Tadman wrote:Fake wood grain screams "Bad idea from 1968"I agree completely. I must assume that Metro-North and whoever designed NJ Transit's EMUs just saved money by having the engineering department do interior design for railcars.
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Tadman wrote:Fake wood grain screams "Bad idea from 1968"I agree completely. I must assume that Metro-North and whoever designed NJ Transit's EMUs just saved money by having the engineering department do interior design for railcars.
Tadman wrote:Fake wood grain screams "Bad idea from 1968" although the new fake wood grain used in superliner sleepers is a much warmer color than the typical faux-walnut found in most commuter trains.It's not 'fake woodgrain', it's 'genuine simulated vinyl woodgrain'
Commissioner James Redeker has said he envisions buying new trains for the Waterbury and Danbury branch lines at the same time. All of those orders would probably be done in conjunction with Metro-North, the Long Island Rail Road and possibly other public transportation systems to reduce costs, Redeker said.
F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Maybe Dutch or somebody else from Metro North can correct me if I am wrong, but the III's and IV's are not identical, Shoreliner III's were built in 1991 and have a door where the engineer sits in the cab car, the Shoreliner IV does not. The Shoreliner III's predate the NJT accident in Secaucus where the engineer was killed, and the FRA required stronger corner posts, eliminating the door next to the engineer.The III's also have the much hated fake wood grain whereas the IV's have the white and gray walls on the interior. There are plenty of Shoreliner IVs running around in blue.
-- Shoreliner III's and IV's are near-identical, built in multiple installments '96-02. Never rebuilt. 106 III's, 10 active IV's + 1 IV wreck victim that's probably never coming back.
Of these, CDOT owns 23 of the I's, 10 of the II's, and all of the IV's. The Shoreliner III's and Comet II's are MTA-only. Comet V's are west-of-Hudson -only.
F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:The MTA intends on going all bi-level. They have no choice EoH with Upper Hudson and Upper Harlem capacity problems, so that's a complete purge of the Comet II's and all the blue Shoreliners of every class... NJT has 260 Comet IIM's and IV's it has to dispose of first before it even gets around to a decision on option orders for replacing the V's, so another 10 years of service on the WoH fleet before replacement is a pretty solid bet.Too bad the IIM's weren't up for grabs sooner. Just slap an "NH" logo on one end and a "CTrail"/CT Commuter Rail logo on the other over the disco stripe logos and they're good to go
For CDOT it depends. They can join in on the MLV order...but play red tape with with the MTA on which ones get assigned to the MNRR branchline pool vs. the CDOT-solo pool. Or they can play scrap-n'-swap by junking all their Shoreliner I's and II's, and swapping title deeds with the MTA on a selection of III's to send out for rebuild.
Rebuilding flats isn't economical for all that many agencies nowadays, but CDOT could probably justify it if it went all-in on a decision for uniform rehabbed fleet with padded numbers that cover all foreseeable service expansion during their rebuild lifetime. Say they pick up 80 of the 106 III's from the MTA to replace 33 I's and II's, 33 Mafersas, and 1 wrecked IV...and add 13 units of expansion to cover Waterbury/Danbury headway improvements, Hartford Line full-blast service, and future-proofing for some combination of New Milford extension / Hartford-Waterbury / joint MassDOT run-thrus from Northampton/Greenfield to Hartford. Then cannibalize or store the remaining 26 units as parts cache for the rebuild program to bring down the total cost of the program. Unless the MTA wants to hold on to a few sets for work trains, excursions, or something.They may end up needing all 106 and then some to cover all that and make any trains longer on the Hartford Line should ridership really take off better than expected. Case in point the newly reopened Borders Railway in Scotland quickly became a victim of its own success when overcrowding conditions forced trains to be cancelled. The politicians, etc. there really underestimated just how many people would ride it at 600,000 riders projected for the year vs. 125,000 actual for just the first month alone. The I-91 corridor has New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield all in one...
Jeff Smith wrote:And SLE extension may not be far off to Westerly (I doubt they'd use M8's beyond OSB; just not enough).Besides that valid point, they may determine that the costs for upgrading New London, Mystic, and Westerly for M8's isn't worth their cost-to-ridership numbers for initial service. (Mystic is low platform, non-handicap accessible, and on a fairly sharp curve; Westerly is also low-platform, but on a less-severe curve.)