LIRR Math

I am curious. How many DE's and DM's are there. I thought they orded 20 of each kind. Since the RR says equipment shortages are prevalent. I am wondering where 40 locomotives could be hiding.

Regards,

Eric

there are 23 of each.

Hiding Spots:
-Morris Park
-LIC Yard
-West Side Yard
-Fresh Pond-Being shipped out for repair

What's the shortage in? Not locos - they want to drop the third rail gear on a number, and put a few others in dead storage. It's in the MTA plan.

they want to drop the third rail gear on a number, and put a few others in dead storage. It's in the MTA plan.

what do you mean drop the third rail gear? You mean essentiallly make the DM unit a DE? Why??? And why put the others in dead storage?

Can anyone logically comment on why these decisions are being made?

only about 10 DM's are needed plus maybe 3 spare for mainenance cycles.
the rest has to be fueled and maintained daily costing the railroad at least $1500 a day in fuel and labor. maybe LIRR could lease the extra's to ConnDOT to pull the VRE cars

They get used. How many have noticed DM's covering a MU job during the rush? Very handy, if you're shy on equipment, and I doubt the engineer will complain

wait a second? only 10 are being used at a time? what the #$#$? put them to use.

Is there also a surplus of bilevels?

wasn't the plan to use a lot of the engines to increase service, particularly through service to penn from diesel territory?

Wo wo wo! You're telling us that out of 23 DMs, only 10 are used each day? Which moron thought of that one, and please don't tell me this is happening b/c some other moron miscalculated the number of cars they should've ordered and wound up ordering too few.

And it's a wonder that we don't more direct NYP service from diesel territory.


You know....I was just thinking. This number does seem about right, atleast when compared to the number of diesel territory trains into NYP. I think it's 1 Speonk train, 1 OB train, and 2 or 3 PJ trains. How many engines do they use for the Speonk train, 1 or 2? The OB train is only 1, right? So, after doing the math, that's a minimum of 8 DMs that are actually used to serve NYP during each rush hour, and a maximum of 10. Wow. This is really sad. It can't be that they under-ordered the C3s, can it?

I did not say only 10 are used, I said only 10 Dual modes are needed. others are used as single mode.

My bad, I misread your post. Either way, the fact that the other 13 are going around waisted is mind blowing. Hell, keep 4 sitting around just in case others crap out somewhere, but that still leaves them with 9 more DMs. They could add 1 or even 2 more NYP runs to the OB, add some more to the PJ, or even have one from Patchogue that would also serve Mineola and Hicksville.

And even more crazy, add an NYP run to the Greenport.

Either way, they have the equipment, why not use them for what they were made to do?

LIRR can not add more trains to Penn station, even if 2 slots were made available by Amtrak only one slot would be for LIRR the other for NJT.
But Amtrak will not allow more trains into Penn, the system just can't handle it..
When ESA opens maybe some electric trains will head to GCT, opening LIRR slots for more dual mode service.

But they could combine some runs. They could add a train from Greenport, have it arrive at Ronkonkoma at 7:56, and it would leave Ronkonkoma as the regular 7:57. The only difference is that now, the 7:57 from Ronkonkoma actually originates in Greenport and that it is now a C3 consist. This way, there is no addition of a train into NYP. It's still the same 7:57. The only addition is the stops between Greenport and Ronkonkoma.

Another one they could do combines a montauk and a bethpage train. Push the 5:39 from Montauk back 10 minutes. This is the train that operates via the main line and already stops at Hicksville and Mineola. Add Bay Shore as a stop. Then, combine it with the 7:58 train that originates in Bethpage. The 7:58 already goes to all the way to NYP. So now, it's all one train, from Montauk. It makes all stops to Sayville, the Bay Shore, Babylon, Bethpage, Hicksville, Mineola, Jamaica, NYP.

So there, that's 2 more trains from diesel territory into NYP without actually adding more trains to NYP. I figure both of those would be long enough to have to use 2 engines each, so that's 4 engines down, with 9 left.

Combining trains would require new brake test and other problems I don't think two cab cars for exsample could face each other without door problems on both sets. All dual mode trains are required to run with two engines, to avoid gapping in Penn station. it has nothing to do with how many cars are used.

So it doesn't really matter then, b/c I already said to use 2 diesels for each of those trains. But thank you for the info.