Rotem Cars Discussion (new bi-level cars)

Noticed today that 1828 was on the old colony line tracker. Looks like the first group of new rotems are starting their service s life today since they were in readville at the end of last week.

I saw 1053 leading a four car set of shiny bilevels through North Quincy on the Middleborough Main about half an hour ago, my guess is that's them.

Was it 1828 the control coach?

NETransit is showing 1828-1829, and 847-848 are now active on the south side.

Related, yesterday I saw a seven-car set of bilevels at South Station (with cab car 1826). This is the first seven-car set I've seen since the pandemic cut-backs.

Diverging Route wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 5:41 am Related, yesterday I saw a seven-car set of bilevels at South Station (with cab car 1826). This is the first seven-car set I've seen since the pandemic cut-backs.

I've seen sporadic 7-car sets in the past few months, but I'm not sure when I first saw them.
I'm glad these new cars are finally going into service; now I hope some of the old single level cars and 4-car sets go away.

post covid, we have had up to 3 7 car double decker sets SS running around. As of this week, might be down to only 2 sets

849, 850, 1830, 1831 coming up from Rochester/Middleboro tomorrow

Has either Rotem or Kawasaki ever built an EMU(self propelled) version of the K car?

No. The closest thing would be the new MultiLevel III coaches that NJT has on order from Bombardier, some of which are going to be EMUs.

But Bombardiers cannot be combined with K cars, can they?

Tallguy wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 7:10 pm But Bombardiers cannot be combined with K cars, can they?

The MBTA owned bilevel cars are a design that’s unique to MBTA, whether built by Kawasaki or Hyundai Rotem. These are used all the time with the single level Bombardier cars, but MBTA has no other bilevel cars aside from the Kawasaki/Hyundai Rotem cars. NJ Transit owns bilevel Bombardier cars. Who knows what compatibility issues there might be in trying to run those in the same train, but it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t happen.

The only source of incompatibility that *might* exist between MLVs and K cars would be for electronics like door controls and announcements - or if you wanted to run into NY Penn Station or Grand Central Terminal. Everything else - MU, HEP, brakes, vestibule floor height - are industry standard connections, so there's really nothing stopping the T from borrowing a few MLVs and running them with K cars and single-level cars.

Is this the consensus of the group? Could the T buy powered Bombardier s and run them with K cars as an EMU?

Yes, if the MBTA has enough cab cars to use two cab cars per train. The powered bombardier MLV cars have no cabs (NJT is putting the power units between unpowered ML I/II/III cab cars), so if MBTA needed more cab cars, to enable this, it might mean they just find easier to order complete EMUs than try to create EMUs out of existing stock.

BTW, I think the MARC III coaches are the same design as the Kawasaki MBTA coaches.

Tallguy, that really would depend if Bombardier wants to play nice with somebody's "toys". Both types of Boston's cars are taller and hold more people, AKA the weigh more. Bombardier's ML III is still not here yet, and is being designed to work within it's own family of current/prior generations of cars.

NJT doesn't use their ML fleet in mixed consists in revenue trains, due to some safety systems not working. IIRC, they have an additional cabling requirement between cars, more than the MU and COMM (and HEP) requirements that are industry standard and that Boston cars use. I don't think you will get past that today, in the world of "interlocked doors" requirements from the Feds.