Why would they need to do so much testing on the Red Line cars to begin with? The Orange and Red cars are near 100% component-identical, and the Orange pilot cars are being delivered 13 months ahead of the Red pilot cars. What could there possibly be that's above-and-beyond about the Red pilot that requires spending $32M on a one-time-only test track...that they aren't going find out from the earlier Orange pilot having a full year's worth of testing on the Wellington track???
Think about it. If the only thing that's different between CRRC's RL & OL makes is carbody size and weight then clearance testing and ride quality (braking/acceleration distance and etc.) should be the only testing differences more than splitting-hairs unique to the RL pilot. And those differences would not be the sort of things that a stub-ended, single-tracked tangent new test track are going to tell you much about. You'd need a representative sample of curves and switches to go through on the test track to tell how the identical guts fare matched with the larger carbody, and that's something you'll only get rounding the Cabot loop and going through the 3 sets of crossovers on the Cabot lead all day prior to being greenlit for overnight testing on the mainline.
With a whole year's lead time for the Orange pilot, the Red pilot shouldn't need to be tasked with so much common-component testing that it needs such a large sunk-cost investment in test track duplicating Wellington's functions. Wellington should be able to complete a full pilot testing cycle, return pilot mods to CRRC, and still have enough time to test a second post-mods pilot from the factory in the lead time they have over the Red pilot. That's how it worked when the Blue 0700 pilots were puttering back at forth at Wellington for months on end...then joined there by a couple more post-mods Siemens pairs before anything was flatbedded to Orient Heights for next phase of testing. A whole year later they should be past the point where outright design changes from the first Wellington pilot are still required to common components like propulsion & signaling that hold up final configuration of CRRC's assembly line. By the time the Red pilot is ready they should be at a point where they've got 2-3 more post-pilot Orange pairs in testing and any subsequent mods can be done in-situ rather than needing to send cars completely back to CRRC for partial remanufacture like very first pilot pair #01400-01.
This would be a very, very unorthodox testing schedule compared to previous T car orders (LRT, HRT, commuter rail, or bus) if they're dividing the component testing up between the two lines a year apart with such significant up-front test infrastructure costs. And would call into question exactly how well they're making use of their year's worth of lead time @ Wellington to be deferring enough core testing to the Red pilot to require such expensive one-off construction. If this is a case of trying too hard to sync Red's revenue acceptance to closely trail Orange's, then they're really got to examine the risks incurred by pushing the envelope and duplicating so many efforts.
Yeah, we all want to see new Red cars sooner than later. But Red doesn't have an acute car shortage like Orange does. It's OK to front-load more of the CRRC delivery in Orange's favor if that'll save $32M+ in empty-calorie test infrastructure for the same end result. It's OK to concentrate more on the Orange half, because Orange is the bigger year-to-year terror threat for service paralysis if an already lean fleet gets subject to another mass blowout of traction motors from inhaled snow during a winter storm. Cabot has caught up on its Red repair backlog such that there's only 4 OOS cars waiting for parts...the shortest the dead line has been in >5 years. The 01700's are freshly rebuilt and are operating with their highest MTBF in years. The 015's/16's are having their evening & weekend running times more sharply limited in favor of all-17's consists, giving the weakest-reliability units more shop time in less backed-up shops. While it's still a precarious situation to thread through for another 4 years, the fact remains that Red is fully-stocked with reserves, has keep-away tactics on off-peaks to rest its oldest bones, and has fewer overall stressors putting the shops behind the eight-ball at keeping up with pace of maintenance. Red has enough advantages over Orange in month-to-month coping strategies that the CRRC testing & deliveries shouldn't need to be distorted with so much extra cost and complexity as if all things were equal(ly bad). Not only are they not spot-on equal in who needs new cars soonest, but they're unequal enough that it's not worth the extra risks to the CRRC cars' reliability to intentionally overcomplicate the testing phase. Something's being done very inefficiently if a year at Wellington isn't enough to tell if CRRC's basic common design works.
Think about it. If the only thing that's different between CRRC's RL & OL makes is carbody size and weight then clearance testing and ride quality (braking/acceleration distance and etc.) should be the only testing differences more than splitting-hairs unique to the RL pilot. And those differences would not be the sort of things that a stub-ended, single-tracked tangent new test track are going to tell you much about. You'd need a representative sample of curves and switches to go through on the test track to tell how the identical guts fare matched with the larger carbody, and that's something you'll only get rounding the Cabot loop and going through the 3 sets of crossovers on the Cabot lead all day prior to being greenlit for overnight testing on the mainline.
With a whole year's lead time for the Orange pilot, the Red pilot shouldn't need to be tasked with so much common-component testing that it needs such a large sunk-cost investment in test track duplicating Wellington's functions. Wellington should be able to complete a full pilot testing cycle, return pilot mods to CRRC, and still have enough time to test a second post-mods pilot from the factory in the lead time they have over the Red pilot. That's how it worked when the Blue 0700 pilots were puttering back at forth at Wellington for months on end...then joined there by a couple more post-mods Siemens pairs before anything was flatbedded to Orient Heights for next phase of testing. A whole year later they should be past the point where outright design changes from the first Wellington pilot are still required to common components like propulsion & signaling that hold up final configuration of CRRC's assembly line. By the time the Red pilot is ready they should be at a point where they've got 2-3 more post-pilot Orange pairs in testing and any subsequent mods can be done in-situ rather than needing to send cars completely back to CRRC for partial remanufacture like very first pilot pair #01400-01.
This would be a very, very unorthodox testing schedule compared to previous T car orders (LRT, HRT, commuter rail, or bus) if they're dividing the component testing up between the two lines a year apart with such significant up-front test infrastructure costs. And would call into question exactly how well they're making use of their year's worth of lead time @ Wellington to be deferring enough core testing to the Red pilot to require such expensive one-off construction. If this is a case of trying too hard to sync Red's revenue acceptance to closely trail Orange's, then they're really got to examine the risks incurred by pushing the envelope and duplicating so many efforts.
Yeah, we all want to see new Red cars sooner than later. But Red doesn't have an acute car shortage like Orange does. It's OK to front-load more of the CRRC delivery in Orange's favor if that'll save $32M+ in empty-calorie test infrastructure for the same end result. It's OK to concentrate more on the Orange half, because Orange is the bigger year-to-year terror threat for service paralysis if an already lean fleet gets subject to another mass blowout of traction motors from inhaled snow during a winter storm. Cabot has caught up on its Red repair backlog such that there's only 4 OOS cars waiting for parts...the shortest the dead line has been in >5 years. The 01700's are freshly rebuilt and are operating with their highest MTBF in years. The 015's/16's are having their evening & weekend running times more sharply limited in favor of all-17's consists, giving the weakest-reliability units more shop time in less backed-up shops. While it's still a precarious situation to thread through for another 4 years, the fact remains that Red is fully-stocked with reserves, has keep-away tactics on off-peaks to rest its oldest bones, and has fewer overall stressors putting the shops behind the eight-ball at keeping up with pace of maintenance. Red has enough advantages over Orange in month-to-month coping strategies that the CRRC testing & deliveries shouldn't need to be distorted with so much extra cost and complexity as if all things were equal(ly bad). Not only are they not spot-on equal in who needs new cars soonest, but they're unequal enough that it's not worth the extra risks to the CRRC cars' reliability to intentionally overcomplicate the testing phase. Something's being done very inefficiently if a year at Wellington isn't enough to tell if CRRC's basic common design works.
