equilibria
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Given that the rollsign is the one of the only parts of this that might be based on actual specs...
I don't think it matters too much on the Orange Line. There's no branches. You know where the train is going by the platform signage. It matters a little for the Red Line, but only at Alewife, since that's the only place that passengers see Ashmont and Braintree trains at the same time. Why, oh why, do they not show only that platform's train on the departure time sign...