#14 Orange Line Cars 1400-1551 (From Red/Orange Procurement discussion)

orange1234 wrote:Has anybody seen CNR's rendering of a future Orange Line car yet? IMHO, the sides are fine, but the A-car front end cap is fugly.

I'd like to see this without the vertical stripe on the front. I think that would make this ideal. Ultimately, I don't really care if they paint the entire train in a puke-green scheme so long as they're reliable and have some longevity. However, I'm highly skeptical on both counts... especially longevity.

It's not awful looking, I'd almost call it sharp, especially given all of the fairly archaic requirements the T likely threw at them when laying out the design of these things.

My big question is whether the T ended up sticking with their Eisenhower-era obsession with A-A married pairs, or whether we'll be moving into the 21st century like every other proper transit system out there and getting A-B-A or A-B-B-B-B-A articulated sets with full-length passenger access. Looking at CNR's equipment for Harbin, Rio, and Buenos Aires, it looks like they build a halfway-decent articulated set.

My feeling is that if we're going to be buying rolling stock of questionable quality from an unproven manufacturer, we might as well buy come cutting-edge dodgy trains.

Bramdeisroberts wrote:It's not awful looking, I'd almost call it sharp, especially given all of the fairly archaic requirements the T likely threw at them when laying out the design of these things.

My big question is whether the T ended up sticking with their Eisenhower-era obsession with A-A married pairs, or whether we'll be moving into the 21st century like every other proper transit system out there and getting A-B-A or A-B-B-B-B-A articulated sets with full-length passenger access. Looking at CNR's equipment for Harbin, Rio, and Buenos Aires, it looks like they build a halfway-decent articulated set.

My feeling is that if we're going to be buying rolling stock of questionable quality from an unproven manufacturer, we might as well buy come cutting-edge dodgy trains.

These cars will be arranged in A-B married pairs, where A cars will have full-width cabs and B cars will have a small hostler panel for yard moves.

orange1234 wrote:These cars will be arranged in A-B married pairs, where A cars will have full-width cabs and B cars will have a small hostler panel for yard moves.

But no open/articulated connection between the two? (as we're starting to see elsewhere for making the same-size cars "work bigger" and feel bigger)?

If these are traditional pocket doors on the conceptual design, there doesnt seem to be enough room between them and the windows for them to slide into. Wondering if this is just a drawing perspective issue or whether we are looking at a new type of door.

It's possible the windows are part of the door pockets, ie. outer window - door pocket - inner window.

MBTA3247 wrote:It's possible the windows are part of the door pockets, ie. outer window - door pocket - inner window.

That's how the doors are on the Rotems, so it wouldn't surprise me.

If you look closely at the gap between cars it looks like it could be an articulated/open gangway design
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It had better be, our trains are short as it is compared to what other systems run, and there is only so much to be gained by dropping headways. I'm really surprised/disappointed that the T is holding fast with it's outmoded obsession with married pairs, when damn near every other system out there in any country other than the USA has shown that articulated/open gangway trainsets are the way to go and have a minimal effect on operations IF (and that's a really big "IF" considering who we're dealing with) the proper maintenance is carried out on them.

As for the pocket doors, look at any of the older Metro-Cammell designs creaking around the London Underground (the D-stock is a great example of this) and you'll see how you can maximize the window area on a train while still allowing for fairly large door leaves by having the door open into a pocket between a set of double window panes as folks have mentioned above.

This solution isn't actually that surprising as it appears that Chinese subway rolling stock designs carry more than a bit of Metro-Cammell DNA, which isn't surprising as half of CNR's designs look to be derivatives of Metro-Cammell's Hong Kong trainsets, which themselves were basically stretched developments of Metro-Cammell's C-stock designs.

My "wishful thinking, cost is no option" solution for the Red/Orange line cars would have been to see the T order an evolution of Bombardier's Movia-family S stock design, as they're just about the nicest, most well-built subway cars I've ever ridden in, but absent that wonderful but admittedly expensive option, I guess Chinese knockoffs of pre-Thatcher tube designs will do!

The sides resemble the 01800s.

The front definitely resembles the 1968 PATCO cars.

Arlington wrote:But no open/articulated connection between the two? (as we're starting to see elsewhere for making the same-size cars "work bigger" and feel bigger)?

The technical specification did not mention anything about allowing passengers to pass between vehicles so I don't think there will be vestibules between the cars.

Articulation is out, guys. It's too late... If the MBTA was getting articulated cars, they'd be putting a bid out for Wellington to be bulldozed and have a new facility be constructed.

It is possible to have open passage between cars without articulation. The new Toronto Rocket trains do.

The Bombardier Movias all have this feature, and while I haven't been able to ride the Toronto rockets, I was really impressed with the execution of this setup on the London Undergrounds new surface stock, which are mechanical kissing cousins to the Toronto trains. You get the best of both worlds, with continuous passenger movement throughout the train as well as the operational flexibility of being able to break up a consist as needed for maintenance.

CNR Changchun also seems to prefer this setup on most of their new subway hardware (google their trains for Harbin, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires), which is why it's a real shame that the T isn't jumping at the opportunity to gain some desperately-needed capacity for the Red and Orange lines.

You can only shorten headways so much, and unless the T has an extra couple billion lying around, lengthening platforms to run 8- car trains isn't going to happen. Given the trends pointing ad major ridership increases over the next few decades, its disappointing to see the T letting a potential 1/2 to 1-extra coach's worth of capacity per train get away so easily.

This, as far as I know, has not yet been posted here.

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This page contains a complete set of proposals from all bidders who submitted. Included are detailed technical specifications, etc

Here are the technical specifications for the CNR design that won out:
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/Busin ... oposal.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;