New Red and Orange Line Cars

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Finaly, & at long last, & after many failed attempts to try one of the new Orange Line trains, I was able to ride on one of them today!! Got on it at State Street Station, rode it all the way to Oak Grove, then all the way to Forrest Hills, then back to Haymarket Station. Then, just for kicks & giggles, I rode the Green Line to the new Union Sq. Station after Lechmere & back to Park Street before changing over to the Boston College Line to go home!! The new OL trains are very nice & ride smoothly, except for over the switches, which are a bit noisy. But I was able to see & ride one for the first time ever! Took some pics of it, but they are stuck in the phone until I can get them onto a Sandisk card. The announcement came on the platform that a new train was about to arrive, so I waited for it. :)
 
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Being able to ride on the new OL trains for the first time, had made me realize just exactly how old, outdated & how ugly that the 01100 cars look. It is really a disgusting shame that the T has waited for so long to begin replacing these cars. And the RL cars, even though they may not look as old as the Orange Line cars, they are still just as bad because they are now unreliable, dangerous & break down way too often. I sometimes cry when I hear that something bad happens with them to the point where a passenger is hurt or killed. :cry:
 
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The T seems to have been very quiet on this front as of late, and I feel like I haven't noticed much progress with new trains listed on the various "new train tracker" sites (in particular the red line still sits solidly at 1 new train)....I'm sure things are proceeding, but as someone who is (perhaps impatiently) waiting for the red line trains - has anyone here heard anything else about these projects beyond the standard stuff?

I know, the answer is likely things are going ahead, slower than we'd like but going, and we just need to wait...but man seeing that single new red line train each day is such a tease!
 
notthemonthaugust said:
The T seems to have been very quiet on this front as of late, and I feel like I haven't noticed much progress with new trains listed on the various "new train tracker" sites (in particular the red line still sits solidly at 1 new train)....I'm sure things are proceeding, but as someone who is (perhaps impatiently) waiting for the red line trains - has anyone here heard anything else about these projects beyond the standard stuff?

I know, the answer is likely things are going ahead, slower than we'd like but going, and we just need to wait...but man seeing that single new red line train each day is such a tease!
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The covid-19 pandemic has screwed things to a crawl, up to the point where there was a dramatic slowdown of things. Hopefully, there should be more shells coming soon from China. Part of the reason why there's still only one new train in use on the Red Line. But all that should change soon. The Orange Line was in dire need of the new trains, as the old ones were worst for wear & tear. It should have all of theirs by next year, while the Red Line should have all of its new trains by the year after.
 
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Short circuit on one of the Old Red Line trains probable cause of deadly accident.

www.nbcboston.com

NTSB Report: Faulty Door Control System Led to Last Month's MBTA Red Line Death

A passenger door on a Boston subway car did not function properly when a man got his arm stuck in it and was dragged to his death last month, federal investigators said Monday. The trains are equipped with safety features to prevent them from moving when the doors are obstructed, the National...
www.nbcboston.com www.nbcboston.com
 
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First time seeing 2 new trains at a station at once!! Yeah, the Orange Line is more in dire need of the new trains than the Red Line. Even though, like the old trains on the Orange Line, the old 1500 & 1600 railcars on the Red Line are also deemed as being the least reliable. :eek:
 
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bakgwailo said:
I know of the various new train trackers for in service trains, but, is there anywhere to track new trains going into service/total deliveries ?
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The Orange Line has about 60% of its new cars - totalling about 6 new trains. Together with the one lonely new one that's on the Red Line, it totals 7 new trains. But no word has come out as to when more shells will be delivered. The guys at the assembly plant in Sprigfield must be starving for work. Or were they furoughed pending the arrival of more shells? What stark-raving idiocy!! :eek:
 
bakgwailo said:
I know of the various new train trackers for in service trains, but, is there anywhere to track new trains going into service/total deliveries ?
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NETransit. That's as close to an "official" roster tracker as you'll ever get on the MBTA, because it's sourced by employees with the MBTA's blessing.

There's 70 Orange cars delivered through April. 58 are accepted, 56 are in-service (enough for 9 trainsets), 2 are out-of-service (derailment damage). 8 Red cars are delivered/accepted/in-service, though since there's only enough for one six-car trainset only 6 of them will be in-service at any given time.
 
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F-Line to Dudley said:
NETransit. That's as close to an "official" roster tracker as you'll ever get on the MBTA, because it's sourced by employees with the MBTA's blessing.

There's 70 Orange cars delivered through April. 58 are accepted, 56 are in-service (enough for 9 trainsets), 2 are out-of-service (derailment damage). 8 Red cars are delivered/accepted/in-service, though since there's only enough for one six-car trainset only 6 of them will be in-service at any given time.
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Should have remembered that. Pretty awesome that the Orange Line is almost halfway there with the 152 car order.
 
bakgwailo said:
Should have remembered that. Pretty awesome that the Orange Line is almost halfway there with the 152 car order.
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Because of what I said about the old railcars being the ones that are the least reliable. It was once said that they were going to be rehabbed with a fresh repainting & new mechanical parts & so fourth, but that day never came, & it went.... right out the window! They never got the life extenion from a rebuild, & so they went on & on & on without the tender loving care they should've gotten. Thus they went all the way to a replacement. They were only repaired if or when they needed it. And the MBTA had decided to replace them with railcars that have stainless steel bodies, as in the case of the current Blue Line railcars. :)
 
A friend had just texted me about this. I had a feeling that something like this would happen. AGAIN!!! But at least, I got the chance to ride on one of them. They'll get them fixed, hopefully soon. But almost half of them are here! :eek:
 
chrisbrat said:
how could this be going so poorly?
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I know, it really sucks to learn about all of these setbacks. At the same time, I wonder whether we are suffering by hyper awareness syndrome. I mean, I can't personally say whether this was typical/common on prior procurements. We just didn't have the same kind of up to minute data on everything that we now have. So maybe this is normal, maybe it's cause for concern, or maybe the MBTA, to use the term they did, is being abundantly cautious, in part due to the information environment that now exists.

All I really know, is that I like the new trains, want the procurement to succeed and in a reasonably short time frame, and start to have an Orange Line that is a top performing HRT system.
 
Riverside said:
I wonder if the increased FTA presence is tacitly encouraging increased caution.
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This is what happens when you try to be stingy & not buy dependable equipment. The T has been very notorious for that. Looks good on paper, but flops out in actual use. I'd said before that they seriously need to look at these new trains & stop Mickey-Mousing them! Give them a thorough check-out & sign off the work to make sure that they are safe to use, or send them back to Springfield to be checked out there. I'm not ranting or raving, but seriously, how many more times are they going to keep on going through this scenerio with these new vehicles, huh? :eek:
 
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