by JacobKoppel
Over the past few months I have noticed that some of MBTA's feet of Ex-Amtrak gondolas have received a new orange paint job, much like color orange seen on some of the work and snow fighting equipment such as C-2 & 64711. I know that at least 2 of the gondola cars out of the 13 have this new paint (one of the repainted cars is MBTX 13239). I am assuming MBTA will repaint each of the remaining ~11 or so when they get the time and money.
My biggest question is, what is the end goal of the repaint project and why put the already limited amount of money given to the commuter rail into something like this? Those cars almost never run outside of the yards around Boston. Even in the rare event they are on a tie or rail reclaim train; do the cars really need to look cool and flashy? Of course they look nice but I can think of many other uses for money which would benefit the system way more. And given that they spend almost all their time sitting on storage tracks like yard 10 or the Grand Junction, that fresh orange paint will just be an open canvas for graffiti taggers; much like the MassDOT blue ballast cars we got in 2017.
Last time I flew over the Grand Junction I saw that the 2 repainted gondolas were there, tied down with the rest of the work equipment that is stored there. I can confirm that the 2 newly repainted gondolas were filled with junked ties.
My biggest question is, what is the end goal of the repaint project and why put the already limited amount of money given to the commuter rail into something like this? Those cars almost never run outside of the yards around Boston. Even in the rare event they are on a tie or rail reclaim train; do the cars really need to look cool and flashy? Of course they look nice but I can think of many other uses for money which would benefit the system way more. And given that they spend almost all their time sitting on storage tracks like yard 10 or the Grand Junction, that fresh orange paint will just be an open canvas for graffiti taggers; much like the MassDOT blue ballast cars we got in 2017.
Last time I flew over the Grand Junction I saw that the 2 repainted gondolas were there, tied down with the rest of the work equipment that is stored there. I can confirm that the 2 newly repainted gondolas were filled with junked ties.