01700 UTDC Midlife Rebuild

I know, I almost cant determine which UTDC Car is a classic or rehab one, except for the cheery bright paint scheme both inside and out. Certailny not like the Washington Metrorail Breda 2 & 3000s which I could easily determine which was a classic and rehab.

On Monday, I rode 01740 and as far as that's concerned, 01740/41 is still in classic mode, that is, non-rehabbed

I would venture to say that the majority of work happening to these cars is not easily visible from the platform or the passenger compartment. Lots going on "under the hood" though.

01736/01737 have entered service!

This is going painfully slow. That makes only 4 in-service rebuilds since the program started Aug. 2010. Only 6 other OOS cars have been in the program for any length of time, so unless they're going to pick up the pace considerably this Fall we're looking at another F-U-N winter of reliability with the legacy fleet.

Only if the rebuild program went to Alstom, the 01700s would have been rehabbed much faster

Uhhh..... Why Alstom? Didn't they create the GP40MCs?

Yeah, but they also did a great job rebuilding the CTA 24 & 2600-series and WMATA 2000 & 3000 series cars so I felt Alstom would be the best candidate of rebuilding the 01700s too

I rode on 01736 today. The ride was very smooth, very quiet, the interior looks like it has been scrubbed clean, and I could hear the subtle whine of the traction motors. A very nice ride!

Oh cool! Where the wheels much quieter also?

I'd say yes. The noise from the wheels come from the flat spots. Since they ground the wheels before releasing the pair, the wheels are very close to round. I didn't notice much flange squeal, but that's because I only rode it from JFK/UMass to Central, which is pretty much a straight shot, and any curves are wide enough to not generate much if any squeal on the retaining rail.

As for running over joints and switches, you'd hear the sound, but you wouldn't feel it much. They worked wonders on the suspension.

Oh good, hopefully they'll sound like Washington Metrorail's Rehab Bredas and Alstoms

I rode on 01707 through the big curve just south of Harvard and they squeak & squeal just like everything else, only the rehabbed cars were a little more quiet.

diburning wrote:I'd say yes. The noise from the wheels come from the flat spots. Since they ground the wheels before releasing the pair, the wheels are very close to round.

Did they do anything to keep the flat spots from coming back, such as an anti-slip braking system?

That I cannot answer as I do not know. However, it's not just the wheelslip when braking that causes flat spots. Over time, running over switches and joints will produce them as well.

The way that the brakes work on the red line cars (from what I can see, on all types of cars) is that when the air is released (brakes released) the brake shoes don't appear to spring back away from the wheel. Instead, the brake shoe stays in place (with little to no force applied) until the wheel pushes it out of the way as the train is accelerating so that the brake shoe is very close to the wheel when the air is applied to start braking.

No anti-slide(slip is when powering up) on brakes, as they are to be trainlined with 01500s and 01600s.