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T to Dyre Avenue

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Everything posted by T to Dyre Avenue

  1. You just answered your own question. Money is the important factor right now. It would cost more to retrofit the older R62As with CBTC technology than it is to retrofit the R142As. It would also be more difficult to put that equipment in the smaller R62A cabs. Furthermore, the MTA doesn't have the money to buy a 400+ car fleet for the line, so retrofitting existing NTT cars is the way they're going. It's not a bad idea to do that. UES riders rode R62As on the for many years. They didn't complain about them then. Why would they now? The R62As are good cars that are holding up well. They don't look much worse than they did 10 years ago. And before the R62As, UES riders rode R17s, R29s and R36s that were rolling wrecks on steel wheels. I'm sure there were riders who complained about the hot, graffiti-covered trains that greeted them every day, but those same complaints were echoed system wide. Be glad we're not dealing with that right now. And you won't be dealing with that when R62As return to the , which they will.
  2. Putting R62As on a Lexington Avenue line is not a stupid decision, as long as that line is not the . That's because the shares a significant amount of track and southern terminal with the and often both lines use each other's trains. And that's why it would be a stupid decision to put R62As on the . Only if R62As are assigned to both the and would it not be such a stupid decision. Except that there aren't enough R62As currently based in Corona to fully equip both lines, so that's just not happening. Meanwhile, the MTA is sending R142As to Kawasaki to be equipped with CBTC technology. Most of those cars are based out of Westchester Yard, home of the train, a line that's not getting CBTC any time soon. By having the and swap fleets, it's an almost even swap. And the can use the same LED circle/diamond markers currently used on the (7)/<7> because it also has a similar local/<6> express setup. Makes perfect sense to me.
  3. I think the ( and ran less frequently when the (Q6Av) ran there. The and would likely have to run less frequently to make room for a express. That's not going to go over well with riders in the Bronx and Harlem. Then there would be the issue of what to do with the south of Chambers.
  4. That's never been a problem on the , and lines whose strip maps show all the stations the trains stop at. People know that the train is not going to stop at 23rd Street or Grand Army Plaza at two in the afternoon. They know that peak-direction trains aren't going to stop at Simpson Street and that peak-direction trains aren't going to stop at Elder Avenue. Why would it be any different with the local and express trains? At least in the (7)/<7> case, both trains have the same terminals at both ends, unlike the Parkchester local and Pelham Bay Park express. So it is not necessary to spend extra time, effort and money to install FIND maps on the R142As when they already have an perfectly good way of alerting passengers about which stops the train is making. Just because it's a simpler technology doesn't automatically make it an inferior one.
  5. I have. I've been on R142s where the direction arrows kept blinking in an alternating pattern with the stop lights turned off. But I haven't seen that recently, so whatever problems they were having with the strip maps that cause the arrows to blink must have been fixed.
  6. So even though Bombardier bought out Adtranz 10 years ago, they still use the name on that type of propulsion system? I would have guessed that Bombardier would have replaced the Adtranz name with its own a long time ago.
  7. Agree that there's no need to retrofit the R142s with FINDs for when they're reasigned to the . About the only thing you can do with the is reroute a local train onto the express track. You can't even reroute a downtown onto the line without doing a reverse move, not that there would be any reason to do that to an in-service train.
  8. So did I, and that's why I'm not so fond of the IRT, with the exception of the line between Dyre Avenue and East 180th Street. But when I first read about the MTA's plan to convert the Dyre Avenue Line to B-Division clearances and connect it to the SAS, I was in favor of that plan. I'm still in favor of it. That's why my handle is "(T) to Dyre Avenue".
  9. Take the or train on the weekend. If you do, you'll dislike the IRT as much as I do.
  10. Toss-up between BMT and IND for me. Can't stand the IRT lines. Small, squarish trains, giant, pushy crowds and way less variety in the types of subway cars used. Every IRT subway car fleet from R15 to R36 had the same overall look, while the post-R30 fleets varied in appearance. Large, left-side front rollsigns and stainless steel didn't run on A-Division rails until 1983 when the R62s first came in the scene.
  11. Agree with you about those Steinway Tubes, especially after that recent flood that knocked out service. A more permanent solution is needed. New, wider tunnels would be great. Not cheap, but it's better than having to shut the current tunnels down to waterproof them again and again. And they could run B-Division cars on the Flushing Line. That would eliminate the roundabout yard moves that currently have to be done to transfer A-Division cars to and from Corona.
  12. Or further into northeast Queens. But God forbid the MTA from even considering it.
  13. Also, Corona Yard couldn't service the R142s in 2000 when they were new because its barn hadn't been upgraded to handle them. That has since been done and Corona can maintain the 142s now. I figured the R62As currently on the were going to be there temporarily when they started transferring them there in late 2002.
  14. Well said! ES riders rode Redbirds and grafitti-strewn cars on the for decades and all that time they never made a big deal over it. Why would it be any different now if they got the 62As back? At least this time around, the would be 100% R62As, unlike the split-fleet of 62As and Redbirds that ran there for much of the 80s and 90s.
  15. I know. But there's no need to change the decals because the MTA has largely abandoned the practice of placing color-coded yard decals under the car number plates. If they haven't, then the R142s would have those decals. But they don't. There's also no need to shift the R62As back to the and the slightly older R62s back to the . The current and assignments are fine the way they are.
  16. Not necessarily. The R142s don't have the colored yard decals and the R62s kept their orange Jerome Yard decals when they were transferred from the to the . So why go through the time-consuming process of putting new colored decals on the R62As when they go back to the ?
  17. Agreed. I'm almost certain the T/O's and C/R's will want a full width-cab so they have enough room to do their jobs safely and so that conductors won't have to move between cars for line stations where the doors open on the left. I would also prefer to see new cars on the because it presents an opportunity to look into buying subway cars longer than 51 feet.
  18. Like PATH is doing with its PA4 cars, which are actually newer than the R62s? They are replacing their entire fleet with the new PA5 cars. At least if the MTA were to buy new cars for the , it would present a chance for them to test the (7)'s tunnels to see if they can handle longer subway cars.
  19. That's true, but it's certainly not impossible to lengthen the (7)'s platforms to 600 feet. Originally, most BMT stations could not handle 600-foot trains. But in the 60s, the TA expanded the platforms on the Broadway subway line and the Southern Division lines (4th Avenue, Brighton, Sea Beach and West End) to handle 600-foot trains. That was a much larger-scale project than an expansion of Flushing Line platforms would be, especially because there were a lot more underground BMT stations that had to be expanded. By the way, wasn't the TA considering making the R62s 63 feet long? I recall reading that on Dave Pirmann's site.
  20. As a daily rider, I would happily welcome 60 ft by 9 ft cars on my line. A 10-car train of them would handle the crowds much better than an 11-car train of the current rolling stock, especially on the .
  21. I'm with you on this, Grand Concourse. The 51-foot cars just don't handle the crowds well. Yesterday, the day after the blizzard, was a prime example. Between the absence of express service, reduced headways and constant door-holding, the was a nightmare yesterday morning. At least if the cars were 60 feet each with four exit doors per side, people might have had an easier time getting on and off and the trains wouldn't have stayed in the stations so long. They really should find a way to run 60-foot cars on the . They don't have to be wider (because they can't get wider due to the Steinway Tunnel), but longer. A 10-car train of 60-footers (600 feet) carries more people than an 11-car train of 51-footers (561 feet). Plus, if they procured a new fleet of 60-foot cars for the , they could get them with CBTC technology already installed and not have to send R142As back to Kawasaki for CBTC retrofitting and not have to risk angering certain riders by putting the R62As back on lines that currently have R142As.
  22. The R62As do run fine, but it would cost a lot more to retrofit them with the CBTC technology that the MTA wants to implement on the line. The R142As don't have this technology right now, but they were designed for it, so it would be a lot easier, cheaper and less time-consuming to install CBTC on the R142As. The reason for implementing CBTC on the as opposed to the Lex, is that the , like the which already has CBTC, is that it is a self-contained line. With self-contained lines, if there is a problem with the signaling system and the line has to be shut down, it will not affect other lines.
  23. When the R62As that ran on the were transferred to the in 2002-03 they were not old cars (16-18 years old). I rode them every day when they were on the and I ride these same cars every day on the now. Believe me, they look and ride almost as good now as they did when they ran on Lex seven, eight years ago. They're 25-year old cars. They're not old cars. And truthfully, I think most riders aren't going to care if it's an R62A or R142A that pulls into Pelham Bay Park or 86th Street. What they will care about is that the train gets them to where they need to go quickly, safely and in reasonable comfort (in other words, no hot cars in summer). The reason the got 62s instead of new tech trains when they were new is because Corona's barn couldn't handle the R142's roof-mounted a/c units at the time. There were reportedly some issues with the line's third rail having difficulty powering the test R142 trains. And of course they didn't have enough B-cars to make 11-car trains. But two of those three issues have been resolved and the R188 contract will resolve the B-car issues. Not to mention that the NTTs were designed with CBTC in mind and the R62s were a back-to- basics design. It would be a lot easier and less expensive to refit NTTs with CBTC than it would be to refit the barebones R62As. Still, they need to clean up the interiors of those 62s. All the scratching on the stainless steel patterns
  24. Well, you did a great job on this map. I'd like to do my own fantasy map one of these days. I especially like the 2nd Avenue service pattern and the X train. We really could use a service connecting the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn directly without having to go through Manhattan first.
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