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Axeman Jim posted:So the dreaded "Pacer" has to be withdrawn by 2020 (giving it a 35-year life instead of the 20 it was intended to have) because it will not meet the safety and access standards required by that date, and, in glorious British tradition, our traction chiefs have been thinking: "How we can build something cheap and poo poo as a "stopgap" that will undoubtedly end up in service for half a century anyway, like the previous two generations?" Sounds about right 
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Dec 30, 2016 19:36
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Dec 30, 2016 23:20
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Cygni posted:I really needed an Axeman Jim post. Even if the Boston cars end up being poo poo, they'll still be better than the 40 year old Hawker-Siddeley PA3s (Orange Line) and drat near 50 year old Pullman-Standards (Red Line) they are replacing. TBH the MBTA should have gone with the Siemens proposal which was "Those Blue Line cars we just sold you a few years back only without the Pantograph" for the Orange Line and begged Bombardier to build more of the 1800 series cars for the Red Line Also, the CRRC Type A cars are 2019 for the Red Line and the Type B cars start up in 2018 for the Orange Line
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Dec 31, 2016 02:21
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Kilonum posted:Even if the Boston cars end up being poo poo, they'll still be better than the 40 year old Hawker-Siddeley PA3s (Orange Line) and drat near 50 year old Pullman-Standards (Red Line) they are replacing. TBH the MBTA should have gone with the Siemens proposal which was "Those Blue Line cars we just sold you a few years back only without the Pantograph" for the Orange Line and begged Bombardier to build more of the 1800 series cars for the Red Line The Orange line cars wont be in operation until 2019 in the operation plan, though some should get delivered in 2018. but that could all change. the rest is truth though. Orange line cars are so bad, love that 70s-chic wood paneling.
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Dec 31, 2016 02:44
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Axeman Jim posted:So the dreaded "Pacer" has to be withdrawn by 2020 (giving it a 35-year life instead of the 20 it was intended to have) because it will not meet the safety and access standards required by that date, and, in glorious British tradition, our traction chiefs have been thinking: "How we can build something cheap and poo poo as a "stopgap" that will undoubtedly end up in service for half a century anyway, like the previous two generations?" If I could  an individual post, I would.
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Dec 31, 2016 03:44
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Axeman Jim posted:So the dreaded "Pacer" has to be withdrawn by 2020 (giving it a 35-year life instead of the 20 it was intended to have) because it will not meet the safety and access standards required by that date, and, in glorious British tradition, our traction chiefs have been thinking: "How we can build something cheap and poo poo as a "stopgap" that will undoubtedly end up in service for half a century anyway, like the previous two generations?" This is making me genuinely cross - we're actually getting shitter with each generation. The original DMUs were bespoke and (with a few exceptions) reliable and decent at their job (decent enough to last 40+ years in service in many cases). They were replaced by the Pacers which were a 'new' design built from a kit of existing parts and which were unreliable and uncomfortable but making the best of a bad situation. And now the Pacers are being replaced by tarted-up 40+ year old train converted from a completely different role. Why can't somone (government or industry) just actually spend some money on giving us some proper trains more than once per century? Unfortunately this is a hypothetical question because I know the answer and it's "'Because 1955 Modernisation Plan". But at least we got a few good (read: English Electric) locos for all those wasted £billions.
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Dec 31, 2016 04:00
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BalloonFish posted:Why can't somone (government or industry) just actually spend some money on giving us some proper trains more than once per century? Industry won't do it because it's not profitable enough (i.e. the profit margin is larger with these DEMUs), and gov't won't do it because ~the free market will solve everything~
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Dec 31, 2016 12:16
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Also because these trains are going to be used up north, so gently caress 'em 
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Dec 31, 2016 14:12
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Cygni posted:The Orange line cars wont be in operation until 2019 in the operation plan, though some should get delivered in 2018. but that could all change. the rest is truth though. Orange line cars are so bad, love that 70s-chic wood paneling. I also forgot, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles is making new trams/trolleys/streetcars/light rail vehicles/whatever the current term is for the Green Line. Because the green line is so old and has such tight turns and a loving tiny loading guage and therefore needs bedpoke equipment. In MBTA usage they will be "Type 9", being the 9th different model, not including the PCC (which is still in use, albeit modernized, on the Mattapan-Ashmont High Speed Line), used by the MBTA for the Green Line.
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Dec 31, 2016 21:19
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MeatloafCat posted:This is the one that comes to mind, but it's from Austria(I think) so I'm not sure if it's what you're talking about : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zDkTVFL61g Been looking for this for literally years, never would have found it again without learning austrian, thanks!
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Jan 1, 2017 17:49
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I'm just now catching up on the thread, but I wanted to say thank you to Axeman Jim for another dose of his humor!
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Jan 2, 2017 01:55
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It's just a little fire, it's still good, it's still good.
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Jan 2, 2017 08:51
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It is a good thing those pallets didn't contain a flamable liquid as well.
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Jan 2, 2017 10:51
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Cygni posted:I really needed an Axeman Jim post. I will fight you on this. Just because Kawasaki had some issues does not mean Americans can't build good rail cars. The American built cars of Kawasaki for the NY subway are high reliability, the M7 and M9s are high reliability.
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Jan 2, 2017 12:50
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Ryand-Smith posted:I will fight you on this. Just because Kawasaki had some issues does not mean Americans can't build good rail cars. The American built cars of Kawasaki for the NY subway are high reliability, the M7 and M9s are high reliability. Can't be any worse than the British
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Jan 2, 2017 13:25
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GlassEye-Boy posted:Can't be any worse than the
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Jan 2, 2017 13:52
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GlassEye-Boy posted:Can't be any worse than the British We are the best at being worst.
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Jan 2, 2017 13:54
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GlassEye-Boy posted:Can't be any worse than the British There hasn't been a lemon in large us orders besides the Boston type 8 LRVs and the green line is a clusterfuck [they should have purchased the Nippon Sharyo LRV] the silverliners V was a design issue related to ops, the Rotem cars were a clusterfuck for metro link but a few design changes fixed then). I mean if you do want to talk bad modern US cars Rotem is the current king of lemons with both their silver liner frame cracking and the metro link imploding but they were both fixed easily if painfully.
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Jan 2, 2017 15:25
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In Buffalo, our cars are being rebuilt by Ansaldo Breda which is now Hitachi. They kept all the Italians though, so nothing has actually changed. Project is 10 years over due with just over half of the fleet finished (which is a whopping 27 cars) and they like to break a lot. Best stuff ever.
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Jan 2, 2017 16:03
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Ryand-Smith posted:There hasn't been a lemon in large us orders besides the Boston type 8 LRVs and the green line is a clusterfuck [they should have purchased the Nippon Sharyo LRV] the silverliners V was a design issue related to ops, the Rotem cars were a clusterfuck for metro link but a few design changes fixed then). I mean if you do want to talk bad modern US cars Rotem is the current king of lemons with both their silver liner frame cracking and the metro link imploding but they were both fixed easily if painfully. I had to double check to make sure these were the Septa cars. Yeah...that was a dumpster fire.
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Jan 2, 2017 18:16
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*twitches uncontrollably from MBTA Type 8 LRV rollout-related PTSD* I was on one of those fuckers in 2001 when it derailed. Took them a whole 8 years(!) to figure out the problem and fix it
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Jan 2, 2017 18:51
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Ryand-Smith posted:I will fight you on this. Just because Kawasaki had some issues does not mean Americans can't build good rail cars. The American built cars of Kawasaki for the NY subway are high reliability, the M7 and M9s are high reliability. i was partially jokin and also not even thinking about those, more thinking the various siemens of the 80s, boeing LRVs, american cars, etc. i mean, american build quality was exceptionally bad for decades (and they still cant get car interiors right for some drat reason) also on the lemon discussion, the LA P2550 LRVs are way overweight and Metro cancelled the rest of the order. I wouldn't call them a big lemon, but they are certainly a bit of a failure. they look fantastic tho Cygni fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jan 3, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2017 01:31
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Cygni posted:boeing LRVs TRIGGERED
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Jan 3, 2017 08:00
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Kilonum posted:TRIGGERED The 1970s: Boston: We need new trolleys. US Government: TRAINS MUST BE MADE IN THE USA Boston: But....nobody makes them here anymore US Government: TRAINS MUST BE MADE IN THE USA Boeing: Well, we have all these guys who need work....we could give it a throw Boston: Have you made trolleys before? Boeing: Nah, but how hard can it be?
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Jan 3, 2017 17:53
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That's a really good parallel to why the 1955 Modernisation Plan was such a disaster for BR. BR had to BUY BRITISH for political reasons, and there were only maybe three manufacturers (English Electric, Brush and BRCW) who had ever built a diesel before. Those three firms made the diesel classes that didn't suck (EE made their own really good engines, Brush and BRCW managed to get a license from the Swiss Sulzer company for their equally good engines), everyone else produced utter garbage. It wasn't just manufacturers who hadn't build diesels before (though many of them, notably NBL, built some utter garbage diesels, doing a write-up of an NBL type at the moment), it was manufacturers who had never built a train of any description - Metropolitan Vickers made aircraft and produced the diabolically bad Class 28 Co-Bo, and British Thompson-Houston built ships before having a go at the Class 15, which was also complete poo poo.
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Jan 3, 2017 19:26
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Speaking of the Silverliner V fiasco with Septa, I can't relay my happiness and releif when I started seeing them back on the rails when there was talk that the subway strike was going to happen. (It was painful, but would have been much worse if the regional rail was still short on trains. Still was made worse by multiple people deciding that a strike was the best time to kill themselves via trains. Like, more than usual.)
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Jan 3, 2017 19:42
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Crap British Trains - British Rail Class 251/261 "Blue Pullman" Yes, it's time to return to that bountiful well of comedy, British Rail's 1955 "Modernisation Plan", and yet another of the monstrosities that it spawned. As with so many of the others, the failure of the Blue Pullman (aside from its many technical problems, of which more later) was grounded in the belief of the committee that created the plan that rail travel in the future would be the same as it was in the past, just with diesels instead of steam. The Modernisation Plan, ironically, failed again and again to understand that it was being (mis)conceived in an era of massive technological and societal change. By the mid-1950s, people were travelling differently, in different ways, for different distances, to do different things when they arrived, than they had before the war and whilst the road and air travel and haulage industries eagerly embraced the possibilities of change (except the British government, of course, who formed a gigantic committee and produced the stupidest aircraft ever built), British Rail decided to stick their heads in the sand and ignore everything happening around them. Ever since railways were a thing, they had been unmatched (on land, at least) for sheer luxury. You couldn't have a three course meal cooked for you in even the fanciest car, and air travel consisted of being crammed into a tube and thoroughly vibrated for hours on end at huge expense. For the rich, the train was the only way to travel, and for those for whom first class travel was too plebian, the Pullman Car Company built the very best in wood-panneled opulence, attaching their carriages to those of the private rail companies to mutually profitable effect. In 1952 the British government nationalised Pullman (nothing so socialist as luxury travel for the rich) and turned it into a subsidiary of British Rail. Some might worry that the Pullman staff might not adapt very well to suddenly being a nationalised industry. But they demonstrated that they had really got the hang of it by immediately going on strike when BR tried to change their pay and conditions to match their existing staff. That's the spirit! With all that eventually sorted out, it was time for a new generation of Pullman trains to ferry the well-heeled to important functions. With Britain's motorway network rapidly being commissioned and domestic air travel starting to become economic between major cities, the new trains would face fierce competition, for the first time ever. In the USA, passenger rail transport was beginning to die out, beaten for speed by air travel and for convenience by the now-affordable automobile. The switch to diesel traction had, at best, delayed the inevitable. The British Traction Council, BR's unwieldy procurement committee, reacted to these developments, as they did to so many others, by ignoring them and ordering a fleet of trains that would have struggled to find a market, even if they were really good. Which they weren't. The design was fairly radical, and certainly a first for British Rail. Instead of locomotives, the trains had a power car at each end, removing the need to run the locomotive around at stations, and could proceed on one engine if the other failed. This latter feature turned out to be very useful, because the engines were built by NBL. North British Locomotives were one of the great steam engine builders, building every type of engine for every type of customer for half a century. However they had never built a diesel before 1955, and, much like the likes of Baldwin and Lima-Hamilton in the USA, they never really got the hang of it, and every diesel they built for BR was a disaster. Politics forbade the import of power units, so for the Blue Pullman they licence-built an engine from Germany's MAN. The power cars doubled as baggage cars, so the space available was tight, necessitating a complex supercharged V12 that was beyond NBL's ability to engineer properly, and which only put out a rather unimpressive 1000HP (GM's equivalent-sized engine in the 567 series put out 1200HP with just a roots blower rather than a turbo). This engine (which also found its way into a number of terrible diesel locomotive designs, including the Class 42 that I've already covered) was hideously unreliable, as well as noisy and difficult to maintain. So bad were the engines, that the train's full-time crew included a maintenance fitter, whose job it was to try to coax the engines back into life whenever one of them died en route. The trains were underpowered even on two engines, and on one performance was basically non-existent, leading to some highly luxurious delays. Because high-powered business types don't mind being late, right? Worst of all, these "luxury" trains weren't very luxurious. The coaches, built by the Metropolitan-Cammell company of Birmingham (who, tellingly, specialised in tube trains), were based on a successful Swiss design, but BR tinkered with it, installing smaller wheels without redesigning the suspension. The Blue Pullmans thus suffered from a bone-shaking ride, that would fling the Cordon Bleu meals served to passengers off the dining tables into their laps. Opulent! The wonky NBL engines would surge and stutter under load, accelerating unevenly. With one power car at each end of the train, this would cause the passenger cars between them to violently bounce back and forward as the couplings (which were basically just a length of chain) went from tension to compression and back again, smacking the passengers' heads against the headrests and knocking waiters off their feet. Decadent! The Blue Pullman sets didn't have air conditioning, as it would have drawn too much power from the weedy engines. The windows didn't open and the forced-air ventilation didn't work properly, making them roasting hot during the summer. Sumptuous! The trains entered service in 1960 and operated from London to Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Swansea. Passenger numbers were low and the service operated at a considerable loss. Ironically it wasn't competition from road or air travel that finally killed off the Blue Pullman, but from British Rail itself. From 1971 British Rail introduced the Mark 2D passenger coach, the first to feature air conditioning as standard, not to mention a better ride and, being loco hauled, no buffetting of the buffet. Charging extra for the Pullman's clearly worse travelling experience was becoming farcical. The Blue Pullmans were pulled from service in 1973 and unceremoniously scrapped, lasting barely 13 years in service.   The only upside of the Blue Pullman fiasco was that lessons were genuinely learned for the introduction of the HST, 5 years after the Blue Pullmans left service. For example, the rear power car of an HST always produces about 5% less power than the front ones, to keep the couplings extended and prevent the power cars from playing Newton's Cradle with the passenger coaches. The HSTs were also air conditioned and did not have higher fares than other trains. With such a winning formula, all that was needed was a spokesman who embodied everything about the UK in the 1970's:  Jimmy Savile wouldn't be seen dead in something as old as 13 Axeman Jim fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Jan 4, 2017 |
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Jan 4, 2017 00:41
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How the gently caress did they ever come up with something as good as the HST?????
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Jan 4, 2017 02:35
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:How the gently caress did they ever come up with something as good as the HST????? Luck. Same for how US railways are still profitable even with all the bad routing and personnel handling.
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Jan 4, 2017 03:14
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beep-beep car is go posted:The 1970s: They also got forced on San Francisco for Muni Metro and almost got forced on SEPTA iirc
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Jan 4, 2017 05:44
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I've said it before and I'll say it again. The Boeing LRV's may have been unreliable but they were the most comfortable and smoothest riding cars on the green line. They also had the best AC. Yes, I know the AC was a retrofit.
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Jan 4, 2017 06:41
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:I've said it before and I'll say it again. The Boeing LRV's may have been unreliable but they were the most comfortable and smoothest riding cars on the green line. They also had the best AC. If you rode them any time after the early 90s they were more Boston-built than Boeing.
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Jan 4, 2017 12:42
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:How the gently caress did they ever come up with something as good as the HST????? Evolution not revolution.
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Jan 4, 2017 12:44
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Clarence posted:Evolution not revolution. Doesn't always work though. Case in point: SD50.
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Jan 4, 2017 14:38
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The biggest issue with most modern locomotives is the 1-2 punch of emissions and computers, Genesis had an issue with computers, Bostons new big diesel had computer issues, the new sprinter had minor computer bugs, because code bases are too big to test for most programs and in order to make emissions you need computer programmed and electronic fuel control.
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Jan 4, 2017 14:51
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Ryand-Smith posted:The biggest issue with most modern locomotives is the 1-2 punch of emissions and computers, Genesis had an issue with computers, Bostons new big diesel had computer issues, the new sprinter had minor computer bugs, because code bases are too big to test for most programs and in order to make emissions you need computer programmed and electronic fuel control. Boston's new big diesels are pretty cool though. They're pretty much long-haul freight diesels with HEP for running the passenger cars. They are hilariously overpowered.
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Jan 4, 2017 15:19
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As someone who lives on the Fitchburg Line, I can tell the difference between a F40PH hauled train and a HSP46 without seeing the loco The HSP46 trains actually run on time
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Jan 4, 2017 15:29
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Quick question for Axeman Jim. When you say Pullman, is that the same one as the US based Pullman Standard, or did the UK also, just dependently, have a coach builder with the same name? (I'm thinking it's probably a British Ford situation)
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Jan 4, 2017 15:37
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Kilonum posted:As someone who lives on the Fitchburg Line, I can tell the difference between a F40PH hauled train and a HSP46 without seeing the loco I figured it would be the fact that the F40PHs loud enough to wake the dead when it trundles by idling seemingly one notch from overspeeding.
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Jan 4, 2017 15:46
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Has anyone done an Axeman Jim style post on the SD50? I want to see one of these.
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Jan 4, 2017 16:33
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