Another Vintage Picture for you enjoyment. (3 years old)
I haven’t gotten a chance to photograph my latest work…
Right now I’m detailing a GP30 for Vincent, filling in the nose headlight if he give a green light to that, working on his HH GP30, and patching his SD24 (going well, I gloss coated the battery boxes yesterday, and will do the decals today). Also doing the WRS caboose, an MBTA GP18 for an MBCR (they operate the trains for MBTA) conductor, and I just finished a car for the 2 kids across the street. Its an old Rivarossi Baggage car that I masked and painted blue black and silver, then lettered for the “Owen & Drew RR” with an alpha-numeric set. I’ll probably bring that over to them later today, and with luck go railfanning tomorrow!
Tyler, Both MBTA’s Kawasaki Bi-Levels and NJT’s Multilevels are 85 footers, but the Bi-Levels are about a foot taller, which is why NJT designed the MLs, instead of using an existing car (clearances in the North River Tunnels).
The extra doors are the Quarter-Point doors, which are high-level only. I don’t know of any other cars that have these. These doors are supposed to shorten dwell times at high-level stations, but it just clogs it up, because you have two levels of passengers, who are all trying to use the Quarter-point doors, because they are too lazy to walk an extra 5-10 feet to use the end doors!
All of NJT’s cars, beginning with the Comet IV (1996) do not have a door in the engineer’s vestibule next to him. This was done because of crashworthiness standards. This is partly why the CIIMs don’t have cab cars, because the engineer of a Comet II (pre-rebuild) (along with one passenger and the engineer of 4148, now 4219) was killed in a head-on collision in Secaucus in 1996. The Comet Vs and Multilevels are high-level only in the cab vestibule on the Fireman’s side, possibly also due to crashworthiness.
On all of NJT’s cabs, the vestibule is a full cab, with all controls you would find in a locomotive, just more condensed. They have actual seats. The exception is Arrow III MUs. Because they are MUs, the “cab” on each end is very basic, with not much more than a throttle, a brake, a horn, and a few displays (speedometer, brake pressure, etc.) The seats fold up into the wall, because, mid train, every door must be used.
And NJT is too cheap for Wi-Fi. They’d rather replace 20 year old cars, which could EASILY be rebuilt for less money, with brand new $2 million Multilevels. Instead of putting money into better service, they’d rather pump it all into MLs. [sigh]
Joe, the AMT cars in the photos are Comet II’s, paired randomly with NJT Comet I’s. They are not paired in a particular order or anything like that.
Our new cars are to replace all the antique GO transit equipment, which are always having thermal crack problems with the wheelsets. First the St. Hilaire line is getting the new cars, then everything else. NJT and AMT Comets along with the Bi-Levels we already have will stay in service and will be shuffled around until they manage to get rid of all the GO transit stuff.
In the long run its cheaper to operate shorter trains of Multilevels, and maintain a less varied fleet, than to maintain 5 series of Comets in addition to the Multilevels, AND have to maintain more cars.
I got half the decals on Vincents SD24… It took awhile but I think they are right so i’ll start in on that again tonight. With any luck I’ll be able to seal the shell tonight too.
Some time this week I’ll try to get some pictures of my layout and my layout plan as soon after I finish updating it. My plan hasn’t reflected what my layout’s track plan accually looks like for a while now, so I’ve been spending time doing that. School starts next week, so I’ve been extremely busy lately trying to get things done. Lets see I’ve got an article to write for the TAMR newsletter, the Hotbox this week and a similar version of the article for my local club newsletter. I’m working on writing the December article for the TAMR column in Model Railroad News. I’m also the Promotional Director for the TAMR, so I’ve been really busy with that too. Such as calling various Hobby shops to see if they will display our brochures. I was a guest on the Model Railcast podcast show last weekend. Now I’ve been given the chance to make a 30sec ad for the TAMR to run on the show. Now most recently I’ve been in communication with Model Railroad Hobbist, to get the TAMR some publicity in there. Plus several more endeavors, which I won’t mention at this time. I’ve also been working on my layout in the whatever time I have left over, which isn’t much. One project which I just completed was making a static grass applicator and trying it our, last weekend. Well thats all thats going on with me for now,
Well, today, I tihnk I’m going to make a video explaining my yard plan, probably take some pics too. It’s become a lot more complex since the last time I psoted pics.
Not necessarilary… Before I begin, I’ll give a little background info for all you non-NJT’ers…
Hoboken Terminal is the end of line for the entire Hoboken Division (obviously), so many trains terminate and originate here. The Meadows Maintenance Complex (MMC), NJT’s main maintenance center, is located just west of Hoboken. After ending their run, many trains run back to the MMC to refuel before their next trip.
So say that after ending a run at Hoboken, a train runs west (loco first) to the MMC to refuel. When they turn it to run back to Hoboken, the cab car craps out and won’t cut in (come online). Say that NJT didn’t have ANY Comets at all, and the entire Multilevel fleet is being used, and there are no spare cabs laying around. This means that trains must be canceled, which messes up the entire system.
Say a Comet V cab craps out. Any Comet cab (all models) can easily be slapped on so that the trainset is usable.
OR, if a ML cab craps out, and there’s a few Comets laying around, they can slap together a Comet set as a substitute for the ML set.
And before anyone asks, no, a Comet cab can NOT be added to a ML set and vice versa. Some of the ML’s safety features (smoke detectors and Passenger Emergency Intercoms [PEI], for example) do not trainline in Comets, so this obviously causes a problem.
Just like how the MBTA runs the Green Line with two operators per train since every train has two classes of cars and the door control systems aren’t compatible! [:P]
Exactly.
MBTA runs with two operators, while NJT is running with only a Conductor and a Rear Brakeman on a 10 car ML set! The Rear Brake usually collects tickets in the last car, except when management understaffs a train, which apparently happens quite often…
And one more thing, if you see MLs, Comets, and Arrow III MUs all in one consist, it is an X train (equipment move), not a super efficent passenger train, although a 12- car Arrow III train towing 8 MLs would have extreme capacity, while still keeping super-fast acceleration!
You totally missed my point… By buying more Multilevels, and creating more Multilevel sets, and fewer and fewer comet sets, they don’t have to maintain such a varied fleet of cars, and can use less cars per set due to the fact that MLs seat more people. Look at LIRR… Their diesel powered fleet is entirely C3 cars. They eliminated all the MP72/MP75 rebuilds and they don’t have problems. Essentially NJT would end up like LIRR with an entire fleet of MLs. Its cheaper that way.
Another video for your viewing pleasure…this time we’re chasing WRS train CDLE-1 from Franklin to Lebanon, starting at 11:59 PM, running through several night scenes, seeing a time-lapse sunrise (a real one), and finally arriving in Lebanon at 6:45 AM.
Tyler, I’ll watch the vid tomorrow when I got time, but sounds great!
Traded a fellow on another forum my H-15-44 and rsd-4/5 for a bunch of code 55 track, I’ve definitely got enough for the yard, hopefully enough for the town. I’m also getting some flux and solder tomorrow at radio shack, and should hopefully have some pics tomorrow, maybe a vid too.
There are currently some sets that only use three Comet cars, because that’s all they need. Why replace that with a two-car MLV set? Besides, they don’t like useing sets with less than three cars, because tht lowers the braking power. So that wouldn’t make sense.
Believe it or not, what NJT is doing now is making the most sense. Use single level Comets where capacity isn’t a problem, and use MLVs where the extra capacity is needed (NEC, MidTOWN Direct). With the recent influx of PL42ACs on the NJCL, I have a feeling that pretty soon ML/PL42 sets will start showing up in Bay Head. They are most certainly needed during the summer, considering that it’s the COAST LINE.
I think it would be smart if NJT rebuilt the CIIIs to be compatible with the MLs. It would free up the MLs for use on other lines, instead of buying 448 new MLVs for $1.9 million each…
What stops faster, a light locomotive, or a locomotive with 8 cars behind it…
The reality is railroads are no longer buying single level cars, because its cheaper to maintain a smaller fleet. MBTA is replacing their entire fleet of MBB 500 and 1500 cars, with a new order of 75 Bilevels, and whatever CII knock offs they have will not be put back in service when they are taken out for a major problem. Why extend a car’s life 15 years when you can buy new ones to last 30 or 40 years. If they were to keep any comets at all, they should keep the C5s and get rid of all the other ones.
A lot of commuter agencies are out buying brand-new equipement thanks to Government grants. They are spending it while they have it!
Not only do the multilevels lower maintance costs on equipment etc, they can increase service without having to have longer trainsets, and by concequence, not having to extend a station platform. This is a problem in Montreal, some stations only have space for 3-4 cars, while trainsets are up to 10 cars in length.
Our first Multilevel consist should be in service shortly on the St-Hilaire line, after all the testing. That line is currently all F40PH’s and GP40PH-2’s, I believe that the F59PHI’s have clearance problems at Bonaventure (terminal). It is one of the reasons Via Rail cancelled their F59PHI order in favor of the P42DC.
