Out of Trolleys?

My roommate was at Cleveland Circle last night at aproximately 9pm waiting for a trolley to come for roughly a half hour. At one point T personnel informed the waiting people that they "ran out of trolleys". Eventually, one came down the nonrevenue tracks on Chestnut Hill Ave. to service the C-Line. During this half hour, there were no trains inbound or outbound at Cleveland Circle. Does anyone know what was going on?

Between the Breda situation and the Boeing situation, the Kinki's are being stretched to the max. Odviously, the T found the max and kept stretching.

I'm just curious, why has this become a problem now all of a sudden? I've never heard an announcement about running out of cars before.

The whole running out of trolleys things is what caused the A line to be shut down way back when.

I must add I saw quite a few singles running the C line yesterday around 5:30. I picked up a 1 car boeing last night and I think the electronic whine along with that other noise the car makes can be very annoying. It's a possibility that the T has a lot of cars out of service in repair or something. Remember the Breda's are not completely reliable.

The Globe this morning had an article about how tough this week has been for the T:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... _on_track/

The article referenced that 72 trolleys and subway cars were out of serivce at the height of the problems this week.

AEM7AC920 wrote:I think the electronic whine along with that other noise the car makes can be very annoying.

I think it's cool.

CSX Conductor wrote:

AEM7AC920 wrote:I think the electronic whine along with that other noise the car makes can be very annoying.

I think it's cool.

lol its ok when rail fanning but after a long day's work and the headaches creeping in it drives me nuts! The whine makes the train sound like a big electronic baby. The boeings are the babies that whine and the T8's sound like a lady singing a high note in an opera.

Plows and jet blowers were used minimally to clear and melt snow off the tracks because they would get in the way of trains, causing delays.

This phrase does not make sense to me. Would the MBTA rather keep 72 cars unharmed then the remaining 24 cars on schedule?[/b]

parovozis wrote:

Plows and jet blowers were used minimally to clear and melt snow off the tracks because they would get in the way of trains, causing delays.

This phrase does not make sense to me. Would the MBTA rather keep 72 cars unharmed then the remaining 24 cars on schedule?[/b]

It makes sense. You have to first clear the yards before you can even get a single car out on the routes...just common sense to limit them to where they can do the most good. Once you get the yards clear you can then get trains in motion to clear the right of way and use the plows and blowers for the biggest trouble spots- the Braintree Line and the NEC and Wellington Cuts.

Efin, what you say makes sense. However, what you say is not what the original quote was about. The original quote insisted that "Plows and jet blowers were used minimally to clear and melt snow off the tracks because they would get in the way of trains, causing delays." My claim is that if they reduce the use of snow plowing equipment to minimum to reduce delays, then the trains get hurt in deep snow and get out of service. My understanding is that running ~100 cars with delays is better than running 24 remaining cars on schedule. I also wonder how did the T manage to run anything on schedule without clearing the tracks?

the use of the jet snow blower requires the opening of third rail power, with out power the heaters will not work and could lead to more problems

parovozis wrote:Efin, what you say makes sense. However, what you say is not what the original quote was about. The original quote insisted that "Plows and jet blowers were used minimally to clear and melt snow off the tracks because they would get in the way of trains, causing delays."

That's exactly what I was talking about but was never considered by the article. Minimally meaning they were in the yards clearing the yard trackage first which is alot less in size than the revenue trackage.

My claim is that if they reduce the use of snow plowing equipment to minimum to reduce delays, then the trains get hurt in deep snow and get out of service.

And if trains can't get out of the yard in the first place nothing can get in service...

My understanding is that running ~100 cars with delays is better than running 24 remaining cars on schedule.

But if you can't get the trains out of the yard it's a moot point...And 24 trains(not cars as you are stating) in service at all is better than zero trains in service. And BTW- not until Friday did anything get back to a normal schedule, each line except the commuter rail was delayed at least 10 minutes or longer on Monday through Thursday!

I also wonder how did the T manage to run anything on schedule without clearing the tracks?

They cleared the tracks with non-revenue trains running between the yards, terminals, and tunnels after clearing the yards as best they could FIRST. After they had gone through they sent outh revenue trains and kept that up until they could safely get thigns back to normal.

[quote="efin98"]
"That's exactly what I was talking about but was never considered by the article. Minimally meaning they were in the yards clearing the yard trackage first which is alot less in size than the revenue trackage."


Wow. I don't know where to begin.

TPR37777 wrote:quote="efin98"
"That's exactly what I was talking about but was never considered by the article. Minimally meaning they were in the yards clearing the yard trackage first which is alot less in size than the revenue trackage."


Wow. I don't know where to begin.

For starters you can do the math on the amount of yard trackage and the length of the lines...I believe that the yard trackage is a small amount of trackage compared to the revenue trackage.