New Red and Orange Line Cars

Equilibria said:
I don't think it's unacceptable. A slow uptake is very normal with new fleet - it would have been this way whether it happened in November or it happened now. They could have quietly entered it into service yesterday and waited until the first rush hour service to hold the press conference, but the people were restless and the MBTA wanted good PR, which they got.
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WMATA held a VIP only press event the first day of the first 7000 series and then from the next day on, it was running from morning rush thru the day as part of the fleet. Full revenue service was scheduled to begin HALF A YEAR AGO (at least).

Also, you can track the train with our webapp at http://traintracker.transitmatters.org. Preston (newtrains.today) helped us develop it.
 
It sounds like the MBTA has been taking a super cautious approach. They found every damn possible angle to test the train and then tested it some more. And even though they have released the train, they are still testing by letting her ride only between rush hours. Essentially creating a test stage of now running with live passengers but still not letting her face the strain of rush hour.

I do have to wonder if the level of precaution is necessary. But then again, we've been lax on things like the Type 8s and we regret that every with derailment that occurs. In the long run, we will remember the pains of the Type 8s more than the pains of waiting out all the testing.

But that said, I don't really how all of this really works so I could be completely wrong in this area.
 
The Blue 0700's were late too and made cautiously sparse appearances in their opening weeks. And the T got criticized for it much the same. Nobody remembered a month later when the appearances were more regular. The same thing will happen here. It's the cycle of life repeating.
 
Just rode it today, lovely train I'll try and post my pictures at some point. But yes the MBTA has continued this with the new green line trains still not seeing use in rush hour yet.

And when I was on the new OL today, I sat in the front carriage and noted two software engineers and two mechanical engineers troubleshooting various things, going in and out of the cab in the front to speak with the three people up there, etc. And there are definitely still a few customer facing bugs, like the stop announcements getting a bit muddled sometimes. And the godawful door beeping has got to stop when parked at a terminal station or stopped for a delay. My train informed us we were at Ruggles as we pulled into Mass Ave today. I also overhead listening in on a conversation bt the engineers that things like the APCs aren't online yet, hardware is ready but the servers aren't up or anything to even begin data collection.
 
HelloBostonHi said:
Just rode it today, lovely train I'll try and post my pictures at some point. But yes the MBTA has continued this with the new green line trains still not seeing use in rush hour yet.

And when I was on the new OL today, I sat in the front carriage and noted two software engineers and two mechanical engineers troubleshooting various things, going in and out of the cab in the front to speak with the three people up there, etc. And there are definitely still a few customer facing bugs, like the stop announcements getting a bit muddled sometimes. And the godawful door beeping has got to stop when parked at a terminal station or stopped for a delay. My train informed us we were at Ruggles as we pulled into Mass Ave today. I also overhead listening in on a conversation bt the engineers that things like the APCs aren't online yet, hardware is ready but the servers aren't up or anything to even begin data collection.
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Yesterday it announced Mass Ave at Back Bay.
 
Small sample size but I'd bet there's an issue with a transmitter near Mass Ave :) at least it should be a simple fix...
 
The Red 01800's still routinely fuck up the stop announcements 25 years later. Green ASA...never really had problems in 21 years. Blue...some opening glitches but stable for 8-9 years.


Day 1 glitch does not a trend make.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The Red 01800's still routinely fuck up the stop announcements 25 years later. Green ASA...never really had problems in 21 years. Blue...some opening glitches but stable for 8-9 years.


Day 1 glitch does not a trend make.
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The Commuter Rail always says "now approaching, Reading" or "now approaching, Beverly" when pulling into North Station.
 
To be fair, I've heard human announcers call out the wrong stop from time to time as well. Of course they almost always correct themselves.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Aluminum frames disintegrate too fast in saltwater to be used with any effectiveness for reef-building, though the stainless steel Red 01800's would be perfect for that purpose. The old cars will get scrapped with most of the metal sent out by the scrappers for recycling. There won't be anything left of them by the time the metal is parted out because they'll be crushed into a million pieces.

The Blue 0600's, due to lack of space at Orient Heights, were trucked out to the Pan Am freight yard in Billerica and scrapped there. Too early to tell for Orange because a scrap contract probably won't go out to bid until year's end with next Spring/Summer being the first dispersals. Wellinton does have a long service track stretching from the Route 16 overpass to Medford Jct. above the tunnel roof, connected to the Medford Branch as Orange's access to the outside RR network. They may use that as the dead line for decomissioned trains because it doesn't interfere with the test trackage for new cars. They can just keep shoving dead sets back there as far as the eye can see from a passing train...then pull them back forward when it's time to load on a flatbed for the scrappers.
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Thanks for the info.
 
Saw a new OL train set go by at Assembly yesterday. It was out of service so must have been a testing run? Or it was deadheading to Wellington.
 
whittle said:
What happened to 1400&1401?
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Puttering around up and down the Somerville-Medford test track. 12 production cars (1400-1411) have been delivered to Wellington, but they isolated the first revenue set to the ones that had the most testing under the latest firmware tweak.

There's also 4 un-numbered pilot cars: 2 returned to CRRC for modification into production cars and 2 in temporary residency on the Red Line to break in their test track before going back to CRRC.
 
Not quite F-line, there are 8 total pilot cars, the first four unumbered and then 1400-1403. The production cars are technically 1404-1411. However, 1400-1403 were delivered like a year after the first pilot cars so they're much closer to production specs, the only difference being they were produced entirely in China not Springfield
 
So will 1400-1403 ever enter revenue service or will they always be training cars?
 
statler said:
So will 1400-1403 ever enter revenue service or will they always be training cars?
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All pilot cars will be upgraded to production spec. The first unnumbered pair is already having that job done in Springfield. The numbered cars may have their mods done at Wellington. NETransit didn't group those amongst the pilots heading back to CRRC, so that may be a TBD.
 
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