zacster

The feds were only interested in 5551. Given the supposed car shortage and the fact that the C runs a mix of 480' and 600' trains they could've used the other 3 cars to make a 525' train. But they didn't and they did the other thing I speculated, cannibalized them. Once the R211s are back there won't be a car shortage.

Oops, this post was an answer to a comment from a few pages ago, never mind.

Those software issues were all caught during the testing, so this was not an issue. You test to find these things, fix them and test again to make sure it works. Then you do your release. You have everyone in a room going through all the steps taken, the sign offs, someone from QA there, users, developers, testers, and you get a final sign off, and what you tested and signed off gets released, nothing more. It is normal to find bugs while you are testing. You keep track of them, you either fix them or get sign off that they are insignificant enough to allow them to pass and get the fix in the next release and move on. Let's call this release 5.0. What they did instead was to do all of that, painful as it could be to get everyone together and do all this, and then make a change to release 5.1 and put the change in production without testing it. It wasn't a minor change and it blew up in their faces. Kawasaki's QA team should have caught this failure to test, as should the MTA, who should have been overseeing this. Even that lock out issue was caught, and likely remediated so the user error couldn't happen again. Because if something can happen it will happen. One goal in all software development is to "idiot proof" everything, because there are idiots out there. And not just your garden variety idiots but idiots that specialize in doing things that no rational gorilla would even do.

I think they are tight lipped because as I pointed out when this thing started, they tested everything except the trucks that the cars were to run on. It was probably the most tested train in NYCT history, and yet it failed because they failed to test the one part that gets the most wear and tear. The broke the structured testing rules by inserting something new AFTER the test. It was a fiasco for them, whether or not it is an easy fix.

Well, no. In 1964 those devices didn't exist. They'd be using their Brownie, Instamatic, Super8, or Polaroid cameras. And to use a phone you needed a dime and a phone booth but only for local calls. And the subway was a 15 cent token. In 1964 the newest R9s were only 24 years old, less than half the age of the R32 now. And back to the topic of this thread, does anybody have any idea of what the status is of the fix? I surmised that the fix is being put through a 30 day test which would be over if successful. But was it?

The R32s were retired long before the first R211 entered service. They were able to make do with what they have. Do you really think 60 year old subway cars were going to come to the rescue?

I'm just putting things together in my head. They put this one set out there that had a fix, and then one new set that came that also already had it. And they've been running both of these sets without any others being put in for 30 days now. One 5 car set was replaced with another in the process. Maybe they had 2 different fixes to try. All of these are assumptions, I have zero inside knowledge. But the facts that I know point to this, and these facts come from this board. As an IT guy we would do something like this too with testing. You don't release anything until you have tested everything and it all works. If this passes the test, it'll take some time to apply the fix to all the other cars that were pulled, and also to the cars that haven't been delivered but are sitting in Lincoln, NE. Hopefully it isn't a lot of time. If it doesn't pass the test it'll be back to square one.

Maybe they'd run that as part of a 7 car C train? Or have they already been cannibalized or written off?

You posted this yourself on November 4th, but wasn't that one pulled again? Or at least half that set. That would be 27 days as of today.

I think that they are testing the fix with the production set that returned and also with the new set that came from Kawasaki. It hasn't been 30 days yet.

You may want to consider taking NJ Transit to Penn Station and then taking the LIRR out to Jamaica. It'll cost a little more but it'll be faster and easier is my guess. Trains leave frequently to Jamaica as all mainline LIRR trains go through there. From Jamaica you can get the Airtrain to JFK, same as you would from the A. You need to take NJ Transit to get to the Path train anyway, and once on it you may as well stay on to NY Penn.

But there is no sign changing on weekends. I agree though that they should run them on the N/Q on weekends with cars from the B.

If they still wanted to use 5551 they wouldn't have parted out the rest of the set.

Maybe in addition to what I said above about them being used on weekends they'll throw a few into the Broadway N/Q fleet so it is not the only line to not have NTTs. They did that with the R42s, assigning a small number to all the lines so every line would have some air conditioned cars, and then intermixed them with the other smees running on that line. There was a good chance that you'd get at least one pair on any given train. It is a long way off in any case.

I could see them using the R211s from the B over the weekends on the N/Q, but that would be about it. It won't be for a few years anyway.

I think logistics may prevent them from coming much faster.

It would be in the MTA's best interest to make sure these are fixed at the same time as the others, if they have the newer trucks. Since they are all pilot sets it is possible they don't have them.

Apparently they are all back in service, as long as it moves.

This is what I was alluding to in my posts a page or two ago. That flat spot did not seem normal on that video. It was not just a normal wheel slide or BIE or leaves. There was a production problem and now it has to be fixed And they broke the testing rules that we follow in IT. They tested the pilot set with different trucks than the production cars and the production trucks caused problems. In audited IT work nothing goes in without testing. People would get fired for breaking the protocol. You would think the production trucks would be thoroughly tested because they contain a large amount of moving parts and carry the weight. And there's history too, the R46 fiasco.

You seem to be missing the point about the tracks from Broadway and 14th ST merging before they get to Atlantic Ave on a structure high above what is now an abandoned structure. And they cut the Snediker side because the extra capacity hadn't been needed for 50 YEARS! If they had needed it for storage they'd have kept it, but they didn't it nor keep it.

Yea, but did something else happen?

What could cause that in a brand new train? How does that happen? Is this something that could be caused by a defect at the factory? And if it's a defect that could be a real problem because there is never just one defect.

If you look at the satellite view of Broadway Junction to Atlantic Ave you can see a wide platform of elevated structure to feed both Van Sinderen and Snediker, but you would never need Snediker anymore because it was built with the idea of 3 lines feeding in, Fulton, Bway Bkln, and 14th St, and two coming out, Canarsie and Fulton/Pitkin. Since Fulton and Pitkin were torn down a long time ago it meant at least two tracks were no longer needed through the complex, which was overbuilt to begin with. They tore down the two tracks over the entirely separate Snediker part, and rerouted the Canarsie NB track over Van Sinderen. It looks from the satellite view that the NB track then cuts diagonally across the structure back to where the Snediker tracks were and feeds both the 14th St line and Bway, and also a yard lead. This cuts off any access to the old Snediker/Atlantic Ave station. Trains coming from Broadway going to Atlantic have a structure that merges with the 14th St tracks. Underneath it are the leads to Fulton St. at a different level. And this merged track goes to the westernmost track at Atlantic on the westernmost platform. The next track over is now the Northbound track from Canarsie which similarly splits with a branch off to Broadway with a wide turn that goes over the Jamaica tracks. There is no way to configure this so that Broadway trains and 14th St trains don't interfere with each other. The easternmost platform over Van Sinderen is no longer used, nor is the dead end over Snediker where the platform was cut. Bottom line is that to do this would be an operational nightmare. https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6773246,-73.9037944,706m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

Ok, got it.

And what will they be doing between now and then with it? It's already been tested, hasn't it? Why wait another six months?