Yellow Line going from overhead wires to third rail

ctaman34 wrote:are the pans still going up

Of course not. The wire is no longer energized.

MikeF wrote:

ctaman34 wrote:are the pans still going up

Of course not. The wire is no longer energized.

and did they remove them

and is skokie swift service now running on the weekends or not

I'm not sure whether the former Yellow Line 3200's have had the pans removed yet, but it will probably happen in the near future so that the cars may be reassigned to other routes.

The wires will likely remain up for some time. Taking them down is just an unnecessary expense for the cash-strapped CTA.

There is no Yellow Line service on weekends.

I wonder how much does it cost for the CTA to take down the wires fom the yellow line.

I can't give an estimate, but consider the number of man-hours that would be needed to take down the wire and the heavy steel catenary bridges. Also remember the work would have to be done at night or on weekends if the CTA does not wish to disrupt regular Yellow Line service.

MikeF wrote:I'm not sure whether the former Yellow Line 3200's have had the pans removed yet, but it will probably happen in the near future so that the cars may be reassigned to other routes.

The wires will likely remain up for some time. Taking them down is just an unnecessary expense for the cash-strapped CTA.

There is no Yellow Line service on weekends.

why is there no Yellow Line service on weekends why is that?

Perhaps because ridership doesn't warrant it. If I recall correctly, there has never been Skokie service on Sundays and it's been a while since there was Saturday service. With the CTA's recent budget problems, it's not likely we'll see weekend Yellow Line service anytime in the forseeable future.

I know that the yellow line does not operate on weekends, but there are some times like if there are major events in downtown Chicago on the weekend they will some times run the yellow line to keep the crowd down on the purple line, since this is a nonstop shuttle route, and since skokie has a park & ride lot they will run it.

The only way to know if the yellow line will run on a certain weekend is to go to the CTA' s web site at www.transitchicago.com and got to customer alearts, or press release when there are special events that drag thousands to downtown Chicago.

There were some weekends that I rode the red line on a saturday, or a sunday, and the yellow line be operating.

Seeing as how the CTA's current budget crisis is pretty bad, I don't think it's a near-future possibility, but replacing the catenary with third rail electrification is probably a step in the right direction as far as adding service on weekends (although it was probably unintentional, at that). While this is some rough guessing, around 650 Saturdays have passed since Saturday service was cut on the Yellow line in February of 1992. The figure goes up until the new third rail was put into service this fall. That's almost two years of service right there. So if the condition of the catenary was as bad as has been mentioned, then either it would have replaced already, a little less than two years ago (according to my fuzzy math), or they could have left it up and either gotten lucky or had some nasty suprises (more than likely the latter). Either way, it's unlikely that Saturday service would have been re-instated with the wires still in use - with the age/condition of the wires, it would be really pressing their luck to add more usage to them. Not that the CTA is going to announce tommorow that they're reinstating Saturday service on the Yellow line, but if the new third rail hadn't been installed, it would never return - the aged wires would simply not be able to take the increased usage.

JamesT4 wrote:There were some weekends that I rode the red line on a saturday, or a sunday, and the yellow line be operating.

Yeah, I loved that, when they often added Yellow Line service for Cubs games, and occasionally for some other special events.

MikeF wrote:Perhaps because ridership doesn't warrant it. If I recall correctly, there has never been Skokie service on Sundays and it's been a while since there was Saturday service. With the CTA's recent budget problems, it's not likely we'll see weekend Yellow Line service anytime in the forseeable future.

I dunno, we just might. Skokie and Evanston are in discussions with CTA to add some stops to the yellow line, which might make the case for weekend service. Course who knows how long this will take, given everyone's budget conditions.

If the CTA is so cash strapped, that 5 miles of copper wire is worth some definite money the way the metals market is these days. Also, all those darn steel towers don't have to be dug up, just cut off at ground level. It's got to suck to be a transit agency right now that needs rolling stock, because steel prices are outrageous and climbing.

that wire is copper?

Yes, the overhead catenary wire is copper. Many, many years ago some lines used steel, but there are a number of problems with using steel wire. Virtually all electric railroads use copper today.

There are (or were) two wires, if you looked closely when it was up. The one the pantographs recieved electricity from was aluminum. The one just above it was copper. Ever few feet there was a piece of wire going to the copper to the aluminum one, so the conductivity would be pretty much the same but the more-expensive copper wire would never wear down.