trainfan22
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Posts posted by trainfan22
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9 hours ago, Nova Fly Guy said:
Got a surprise update 211A inaugural run will be March 9, 2023 From 1400-2100 starting from 207
Very Nice! I wonder if the media will be invited or will it be an quiet uneventful first trip with only fanfare from railfans.
Nothing more exciting in this hobby than when an new subway car class makes its revenue service debut.
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On 2/27/2023 at 11:47 AM, NewFlyer 230 said:
I was on the Q56 last week between Jamaica Av/Parsons Blvd to Jamaica Ave/Lefferts Blvd and based off the usage I see on the route, I can’t believe the Q56 was proposed for elimination back in 2009. It’s on time performance still leaves more to be desired but those buses do get packed especially going into and coming out of the Jamaica area. Outside of it running alongside the
for a substantial part of its route, I wonder what was the rationale for its proposed elimination when it’s always had decent ridership. The Q56 of all routes was proposed to be eliminated over the Q102 which the latter to this day still struggles ridership wise.
They wanted to cut the B25 too which has heavy ridership too because it was running parallel to the subway.
I can see the appeal of the Q56 for seniors and disabled riders, but I wonder why the Q56 along with the B25 is so popular with younger abled body ppl despite being much slower than the subway. I've had a few
trains going in the same direction pass me at Woodhaven Blvd before one BK bound Q56 showed up. I only tolerated it because I wanted to busfan the route lol. If I was an normal commuter, I would have simply taken the train.
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I'm reading online that NYP is still a far more popular destination than GCM for LIRR riders so far.
Crazy that they cut both the 3:07 AND 3:14 from NYP to Ronkonkoma, that 3:31 to Ronkonkoma must be getting hammered.
I wonder if LIRR was expecting a 50/50 balance between NYP and GCM terminals in terms of ridership.
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I'm curious if the superliner replacements will be bi level. I'd rather the whole LD fleet have a uniform single level fleet rather than now with the east coast/LSL having an separate fleet from the midwest & west coast LD trains.
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1 hour ago, B35 via Church said:
Question :
Those WB expresses on the PW line that go ...Great Neck - Mets-Willets Point - Woodside - Penn..... I suppose I can understand doing that on game days, but baseball season been done.... Why do they have those trains during the offseason stopping at Mets-Willets Point, instead of LIRR Flushing?
That's one of the locations you can get the COVID vaccine. They want to make it easier for people to reach that location.
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Today I FINALLY got a Cuomo scheme Nova on an FLA SBS route. I've been on the blue and white Novas on the B44 SBS plenty of times when FLA had them but never the newer ones until today.
I had to choose between an NG on the local or the Nova on the SBS, was an tough choice as I'm not sure how much longer FLA will have NGs.
Also I saw the Eagle team pull up to the stop I was waiting at before the bus showed up.
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Express buses need a fare for crowd control, otherwise they are gonna have to run some of those express bus routes on B46 pre artic conversion headways just to keep up with the demand
Express bus ridership will go though the roof if they make it free, they might have to run the SI rush hour weekday only routes 7 days a week if it was free rather than the four routes they do now.
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76th Street is the only one where no one knows whether it exists or not AFAIK
Not the subway but IIRC remnants of an LIRR steam train was found under Atlantic Ave.
EDIT: Heres an wikipedia page about the LIRR tunnel
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobble_Hill_Tunnel
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An Metro North train overshot the bumper block at New Canaan today..
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IMO N/Q/W riders will be even more miserable if those lines become entirely R68/68A because nearly all of CI R68/68A fleet has flat wheels, making them an even more unpleasant ride than the R46.
The 68/68A wasn't like this in the 2000s, it's really bad in current day. The R68A in particular was so nice to ride in the mid to late 2000s, now they rumble like crazy. Concourse easily has the best R68s to ride cause they are smooth.
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27 minutes ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:
Lowkey, Broadway is prolly the "laziest" North-South core in Manhattan. Literally Broadway could be removed and all it's branches except Astoria could be replaced with relative ease.
South Brooklyn
and 
are all low ridership, and to the North the Astoria and SAS branches are short while the on QBLVD doesn't pull all that much weight.
Also rmbr that even during rush hour, the Broadway services each only run every 8 minutes or so.
South Brooklyn
is not low ridership, ever ride the line on weekends when the 
isn't running? SRO by the time you get to Chruch Ave. I use to live along the line in Brooklyn, the Q is very well utilized in BK.
Weekday ridership might have taking a hit due to Covid/WFH but it was crushloaded during rush hour prior to that.
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1 hour ago, Vulturious said:
Didn't they show an R62A? Either we didn't watch the same video or that's one hell of a mandela effect I'm experiencing.
The NBC4 5PM newscast showed an R68 but the YouTube version showed an R62A on the
They switched the video and still got the wrong car class lol
ABC7 got it right by actually showing an R46 on the (A).
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I know what an joke is, considering that they reefed subway cars until very recently its possible he didn't know they went back to scrapping subway cars.
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On the NBC 4 R211 news story when they talked about the R46 being replaced..... they showed video of an R68.
Also the MTA president said it's time for the cars to take a swim, the MTA president isn't aware that they went back to scrapping cars the old fashioned way? Unless plans changed. I doubt they will go back to reefing for R46 disposal as the stainless steel reef program didn't age as well as it did with the Redbirds.
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On 1/25/2023 at 10:27 PM, xD4nn said:
The signal system is the same. It is ACSES and LIRR's form of ATC...
It was explained on another railfan site that the M3s were not rebuilt with the updated signal aspects for ESA and can only run on restricted speed in ESA cause the M3s wouldn't recognize the signal system.
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Anybody ever notice that the heating sucks in the R160s? That's the biggest improvement the R179 has over the older B div NTT is they are nice and toasty on a cold winter day.
R160s have excellent A/C during the summertime but the heat is nearly nonexistent during the winter.
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7 hours ago, danielhg121 said:
Yep no M3’s and no diesels. I believe it was said that they couldn’t make the steep climb out of the portal on the way out or they didn’t want to risk it. They’ve never run an M3 in there to begin with.
The M3s also aren't compatible with the new signal system in the ESA tunnels.
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2 hours ago, BreeddekalbL said:
They are really gonna do this crap?!
EDIT: It gonna be flip up seats, no permanent loss of seating, that's not too bad IMO. Just saw the story on the news..
Maybe I'm misremembering but some of the 4700s on the B1 had permanent loss of seating during the trial period, I'm assuming they are gonna refit the 1,000 buses with flip up seats.
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Finally. Considering they covered up the LIRR signs at GCT I was worried the delay will be longer, but a little under a month after 2022 ended isn't too bad.
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4 hours ago, Lawrence St said:
Messing with the design of the front of the train affects the aerodynamics which will make it slower.
I think that mainly applies to High Speed Rail consists, not commuter rail trains. There's a train in London that was suggested in the article that's flatter faced (but still curved), but I was too lazy to post a photo of it.
The Europe trains are faster than LIRR & MNR trains cause they are lighter.
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1 hour ago, Lex said:
This whole thing requires ignoring the fact that the change in regulations was made years after the ink dried on the M9 contract.
A completely new order can be drafted with something like the FLIRTs, ideally for the short LIRR branches and locals on the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven branches (the M7s and M9s can instead be used on other routes). Of course, the cars would also need to be short enough to fit into the 63rd Street Tunnel, preferably without sacrificing the ability to use overhead wires.
The LIRR MUs run on different branches in the system over the course of the day. So odds are they wouldn't buy equipment just for the short LIRR branches. It would kill flexibility.
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Some time savings if European rolling stock was used on LIRR and MNR.....
"It would cut the 46-minute local service between Port Washington and Penn Station to 40 minutes, making it practically as fast as the express;"
"It would shave nine minutes off the 75 minute, 18-stop trip between Babylon and Penn, making it almost as quick as the 62-minute limited-stop service;"
"It would knock eight minutes off the 59-minute ride between North White Plains and Grand Central, making it nearly as fast as the express."
The biggest issue I see with using Europe trains here in NY is they are in fixed sets rather than married pairs, both LIRR and MNR runs different length sets over its various routes, that could kill flexibility. Here's an pic found on google of the "Stadler FLIRT" which is some of the euro rolling stock being suggested to run on MTA commuter railroads...
Maybe if they could find a way to put these things in married pairs and flatten the front of the train, maybe they could work over here.
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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is preparing to spend nearly $3 billion to buy hundreds of overweight and overpriced train cars that will saddle riders with longer commutes — and the cash-strapped agency with higher costs for decades to come, The Post has learned.
The MTA still wants to move ahead with another purchase of the steel dinosaurs even though federal authorities approved a massive regulatory overhaul in 2018 that now allows the agency to buy high-tech trains — common in Europe — that are dramatically faster, lighter and cheaper.
“MTA rolling stock procurement is too conservative and is asking for trains that are less advanced than what the international vendors make — too heavy, for one,” said Alon Levy, who is part of a team at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management studying why US transit agencies struggle to build and operate as efficiently as their major international counterparts.
“So just building to these specs costs more than building to the specs of standard European regional trains.”
So far, the MTA has spent $723 million to purchase 202 M9 cars for the Long Island Rail Road — a program that was first approved in 2013.
That’s enough to add roughly 10 new, 10-car-long trains to its schedule when they all finally arrive, following a slew of delays chronicled in a report last year by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.
Despite the problems, the transit agency hopes to double down and buy at least 432 more cars — lightly updated and known as the M9-A — for both the LIRR and MetroNorth, officials confirmed to The Post.
The value of the new order is at least $1.4 billion – and the likely cost rises to $2.8 billion when factoring in the cost of financing, a Post analysis found.
Officials are still pushing ahead even though federal officials OK’d the regulatory overhaul — known as alternative compliance — which allows railroads like the LIRR and Metro-North to operate train cars commonly used in Europe with only tiny modifications.
The European trains make extensive use of aluminum and other advanced materials, which makes them substantially lighter — reducing wear and tear on switches and tracks, dramatically improving acceleration and increasing energy efficiency.
A 10-car, steel-bodied M9 train weighs more than 660 tons — with each car clocking in at more than 131,000 pounds. A Post comparison against three comparably long European models — built by Siemens, Alstom and Stadler — with similar passenger capacities found that the heaviest one weighed in 450 tons, making the trains at least a third lighter.
Link to article: https://nypost.com/2023/01/17/mta-opting-for-overweight-trains-that-will-cost-millions-more-analysis/
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2 hours ago, subwaycommuter1983 said:
Any typical commuter who rides the subway every day to/from work doesn't give a damn if a train yard has a high spare factor. All they care about and they demand frequent subway service.
To those who complain about how bad the r46's are were obviously not around when the redbirds were running in the 90's. Those were in my opinion the worst subway fleet that I've ever ridden. I rode them on the C in the early 90's and I rode them on the 2 and 7. The lights were always flickering. It didn't have air conditioning and water leaked inside whenever it rains. The r42's and r32's retired in much better shape than the redbirds.
You was around for the R30? Lucky you lol. For those not familiar the Redbirds on the
were R30s which retired in the early 90s. I wish they would have stayed until the early 2000s when the R143 showed up so I would have had an chance to ride them.
I do agree that there has been worse equipment in the subway history than the current day R46. IMO the R46 are in upgrade in comfort over older SMEE cars. Mechanical issues aside the cars are still pleasent to ride. Only complaint is the A/C can be weak during the summer months at times. They are also IMO the quietest cars in the fleet in the interior, even quieter than the Tech Trains.
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for a substantial part of its route, I wonder what was the rationale for its proposed elimination when it’s always had decent ridership. The Q56 of all routes was proposed to be eliminated over the Q102 which the latter to this day still struggles ridership wise.
and 
are all low ridership, and to the North the Astoria and SAS branches are short while the 
isn't running? SRO by the time you get to Chruch Ave. I use to live along the 
were R30s which retired in the early 90s. I wish they would have stayed until the early 2000s when the R143 showed up so I would have had an chance to ride them.
R211 Discussion Thread
in New York City Subway
Posted
I don't plan to ride in the first car. The second and third or seventh car in a consist is my favorite to ride in regardless of car class.
Just a weird quirk of mine lol
There wasn't no heads up to the public when the TA took the R211 gangway set for a spin on the Culver EL with the media on board.