A B C signs on South Shore Train

Last night I was watching trains from my usual spot in the Art Institute northwest employee lot (if you ever see a guy in a jacket/tie watching trains around 5p, it's me, say hello) and the 4:57 (#113) left with some weird signage on the right side of the third car. 1'x1" signs with "A", "B", and "C" were spaced 10' apart on the side of the car. Any idea what this is? Some technique to board children or a tour group in quasi-orderly fashion? No other trains had such signs.

Good question ...

That would be Car 26, have seen the same thing myself... Inquiring minds want to know!!!

Not a clue, they just showed up one day...


They don't match up to the Emergency windows. Perhaps it's a plan for more advertising, on the outside of the cars.


Ryan

Heard back from some folks in the Mechanical Dept. They are testing different types of Adhesives for advertisements on the outsides of the cars.

Oh great. So the trains are going to be nothing but rolling billboards?

Oy, I hate to be a foamer, but they're going to look rotten. Stainless with advertising?

Also, they may want to discuss the problems VIA Canada has had with wraps - they can't get them to come off...

Tadman wrote:Oy, I hate to be a foamer, but they're going to look rotten. Stainless with advertising?

Also, they may want to discuss the problems VIA Canada has had with wraps - they can't get them to come off...

Hopefully part of the test is to restore 26 to it's pre-lettered condition ... and if they do add advertising that it is done tastefully.

They will have to be single car ads at the biggest ... wrapping an entire train when the cars are shuffled daily wouldn't keep a multi-car ad in the right order or the same train. If they stay below the windows the ads would be seen at platform level on high platforms and eye level on low platforms.

I'm assuming that the target audience will be passengers or others near stations. There are few places where a train zipping along at 65-79 MPH would be seen long enough to absorb an advertisement.

Speaking of ad-wraps, whatever happened to the ones Metra was running? There were a few out and about, but I haven't heard anything about them recently, and as far as I've seen none of them made it down to the south side lines (RI, SWS) that I ride/see most often.

I think they're long gone. I live by UP-N main (near the Menards by the Clybourn bridge) and I spend a few evenings/month at Canal crossing north of CUS, and I haven't seen any wrapped Metra cars in a long time.

Makes you wonder if it's viable (in the eyes of the party buying the advertisement). Wrapping a CTA train is one thing, they run in very visible urban environments and at more frequent intervals. Commuter trains are another story; some Metra sets make one (1) trip downtown and then one (1) back to wherever that evening. Not really a good investment when it's going to be seen for what, 2 hours out of 24?

byte wrote:Commuter trains are another story; some Metra sets make one (1) trip downtown and then one (1) back to wherever that evening. Not really a good investment when it's going to be seen for what, 2 hours out of 24?

The NICTD sets (topic of this thread) are not run that way. While on a given weekday a given set may not see more than a single round trip or two the cars are constantly being shuffled. A different day would put that car on a different schedule, and if the car ran on the weekend there is even more reuse.

As far as Metra's use ... if the set runs at the time the advertiser wants the ad seen it may work out better than random appearances. Both methods of "scheduling" are used in radio and TV advertising. Both would be valid approaches.