Door question

This probably has been addressed before, but here goes anyway.

What/who/how determines which doors open at what stations?

Case in point: Today I rode my usual 2305 down the Coast Line. I noticed that when approaching South Amboy (= no station platform), the conductor did not raise the trap door in my car, but she did so in the car coupled next to it. When we came to the station, the door in my car did not open, but the door of the other car did. Did she perform some magic that I missed? Or, does the train know NOT to open the doors whose traps are still down? And who/how did tell the train not to do that?

I never fail to live a day without learning something new.

NJTrider wrote:I never fail to live a day without learning something new.

Nor do I, whether it be in music, trains or whatever.

To answer your question, you're correct in your assumption about the traps. The doors are controlled usually by the rear brake in the back. He'll go to the last car to platform, or the last car open usually and open the doors forward. On the coast line, most trains are of the newer equipment (with long doors), so you can open the doors forward high or open the doors forward low. The crew in the train are responsible for rasing and lowering the traps to the appropriate configuration for the station. So, after Woodbridge, the crews would raise the traps for low stops at Perth Amboy and South Amboy. The rear brake at the station would open the doors forward. If a trap is in the wrong position when opened, the door won't open. So at South Amboy, the doors were opened low by the rear brake for the low platform and the door in your car didn't open because the trap was not raised. It is a necessary safety feature- otherwise, someone might try to exit at South Amboy while the trap is up and that could lead to injury. Also, if someone lowered the trap while the door was open for a low stop, then the door chime would go off and that door would close. The safety features are indegenous on all of NJT's long door cars.

EDIT: When I first became a railfan, the thing that fascinated me the most was how the doors worked. My first post here in this forum actually was a question on how the doors worked.

If they only made that Star Trek sound when they opened and closed they would be perfect :D

dinky wrote:If they only made that Star Trek sound when they opened and closed they would be perfect :D

Haha. Tssssssssssssss-ssstt.

Also the center doors (except on Arrows) also use the traps. They will only open if all the traps in that side of the car are down. The center doors on the Arrows can be controlled by themselves, but not on other equipment (so they always open at a high level stop unless they are cut-out).

If they only made that Star Trek sound when they opened and closed they would be perfect

Capt Kirk on a Comet V? That will be the day!

http://idisk.mac.com/jakepatrick/public ... orkirk.jpg

...yeah so long as he's not on a C5 saying, "Kirk to Intercom...."

Hahaha. IR strikes again! Being a Trekker, gotta love that one! I betcha he's staring at one of the hot NJT NJCL conductors in the vestibule (and yes, it's a lady!) I can see it now- the conductor asking "How much power do you have...." (I know, I'm bad. Gotta go to confession again...)

And scary how his movie uniform matches the Comet Vs.

NJT does have at least one Conductor who's name is "Kirk" :D

And leave the pretty Coast Line trainmen(women) alone!!!!

Oh, wow!

I can see it now:

No need to check tickets. Cars are scanned with tricorders to detect any signs of fare evaders.

No more two-to-go. Rather, the conductor touches his/her NJT insignia and speaks into the air: "Power up, Scotty!"

Scotty (the engineer - get it?) checks in with the dispatchers on the hailing frequency. Then he puts the dilithium crystals to work and the train goes into warp speed.

Rather than blowing the horn, the train fires photon torpedoes at trespassers.

Dispatcher Spok throws all switches ahead in a perfect order, in a very logical way, so no NJT train gets routed in front of an Amtrak train -- EVER!

And Space Station South Amboy finally gets a docking platform.

But then, NJT installs equipment in all stations so that all passengers are simply beamed into NYC or Hoboken. No more fun.

... I guess that would be Star Track, then?

(Sorry- I couldn't resist)

All right, since we're getting bad.....

Why didn't the ALP44 run?

Give up?

It didn't have spock plugs. Allow me to save you the trouble of groaning. :groan:

Oh, yeah? Well, here is a worse one:

How did they improve wheel-to-rail adherence on ALP-46s?

Give up?

Simple: They used Klingons.


(Get it? Kling-ons?)

Brrrrrrrrrr

NJTrider wrote:Oh, yeah? Well, here is a worse one:

No argument here.