How many M-1's are in service?

...too many breakers...

Noel,

You'd really hate the M-7 / M-7a then. There are way more breakers than the M-1.
There are a whole bunch behind the Engineer, and a whole bunch more in both of the electric lockers behind the cab.

Tom

N340SG wrote:

...too many breakers...

Noel,

You'd really hate the M-7 / M-7a then. There are way more breakers than the M-1.
There are a whole bunch behind the Engineer, and a whole bunch more in both of the electric lockers behind the cab.

Tom

Maybe not if they were not too far from the cab where one can access
them. Problem with the M-2's etc is that a number of breakers and other
resets are outside, under the car or in a box outside that requires both
time and trouble to get reset. On the M-2, even the breaker for cab heat
is in a box outside of the car. Maybe they did not want us to reset this
thing but sometimes it was better to do than than to sit in a cold cab and
freeze all of the way to New Haven some cold night.
Noel Weaver

You'd really hate the M-7 / M-7a then. There are way more breakers than the M-1.
There are a whole bunch behind the Engineer, and a whole bunch more in both of the electric lockers behind the cab.

As Noel has indicated, he would like the breakers on the M-7 because they are all located close to the operating cab. It gets better. When a breaker trips, the computer will tell you which one it is. They are all numbered and easy to find. There are some high voltage breakers outside of the car, but we aren't allowed to reset them.

Whoa....I guess that means if I don't hurry, I'll miss out on taking a "farewell" trip on an M1. Guess a trip up to NY is on my plans....

I still have yet to ride an M7...but since there are now almost 200 of them, at least my odds are better!

As Noel has indicated, he would like the breakers on the M-7...

Penn Central,

As an [LIRR] Electrician, I like the breaker setup on the M-7 also.
Some thought finally went into setting up the electrical distribution system.
As you know, the breaker numbering even makes sense. Any breaker number from 1 up to 100 is low voltage; in the 100's is 120 volts; 200's is 220 volts, etc.
Even better for us Electricians, all the low voltage breakers are two pole breakers... the breaker, when shut off or tripped, breaks the positive and negative feeds to the circuit, making [the inevitable grounds as the cars get older] grounds easier to isolate.
Contrast that to the M-1, where the low voltage negative buss is one big morass, and a pain to isolate grounds. They improved a little on that with the M-3, but certain grounds still read across several major circuits.

One major negative thing about the type of breaker used in the M-7 is that they cannot differentiate between a breaker being tripped or shut off.
When a security lighting breaker is shut off, for example, the Engineer keeps getting a trouble screen ["breaker is tripped"] flashing and beeping throughout his trip. And he/she doesn't like it.

As far as the high voltage breakers not being accesible to the crew...that is probably just the natural migration away from having high voltage equipment in the cab.
We've gotten to the point where there is no 750 in the cab at all in the M-7 AFAIK. Even cab heat is no longer rail voltage.

As an aside, many people don't know this, but the load meter in the M-3 [and I would presume the M-3a...my blueprints say "LIRR and H/H"...perhaps Dutch can recall from his M of E days if this is true on MNR M-3a] is not directly in the 750 volt circuit, even though the shops keep labeling the M-3 load meter "Danger 750 volts" (on the LIRR, anyway), because at least a few of them have gone "poof" over the years in the M-1. The M-3 load meter is driven by an electronic card that monitors the traction motor current. The only 750 in the M-3 cab is in the cab heat enclosure.

Tom

I rode on an express train of M-1's on Saturday evening on the Harlem line, so the older cars are still being run on weekends. The train was fast and the A/C was working great.

JD

Same on MNCR, the M1 load meter just reads accross a shunt and basicly has 750 volt to it, the M3 loadmeter is a card output at low voltage/mA range.

UpperHarlemLine4ever wrote:Noel, what were the GTE cars you referred to?? Any photos?

I believe this is one of them:

http://206.103.49.193/lirr/htm/lirr005.htm