by metraRI
As of today, 6 of the 1500 series MU cars are sitting at 47th Street Yard on the Rock with all Metra logos painted over awaiting whatever journey lies ahead.
Railroad Forums
Moderators: metraRI, JamesT4
Tadman wrote:How many new cars are on the property? I saw a few last week at KYD under tarps.Not sure of the exact number, somewhere around 5 are expected a month and they first went into service in November.
metraRI wrote:As of today, 6 of the 1500 series MU cars are sitting at 47th Street Yard on the Rock with all Metra logos painted over awaiting whatever journey lies ahead.I saw these cars while on board a CTA bus and wondered why they were there. Now that I see the reason why, I guess it's time to get as many pictures of the old Highliners as possible before the entire fleet is taken out of service.
Tadman wrote:I've heard ICG specifically ordered carbon steel because it was cheaper. The highliner order was their end of some type of bargain with the gov't for subsidy or something like that. The gov't at the time did not think to mandate stainless cars (this was 1970, when gov't transit ops were much newer) so we got the highliners. They've been a bit unloved from day one due to reliability problems.The original Highliner purchase was one of the first uses of federal funds to buy equipment for commuter railroads. The IC provided 1/3rd of the cost of the cars, the feds 2/3rds. Since the feds didn't want a private entity to own cars purchased with mostly public money, the Chicago South Suburban Mass Transit District was formed. The appointed trustees of the board oversaw the purchase with the district's executive director and lawyer handling much of the negotiations. Since this was one of the first federal grants for cars, there was a lot of work to nail down an agreement between the three parties. Carbon steel was probably chosen over stainless steel because the IC did not own any stainless steel cars, and hey, being railroaders, they didn't want to try anything radically different. The steel bodies had rust problems from the beginning and the cars were constantly being repainted.