M&E Engine on both sides of train from hoboken

Not sure or any of you take M&E line to Hoboken, but it seems the 601 train from hoboken has an engine on each side of the train, and one less train car. Anyone know why they are doing this?
It is resulting in overcrowding. I also thought in Hoboken they didn't have the diesals facing the station due to exaust and noise. Pattern seems to always be that old diesals(GP40 every time) facing Hoboken terminal and a random engine, sometimes dual electric facing west. It has been happening over a month now every day for this time slot.

bad cab car ?

NJT is in the middle of upgrading their cab cars to ACSES ,which is NJT's PTC chose,engines have used as subs for the shopped cab cars.

38 cab cars OOS will do that.

freemenot wrote:Not sure or any of you take M&E line to Hoboken, but it seems the 601 train from hoboken has an engine on each side of the train, and one less train car. Anyone know why they are doing this?
It is resulting in overcrowding. I also thought in Hoboken they didn't have the diesals facing the station due to exaust and noise. Pattern seems to always be that old diesals(GP40 every time) facing Hoboken terminal and a random engine, sometimes dual electric facing west. It has been happening over a month now every day for this time slot.

Commuter railroads have been given the deadline of 2020 to install PTC on their fleet/lines. NJT has chosen now to upgrade all their Comet V and Multilevel cabcars, which is why your seeing locomotives on both ends of a set. On most occasions these locomotives are newly rebuild GP40-2 units, rebuilt from the ex-CNJ GP40PH-2 fleet, that have been brought into revenue service to patch this cabcar issue. These kinds of sets were normal on the North Jersey Coast and Northeast Corridor lines over the September/October period. Right now there is still one or two sets on those lines like that. Hope this helped.

Thanks all, that explains both ends. Not sure why they can't add an additional non can car to help with the overcrowding :/.

freemenot wrote:Thanks all, that explains both ends. Not sure why they can't add an additional non can car to help with the overcrowding :/.

They would of they had one available. There are/were more than 20 cabs out for PTC installation at one time. There are not 20 roadworthy cars sitting in the yards ready to go to replace the seating capacity lost in the cab cars. The many cars you see sitting at MMC are there for a reason. They need inspections, parts or maintenance work performed on them. They are not available to run in passenger service.

EuroStar wrote:

freemenot wrote:Thanks all, that explains both ends. Not sure why they can't add an additional non can car to help with the overcrowding :/.

They would of they had one available. There are/were more than 20 cabs out for PTC installation at one time. There are not 20 roadworthy cars sitting in the yards ready to go to replace the seating capacity lost in the cab cars. The many cars you see sitting at MMC are there for a reason. They need inspections, parts or maintenance work performed on them. They are not available to run in passenger service.

Makes sense thanks! Didn't realize njtransit was so short on equipment