Rolling Equipment Roster for MARC?

All of the gallery cars are trailers and can only be used on the Brunswick Line (Camden and Penn have high level platforms which are incompatible).

Data on the original 7800 cars is available here:
http://www.kawasakirailcar.com/mta.htm

The 13 ex-VRE cars are 125 mph qualified and serve regularly on the Penn Line.

Check out the thread where we discussed MARC buying the cars, the breakdown of cab/trailers are in there (I think that it's 4 cabs (7855-7858) and 9 trailers (7826-7835)). As far as I know the cab cars all have restrooms and if my memory serves me correct the trailers don't have restrooms.

Not much, sorry. The run on the Penn Line so they're rated at least to 90 - not sure if they run in the expresses (I think that they do) so they'd be rated to the same 125, but that's just a guess.

I just found Nippon Sharyo's page with details on the cars. Apparently, they were designed for up to 120mph operation, though there's a note about regular operation at 105mph. I can't figure out the significance of that, but I imagine that the things can run at 120mph speed just fine with the electrics with their higher top speed.

Mirai Zikasu wrote:I just found Nippon Sharyo's page with details on the cars. Apparently, they were designed for up to 120mph operation, though there's a note about regular operation at 105mph. I can't figure out the significance of that, but I imagine that the things can run at 120mph speed just fine with the electrics with their higher top speed.

MZ: Good find-I remembered wanting to see a fact sheet on these cars because I do think (and still do) that a variation of these cars could have been a good fit back in the day for the LIRR perhaps with center doors like the similar South Shore MUs have...before the C3 Bilevel order was placed in the late 90s...MACTRAXX

There are 60 Nippon Sharyo/Sumitomo MARC II Single Level Coaches and Cab Cars. 26 are MARC IIA and 34 are MARC IIB (approx. 5 years newer than the A's). The top speed for these cars is 110mph. So in mixed consists the speed is automatically lowered to 110mph, which prob doesn't make a huge difference schedule-wise since only a few express trains would exceed that speed for extended periods of time. Also MARC the MARC III Kawasaki bilevels were limited to 115mph for over 2 years recently. Of course this does affect Amtrak's Holiday Extra services which uses two 6-7 car MARC sets completely composed of the single levels (bilevels don't have adequate clearance for tunnels into New York) and a HHP-8 (MARC or Amtrak).

The MARC IIB cars have been in the process of being overhauled (3 at a time) for the past 3 or so years by Bombardier in New York. The overhauled cars which started appearing early last year are easily identifiable by new "paint," trucks, and bright LED interior lighting. The MARC IIA cars were all overhauled quite a while ago.

As a side note, besides the low-platform requirement for MARC's gallery cars restricting them to the Brunswick Line to Brunswick and M'burg only (Frederick Branch has a high platform at Monocacy and a ADA mini-high at Frederick) they don't have clearance for the Baltimore tunnels anyway on the Penn Line (well at least the B&P tunnel). Same applies for Amtrak's Superliner bi-levels. The NEC obviously wasn't designed with bilevels in mind although LIRR, NJT, and (to some extent) MARC have had custom designs built to squeeze into its tight clearances.