BostonUrbEx wrote:Making it sound way too complicated. Here's what ya' do: Saturday morning, the first operators come in for service. They're assigned their equipment and they break a four-car set off of a parked six-car set with the help/supervision of another employee (this employee would help each operator as they enter service), pull away, and off into service. Keep the sets broken up until Sunday night and while coming out of service, couple onto the other broken up sets to make a six-car set again.
You're telling me this is more costly than the wear-and-tear and mileage of running excess capacity?
You have to consider:
Schedule time is lost making and breaking trains.
The uncoupling mechanism may not work, requiring a man to go between the cars while another compresses the set to allow the coupling to be manually released.
The four car set may have two dead cars - not allowed.
The train sitting at Alewife may be an 01800 while the one laying up may be a 015-01700.
Like cars may not work well together.
For all of the above reasons, and others, cars are kept in the same six car sets, and only coupled and uncoupled at the shops.
BTW: NYCT does not alter train lengths either, even from 1 AM to 5 AM. Most married sets are four or five cars long depending on their length and the line to which they are assigned the R-32 and R-42 cars are pairs, but are normally kept in 8 car trains. They are now used only on the C and J/Z
Gerry. STM/BSRA
The next stop is Washington. Change for Forest Hills Trains on the Winter St. Platform, and Everett Trains on the Summer St. Platform. This is an Ashmont train, change for Braintree at Columbia.