New Cars Yet?

EDM5970 wrote:Come on, guys. It isn't revisionist history. The "43 year" refererence points to a young PR person's incomplete grasp of PATH vs. H&M history. History tends to get forgotten (or not even taught) in corporate and/or government agency circles.

Consider the young second deputy assistant trainmaster trainee on Conrail some years ago, that looked at a track diagram and found a "triangle track' to turn the RB&B Circus train on. Not everyone is an old fart and knows all the history and terminology.

I am trying to determine whether or not you're being facetious.

True story. It was told to me by a friend that was in Conrail management at the time, which was back in the late 1970s. I did have some fun with the job title; as I recall the person involved was some sort of management trainee.

EDM5970 wrote:Come on, guys. It isn't revisionist history. The "43 year" refererence points to a young PR person's incomplete grasp of PATH vs. H&M history. History tends to get forgotten (or not even taught) in corporate and/or government agency circles.

Incomplete grasp? More like no grasp at all.

Long blue benches will replace the hated narrow orange bucket seats on PATH trains in a few years.

The Port Authority unveiled the design for 340 new rail cars yesterday. They'll replace models that date back to the 1960s by the middle of 2008.

http://1010wins.com/topstories/local_st ... 11244.html

Two things I noticed from the 1010wins article:

1. I see they haven't scrapped the idea of storage space under the seats. I think it's a good idea, and a bad one, at the same time. On one hand, there'll actually be room for people carrying bags and such during peak times without blocking half the car width. On the other, it seems a lot easier for things to be left behind (accidentally or intentionally), leading to inevitable delays while the bomb squad is called out to investigate.
2. "(The new cars will) feature flat screen video screens." For what? You don't need anything more advanced than a basic LED sign for showing the destination, and I don't think PATH is going to start showing "in flight" movies, so is this just going to be sold for ad space, like the mostly-useless PATHvision monitors in the stations?

Advertisements are everywhere now, I don't think anyone's going to complain that there are too many advertisements. I'm sure the cost of the equipment will be far outweighed by the additional revenue PATH can collect from the ads that will be displayed if that is the purpose of the screens.

Does anyone know where pictures of these cars can be found?

That is a cool looking train!

The absence of a left-side railfan window is a notable change from the old cars.............

That's true, the railfan window will be missed. I will also miss the destination lights on the sides of the cars.

I also don't like that they designed the seating so that there is no room to stand against the walls (just like the PA-4 is). At least with the PA-1 to PA-3 cars, you have that room for someone to stand against the wall near the door. The cars should be designed for more standees than seated passengers in my opinion so I think this is a mistake. But overall, I'm looking forward to seeing these cars.

Arrow, thank you VERY much for the image. But how can you or anyone else be looking forward to these cars? From a railfan perspective, is there anything at all wrong with the PA-1 through PA-4 cars? IMHO, no, there is not. In fact, the PA-1 through PA-4 cars are a superior design, with the railfan window, the railfan seat, large side windows, high speeds, and cool variations between the four classes. For those reasons, I love riding PATH. Once the railfan window cars are gone, PATH will no longer be anywhere near as great a ride it now is. All it will be, from the perspective of a railfan going for a ride, is an NYC IRT train going 20MPH faster. And while I very much appreciate the high speeds, it isn't worth much to me if I can't look out a railfan window.

I hope it is true that the PA-4 cars will be retained until normal retirement age, even though the PA-5 order seems to contain enough cars to retire the entire existing fleet at once.

Terrapin,

I will also miss the "railfan window", but you have to remember that these cars were designed for public transportation, not for railfans. I don't know why they took the window out, I guess they are more in favor of full width cabs now like the MTA has been since the 70s.

The PA-4s are not going to be replaced by the PA-5s, only the PA-1, PA-2, and PA-3 cars. The older cars are showing their age, although they appear to have been well maintained over the years.

arrow wrote:Terrapin,

The PA-4s are not going to be replaced by the PA-5s, only the PA-1, PA-2, and PA-3 cars. The older cars are showing their age, although they appear to have been well maintained over the years.

What do you mean by not going to replace? Do you mean that:

1. the combination of the PA-4 cars plus the PA-5 cars will result in a permanent increase in the fleet size, and that when the PA-4 cars finally do need to be retired, they will have to order additional cars? or,

2. the combination of the PA-4 cars plus the PA-5 cars will result in a temporary increase in the fleet size, and that when the PA-4 cars finally do need to be retired, they will not have to order additional cars?

And which ever of the above you mean, my proof for saying that it seems the PA-4 cars will be taken out of service once all of the PA-5 cars have arrived come from sections of this press release that I will quote below:

The Board, acting as the PATH Board of Directors, authorized the award of a $499 million contract to Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. to design and build 340 new PATH rail cars. The new cars will replace the system’s fleet, which averages 33 years of age and is the oldest in the nation. The cars will be assembled at the company’s Yonkers, N.Y., plant.

There seems to be slightly less than 340 cars in the entire revenue PATH fleet today, so they seem to be saying they are replacing every current car. And the avg fleet age of 33 years includes the PA-4 cars (I just did the math). If they weren't going to replace the PA-4 cars, they could have left them out of the equation, and ended up with an even larger average age, which would have looked good for them. So right there are two reason that seem to show that the PA-4 cars will be replaced by the PA-5 cars. Going on:

The Port Authority expects to have the first of the new PATH cars in service in late 2008. The entire fleet will be replaced by 2011.

Again, they say the entire fleet will be replaced by 2011. Seems to say only the new PA-5 cars will be running in 2011.

Further proof comes from this earlier press release.

The request for proposals calls for the design and fabrication of 246 new rail cars. As part of their proposal, contractors also were required to submit alternate bids for the rehabilitation or replacement of an additional 94 cars.

There are around 94 PA-4 cars. It seems they were considering either rehabbing the PA-4 cars (probably in order to be compatible with the PA-5 fleet, run along side them for many more years, and to take advantage of the new signal system they are considering installing, because without those reasons, the PA-4 cars don't need to be rehabbed) or replacing them totally with PA-5 cars. And the recent news shows that they chose the latter, and as such, seems that the PA-4 cars will not be able to run with and along side the PA-5 cars.

As I've shown, I'm basing my conclusions on what has been publicly said by PATH, even though it flies in the face of reason that the PA-4 cars should be able to "last" well beyond 2011. If you have inside or otherwise very specific, reliable information that says the PA-4 cars will run after 2011, please say so, and then I will consider your opinions much more than if you are just basing them on the fact that the PA-4 cars run fine and will only be 25 years old in 2011.

I don't know for sure, but I think the plan is to keep the PA-4 cars in service at least until all the PA-5 cars are delivered, which will take many years.

I don't know, but I have a feeling that PATH will be installing equipment in the PA-5s to make them work with some sort of computer controlled system similar to what the MTA is doing. If this were the case, then the PA-4s would have to be retired before the system could be started up.