NICTD to acquire old Metra Electric Highliners?

Saw this article on a Yahoo Group, this might be NICTD's solution to increasing passenger traffic/decreasing storage space.

Nippon Sharyo Highliners 1225 and 1226 were observed operating
southbound on Metra Electric District Track #1 just north of the
Kensington (115th Street) Station this morning at 10:31 AM.

Thus, the order of 26 new Nippon Sharyo Highliners has been
completed and delivered.

In the meantime, Metra is retiring the St. Louis Car Company
Highliners that arrived in the early 1970s - mainly the orange
painted ones that were the first to be overhauled by Metra in the
late 1980-early 1990s (however at least two of the orange St. Louis
Car Company Highliners were observed operating in trains in the
evening rush hour today). However, blue painted St. Louis Car
Company Highliners are also being retired.

The lettering METRA is being painted out (with the appropriate car
color) on the sides of those retired Highliners. Additionally,
information received indicates that the gear boxes from those
Highliners are being removed and will supposedly be sent to NICTD
for future use on their equipment. The retired Highliners currently
are being stored in the south yards of the KYD Shop pending sale (to
whom is not known - probably scrap as there just is no demand for
those Highliners by other properties).

I'm more interested in the use at NICTD of the traction motors - I'm not clear where, as the trucks on our Sumitomo MU's are quite different looking from either old or new highliners. The only trucks that look similar (and might be way different) are on P40/42's. However, motors may have a industry-standard mount that allows just about any motor to drop in place.

NICTD has no use for the DC traction motors from the old Highliners. The article stated they are salvaging the gear boxes. The trucks on the new Metra MU's are nearly identical to those on the NICTD fleet.

There is an article in todays Sun Times about the South Shore needing new cars beacuse they are running at capasity. They want to buy more new cars includind bi-level cars.

I once heard that South Shore is at the limit of trains they can run through Kensington interlocker, both in terms of quantity of trains and length - 8 cars. Any truth to that?

I could not understand why there would be a limit of number of trains thru Kensington, it may be a matter of scheduling trains and keeping a reasonable distance between them. I doubt its at capacity, the CTA loop is plenty busier. The only restricting I can think of is the power stations able to handle the trains.

If there is problems to deal with then there should be some cooperative about power and capacity and improve them to be able to handle the loads.

If its my guess at all the future looks busier on the lines than before.
So they better prepare for it.

In the past (with orange cars) trains longer then 8 cars have been run to/from chicago. I've been told that the circuits can't handle more then 8 of our cars on metra. When we do run 8 car trains we put them in the low rate power setting or we'll trip breakers all the way downtown. Off metra we could run more then 8 cars still but it's a very rare occurance. I've noticed Metra only runs 6 cars trains plus a couple with 7 cars. I'd imagine the age of the substations and caternary have more to do with it. Also, there's platform length to consider, most aren't long enough for our 8 cars trains at the stops we make anyways.

If only every railroad could be as perfect as the South Shore...