From: ahk@chinet.com

John Levine  wrote:

>>How long have you got and how much money are you willing to pay? These
>>trains are not a clean sheet new design, they are built on decades of
>>experience within Alstom of both the TGV and Pendolino platforms.

>Good point.  Anyone remember the Boeing LRVs?  It seems that Boeing
>figured they were just airplanes with the wings removed and steel
>wheels added, and they were seriously mistaken.  It took years to
>address of the maintenance problems, particularly in the snow and
>slush in Boston. They never got close to the reliability of the PCCs
>they replaced.

The Boeing-Vertol series of "L" cars, the 2400s, ended up being mostly
decent once they got through their teething periods, although during a
notoriously nasty winter, had to be pulled off Chicago's rapid transit
routes that shared r-o-w with expressways as motors kept burning out
when the snow was sucked it. That couldn't really be blamed on the
manufacturer.

What did Chicago do different from Boston and San Francisco?

1) Chicago wasn't subject to the one-size-fits-all mentality that
the other two cities were, due to UMTA orders that there had to be
just one style of car for the domestic market. Boston and San Francisco
had different clearance issues and different ruling radii on tightest curves.

2) CTA put a man in the Boeing-Vertol assembly line who could insist on
testing during the manufacturing process. Trial and error during manufacture
caught some problems that would have been far more expensive to fix later.
Neither Boston nor San Francisco did this.

There were still problems with them. Air conditioning circulated poorly.
These were Chicago's first experience with sliding doors since the 4000s.
The door mechanism at floor level failed repeatedly as dirt was drawn into
it, and had to be replaced with a single mechanism at the top that
could open the doors.

They're scrapped now.

It would be lovely if transit agencies spec'ed PCCs. Maintenance was
relatively simple and straightforward. But they're not modern and
no one would do that.

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