These cars replaced the Shaker PCC cars in the mid 1980s. Since Breda has merged with somebody else these cars are on the way to the scrap heap after running out of parts. The PCC cars by the way have beat out yet another light rail car in lifespan.
I’ve always wondered why we didn’t adapt, with safety upgrades, the time-proven PCC design when light rail became popular. Seems like a literal reinvention of the wheel.
John Timm
Especially when so many European ‘licensees’ appear to have updated the styling, seating, fenestration, etc. to make the cars look more “modern”.
I look at it as “automotive engineers” thinking they could do a better job … and then using Japanese or Italian craftsmanship and engineering to build parts of the thing better or less expensively than we could in the USA. The LRVs in particular seem to have demonstrated that Japanese quality does not always survive lowballing or poor transport protection, and that the general field of power-electronics and control technology, especially during rapid effective obsolescence, in the era of revised “new transit” interest has NOT been particularly joyful. (They also show that a compromise one-size-fits-all design may NOT turn out to be the best way to design transit cars, but imho that’s just ignorance by a helicopter manufacturer.)
I’m interested in seeing how the latest generation of lightweight and extremely-low-floor vehicles holds up in extended service. They certainly seem to be engineered and built much better … on average. But when they fail, oh brother! (Equalizer cracking, anyone?)
A weird example of power electronics and control technology is BART with the first generation of cars using inverter grade SCR’s for chopper control of DC series motors, something similar for the second generation, and with the third going to PWM 3 phase presumably with IGBT’s. What puts the weird in BART is that the first generation of cars were upgraded to AC motors, but not the second generation - where the latter still uses thyristors. The later are not available “Off the shelf”.
Since power electronics is still rapidly developing, especially SiC and GaN, we’re still going to be stuck with problems maintaining components that have become obsolescent, if not obsolete as with the thyristors used by BART. The neat thing with GaN and SiC is that the switching frequency can be high enough to allow for inexpensive filters which will eliminate the need for special wiring on inverters.
As for “one size fits all”, I still like ASEA’s proposed LRV from the 1980’s - available in 2 truck single car, 3 truck dual car and 4 truck triple car configurations.
What have prevented the contoinuation of PCC technology and design are:
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The move to low-floor cars, necesstating a radically different truck design and body design.
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Modern energy-saving speed control, first the chopper and then ac-motors and computer electronics.
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Move to articulated and double-aticulated cars, even thriple-articulated, for greater capacity.
Note that 1929 Milan Peter-Witts, a very North American design, are still in service in Milan and San Francisco, and probably will be in service when 100 years old. The same may be true with PCC’s ini Boston, Philadelphia (each one line), San Francisco, El Paso, and Kenosha.
This is not a new concept, it’s a variation of the PCC design concept. You ordered a car with only a limited amount of options available, such as larger entry doors, double-ending as already designed, standee windows, etc.
So PCC designed for articulated car sets (and not just MU as in Cleveland)? No reason why that couldn’t be done – I’d just never heard it was done. (That was the design feature erikem was referencing with ‘multiple size’ in context.)
I’m not sure CSSHegewisch said that 1, 2 or 3 car PCC units were designed.
From what I been reading Cleveland rta is facing a large operating deficit. It has all ready reduced service by 5%. Further cuts are forecasted unless a budget deal can be worked with the involved counties and the state of Ohio.
2 and 3 unit vehicles using PCC technology were operated in Brussels, they were being taken out of service several years ago.
Mechanical devices wear out. Calgary is starting the same process of using sister cars to keep the old ones operating for a few more years.
http://calgary.ctvnews.ca/calgary-transit-s-first-ctrain-completes-its-final-trip-1.3165751
The PCC cars may be easier to rebuild since they have comparatively primitive electronics. Modern “black boxes” are capable of wonderful things, but go obsolete very quickly and can be hard to replace if they fail.
Here’s the actual article.
Until RTA can afford new rail fleet, it strips aging trains to keep others rolling: Michael K. McIntyre’s Tipoff
Don’t blame Boeing for that one. The one size fits all was at the insistence of UMTA. They believed these would be th last streetcars built in the US and didn’t want to fund 2 different designs. Hence the Standard in SLRV.
Thanks; I feel better about it now. I can still remember when the first cars were still being built on the floor at Vertol, and we were entering a new era of transit excellence… as with the TurboTrain, I wish it had worked!
Electonics??? The controls for PCC’s were a form of electrical machinery, using relays and motors. Some of the mechanical stuff would be a PITA to replace, but probably a couple of orders of magnitude easier to replace than 40 year old semiconductor devices. Things like burned out coils can be fixed by re-winding them.
The eletrical vs electronics reminds me of a debate between Schlimm and I a while back about the difference between the two subjects. Turns out in the era that the PCC’s were being built in the US, “electronics” meant the study of electron flow through devices using vacuum or some ionizable gas, i.e. vacuum tubes, mercury vapor tubes or argon. At that time, solid state devices were not considered to truly be in the field of electronics.
Another though came up, with the avaibility of 3-D printing with metal and flexible manufacturing mills, it should be easier to get reproductions of a lot of the mechanical parts - with the exception of getting the metal properties right (grain, hardness, etc). The latter is why I’m encouraging my son with his interest in pursuing a degree in Materials Science and Engineering (he’s a senior in HS).
South Shore had to contend with similar issues in maintaining the fleet of MU cars from the Insull era. The cars were so old that many of the parts were no longer available and had to be obtained either by cannibalization or custom-made in the shops.
Well, actually, not quite – silver oxide, for example, and crystals for radios were certainly in ‘electronics’. The dichotomy (which persists in the modern IEEE) was in between the use of electricity for power (as in electrical generation and AC/DC) and the use of electricity at RF (as in ‘radio engineering’) I took schlimm to task for defining the radio side as ‘information’ rather than RF power emission and reception, but of course the principal sense of radio is indeed for communications or things like radar (which is radio detection and ranging) and where power transmission is involved in that field of electronics, it’s usually something incidental, like balancing modem bits to avoid net charge buildup – broadcast entertainment trumped Tesla broadcast power – and probably a good thing, too! Both radio and power used solid-state devices fairly early (think germanium and then silicon rectifiers, and the early iPod-like fad that was ‘transistor radios’) AND tubes of course came into power use reasonably early on the power side (Ignitrons, anyone?).
Some of the problem with older tech is that newer, better, cheaper approaches become pervasive quickly. But some of it is also that early solid-state electronics were extremely static-sensitive, aged poorly, and were not (unsurprisingly, really) designed to be forward-compatible with later designs. Much of it was also proprietary and very expensive to develop. There have been preservation arguments that many ‘famous’ locomotives from the '80s will not see operating service as museum power because even
I graduated in 1961 with an EE degree with a power major. THe first electronics classes I took were in tubes, but the last two years were in discrete transistors. Went to work with a Electic Utility and the protective relaying communications were with tube electronics sending low frequency signals (40 to 200 kHz) over the high voltage (69-230 kV) power lines. The manufacturers soon came out with transister equipment. Then in 1964, our company started the expansion of our 345 kV system. It needed higher speed communications so we put in a microwave system that was all solid state except for the final klystron tube. Then in the 90’s, data requirements made it economic to install our own fiber optic network which was the final system I assisted in designing. Initial teething problems with semiconductors in the early years was they could not handle some of the environments that they were placed into. Heat and cold could cause failures as could electromagnetic fields.
In the utility and railroad industrys, equipment is expected to have life times of over forty years. The PCC car design was made in 1939 and the last were made in 1952. Back then, electrc relays and contactors were state of art. Life cycles of electronic equipment today is five years. My PC that i’m writing this on is obsolete having been made in 2008 and running on Windows XP which microsoft no linger supports. So manufacturers want customers to buy the latest product, they see little profit in supporting old equipment. There can be profit to be made if a vender came be found to repair and or make parts for obsolete (mfg discontinued) equipment.
This thread is bring up some interesting points. The inability of getting replacement parts, source code, materials lists, manufacturing procedures needs thought when an agency is buying equipment expected to last 40 - 60 years.
We do not know exactly how the CAF order for the V-2s is worded for Amtrak to own all the designs. However Amtrak it should also own all the code, source code and manufacturing techniques. As well all agencies buying locos and rail cars of any kind should have the ability to get all necessary information to continue building equipment as part of the purchase contract if original builder ceases manufacturing for any reason. Comments ?
w
The point that Amtrak should be able to use all the intellectual property contained in a production run is a good one. Amtrak’s equipment has the (regretable) tendency to outlive its manufacturer!
However, at the same time the manufacturer should have the ability to sell the design to third parties who may be competitors of Amtrak, especially in the area of state supported services. To take examples, should Iowa Pacific, the State of North Carolina or some other entity wish to buy a variant of the V2 design, that should be encouraged. Longer production runs are a plus for all of the buyers.
At the end of the day this is a matter of proper contract negotiation between the parties. I have doubta that Amtrak can be trusted to accomplish that without outside supervision.