Metro-North wrangles with failing cars and cold weather

According to my reasearch M2's were built between May 1972 and July 1976. The first pairs to enter service were 8402-8403, 8504-8505 (4/9/73), 8506-8507, 8500-8501 (4/13/73). I stand corrected.

How about staying on subject, and less nitpicking about dates.
When M2's werre built has nothing to do with what is currently happening.
The fact is simply they should have been replaced nearly a decade ago.
and Fact remains its due to Ct people voting for wrong horsesass that we are in situation were in.

I never realized there were 240 M2's and only 100 M4's and M6's combined. Given we have a 372-car M8 order, does that mean within a few years, all of the old cars will be gone?

Yes the m-8's will eventually rePlace all

I think only the M2s are scheduled for replacement at this time. I'd only be guessing if I said the triplets will also be replaced by M8s.

Merged topics.

Nitpicking about dates and what could have happened 10 years ago is irrelevant. Patience for the M8's and support for the hardworking crews along with commuters' flexibility is what will get us through the tough season.

I have been wondering, where did all these bomb trains come from on the NH line? I know they raided the waterbury for them, but did the waterbury really supply all the bomb trains I am seeing?

I remember that in the 2003-2004 winter, "half the MU fleet is out on the new haven" incident, which this is just a repeat of, SLE got VRE cars with VRE still on the side, and that displaced bomb cars back to MN. I can't remember what locos pulled the bomb cars on SLE back then, Genesis or GP40s. Is my memory right?

How come in 35 years, the M2s were never retrofitted with motors that don't suck in snow? is it really cheaper to keep rewinding the coils on them over and over when they short out?

Amtrak cross honors with VRE, SLE and MARC. Why is there no emergency cross honoring on the NH line? Perhaps the MTA should charter a few regionals for shuttles between Penn and New Haven, or Amtrak has never has spare capacity on the NEC anymore? What about getting NJT to run weekday rush hour runs on the NH line? Didn't the Meadowlands runs iron out all bureaucratic issues?

Amtrak7 wrote:I never realized there were 240 M2's and only 100 M4's and M6's combined. Given we have a 372-car M8 order, does that mean within a few years, all of the old cars will be gone?

M8s supposedly will be used for SLE and Penn service. That would be a service expansion. With how sluggish anything the MTA does is, I say probably the M6s will retired by M8s, making that the perfect excuse to never start MU SLE or Penn serivce using lack of cars as a excuse. I assume the M10s ordered in the 2030s and delivered in the 2040s will finally bring MUs to SLE and MN to Penn

Service expansion by MN and SLE seem to be the last on their minds. No dual mode 3rd rail shoe. No 25kv testing on the M8s. I predict by the time they get around to 25kv testing, they'll find out it doesn't work and Kawasaki says acceptance period is up and for the MTA to get lost or pay a kings ransom to retrofit the cars. The pols will put it off until the M10 is ordered. Whenever that happens.

Patcat if you read entire M-8 thread a lot of what your ranting about has been explained, no there won't be NYP service for a while.
As for all Bombardier equipment currently the Waterbury Maxi and 3 Maxi's from Wassaic service are used plus equipment that normaly would cycle through shops for maintenance.
Yes the NY commuter have to ride buses so the primadonna's on New Haven line can have trains.
If it were not for that Doucebag Rowland the state would not be in predicament its in.

I think back in the 1950s and 60s everybody had a different mindset. Even a moderate amount of snow was enough to produce schedule disruptions, sometimes for days at a time. If you have access to a news archive search "snowstorms railroads" and I think you'll find I'm right.

Back then if we had a winter like this (though I don't remember our ever having one quite this extreme) people just assumed the trains would have problems.

As a taxpayer I don't want the powers that be to design railcars like tanks just in case we have the occasional rough winter, I really don't. To me it's a waste of money. I can live with the occasional delays and disruptions. I think most people feel the same way.

Next thing you know some genius is going to propose putting a dome over the entire Metropolitan Region so we're immune to the effects of Mother Nature.

I have no problem with staying home from work on 'snow days.'

Better a reduced (and more realistic) schedule than one that MN is not capable of fullfilling.

No one in Management ever wants to hear, or wants to use the words, "no, we can't do that". So the decision to reduce service must have a difficult one. But the inconvenience of standing has to outweigh the possible risk to safety from overworked maintenance crews trying to do too much or work a little faster which may leave something over looked.

This would be a fantastic opportunity for Kawasaki to chip in with the train(s) under distance testing (if all safety related and operational testing is complete) to offer that set while "under test" and not yet accepted to help ease the strain on the M2/4/6's currently on "the roster". I'm sure there are 1.7 million reasons why this can't be done just from a liability stand point.

I think lowering the expectations of train service, and then deliver on those, instead of everyone wondering what train will and won't run is a better plan in the long run. We can do heroic things for a day or 2, but for weeks... that just wears everyone out.

We can all hope that MN management will take a good hard look at how poorly the New Haven Line cars performed during this rough winter. One must ask why the failure of the cars was so disaturous. Is it poor maintainance? Is it poor planning? Is it some long ingored design flaw in the M2's, M4's and M6's that make them so prone to failure during snow and cold weather? Will MN tone down their endless hype about how the "CSR" modified M2's perform better than those M2's that were not overhauled? These and many more tough questions need to be asked and answered.

I think those questions have been asked and answered. Many of the cars are nearly 40 years old. They have survived most of those 40 winters.

Design flaws on the traction motors have been well-noted, i.e. they are susceptible to fine snow and related shorts. I believe I read something similar on the metroliners.

Similarly, the CSR programs plusses and minuses have been well-documented as well.

Those questions you want asked will be mostly academic after this year, as M-8's finally come on line and M-2's are retired.