How are consists put together?

wicked wrote:Why did Budd stop manufacturing RDCs? Did the company go out of business, or was demand for rail equipment non-existent once the major railroads got rid of passenger service?

Budd offered an updated model, the SPV 2000, in the late 1970s. They proved unreliable and only 24 were sold, to Amtrak, Metro-North, and the Connecticut DOT. The company shut down rail production nine years later.

Wikipedia article on the Budd Company
From that article:
"In 1978, as Budd began to phase out its railcar business to concentrate on the automotive industry, it was acquired by Thyssen AG, becoming its automotive division, Thyssen Automotive in Europe and Budd Thyssen Company in North America. The CTA 2600 series cars were finished in 1987, and were the last railcars to be built by Budd before its railcar business was shut down altogether that year."

Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) cars are not a concept gone by the wayside. In the US, EMU (Electric MU) is more common. SEPTA's regional rail, as well as the Long Island Railroad and ConnDOT come to mind as the most notable users of EMU equipment.

A likely reason DMU trains are not more common in the US is that FRA rules are more stringent to locomotives than they are to blind coaches. Cab Cars are considered locomotives and require more frequent inspections and are held to higher maintenance standards. This explains the 25 deactivated control cars on the T's Commuter Rail system.

TrainManTy wrote:Safely switching this consist would take some time, my uneducated guess being at least 10-15 minutes, since the train would be broken into three pieces (cab car on the main, locomotive+bathroom car+other coaches, and set-out cars) and make a minimum of four moves if this were done on a trailing point spur. Each cut would need a handbrake set when not connected to the locomotive, and proper safety procedures for switching would need to be followed.

This isn't all that much work, but it's considerably more than what happens now. Also, where would these excess cars be stored?

It's just so much easier and cheaper to pull a few empty cars on off-peak trains.

You guys missed one big thing about breaking up trains... Paper! Each set has to have a brake test done by mechanical forces. These test require an air slip custom done to the consist after the required tests are done. These tests take time. To do the above... you need a Conductor and Engineer to switch the train. An electrician to take the cables on and off. A carman/mechanist to do the break test. And all this has to be done in a yard, this cannot be done just anywhere for safety reasons.

Not just anyplace, but it could be done at any of the outlying points in the layover yards (except Lowell which lacks one), all of which are set up to facilitate the craftsman mentioned. If a handful of the deactivated cab cars were set back up and thrown into the middle of select sets, those sets could more easily be cut and designated to run on weekends and holidays when peak service is not required. This is still not practical, however, because of the cost of reactivating and maintaining extra control cars.

" You guys missed one big thing about breaking up trains... Paper! ''

AHA ! Guess life was alot less uncomplicated when the New Haven ran those jobs back then.

Are EMUs/DMUs treated differently when it comes to making/breaking consists? I know SEPTA drops/adds cars at outlying points, and while I haven't personally witnessed it in a while, when I last did it was a quick process handled by the train crew, no mechanical personnel needed. Of course these are all EMUs with MU couplers.

So IF (big if) a successful FAR-compliant DMU ever makes the market, presumably the same options would be available...

Anyone know roughly what a blind coach, a cab control car, a locomotive, and a DMU cost to buy and then to operate/maintain per mile? Is it cheaper to haul around whole trains of coaches than to buy and maintain DMU equipment so as to be able to split the consists quickly during the day?

Does breaking and making consists wear out the cables etc. much? That is, are there maintenance reasons to leave the trains coupled?

To answer your last question, no. Cutting trains is more maintenance friendly as it cuts down on unnecessary mileage. MU cables and air hoses are separate from rolling stock and can easily be replaced (not that I think handling them does any more damage than simply using them). It's simply a logistical nightmare to try and do this before the start and after the conclusion of every rush hour.

Thanks, CRail. Makes sense.

Anyone have any idea how much extra wear and tear and how much extra fuel we're looking at here? Most CR runs are at rush hour, so we're looking at having maybe half the cars not run on maybe a quarter of the trips if they cut the consists for midday runs, maybe a third if they also cut them on late evening runs. So that would be a savings of around 1/8 of the total pax car fleet mileage. (I'm really guessing at these numbers; timetable experts can correct me.) What does 1/8 of the total mileage cost in avoidable costs: fuel and grease and mileage-based inspections and repairs and eventual replacement? How much more fuel does a 6-car set use than a 2-car set? Would cutting the consists at midday save more money/fuel than maintaining the locomotives better or replacing the least fuel efficient locomotives sooner or improving track or any other way they could spend money to save money?

What about cutting fares on midday trains a bit and agressively pursuing midday business? Might that save enough gasoline (from poeople's cars they weren't driving) and bring in enough fare dollars to offsett the diesel and maintenance costs?

I'm also thinking that the labor needs of splitting up the consists every day could be tough to deal with. All the consists would need to be split at more or less the same time for it to do much good. So somewhere at 9 am and 3 pm you'd need many, many of the various people who split consists and put them back togetether -- but you wouldn't need them the rest of the time.

Currently the minimum consist requirement is 4 cars to operate at normal speed. Anything smaller has a 30 mph speed restriction for braking. Also, the ridership is actually greater than just 2 cars at off peak on many trains. You guys are making it out to be that the ridership is very low.

As far as staffing, no matter how you slice it, you will have to add to the current staffing levels.

And Jeff, I am not sure how the paper work is done on Electric Multiple Units. My guess is that each car has it's own paper work good for the inspection period, which is midnight the following the day. So you can add and drop all you want as long as each car is in date.

Currently the minimum consist requirement is 4 cars to operate at normal speed. Anything smaller has a 30 mph speed restriction for braking.

Is there a technical reason for that? Amtrak doesn't seem to have a problem with operating two-car Amfleet shuttles at track speed on the Springfield line.

I wonder why the T doesn't look into something like this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:5022007_graz.jpg

The Desiro units are extremely popular in Europe. They have fast acceleration and are built to the latest safety standards. I think they are used in California for commuter service, so if this is true then they have already been certified by the FRA. The advantage of these is they are individual DMUs just like the old Budd Liners, and can be combined into individual trains, or run as single units. I would think that they would be a cost savings (after initial investment), due to their efficient modern engines, and would be a way to cover the off peak hours, or even provide service on less densely populated lines.

John

They wouldn't buy that design off the shelf... For one, if hooked together, they would require multiple crew to collect tickets since the cars don't have walkways through the train due to the double cabs.

TomNelligan wrote:

Currently the minimum consist requirement is 4 cars to operate at normal speed. Anything smaller has a 30 mph speed restriction for braking.

Is there a technical reason for that? Amtrak doesn't seem to have a problem with operating two-car Amfleet shuttles at track speed on the Springfield line.

This is an MBCR policy.

Has to do with braking as stated before. Ive herd it came from an engineer blowing a red signal because he couldn't get the train to stop in time with a short consist. Funny how the rule was cut back to 3 some time ago.