Railroad Forums
Moderator: Liquidcamphor
geico wrote:Keeping the M3s is already the plan, until the M9A purchase is well under way, but as to what Dutch is saying, having M3s wont help your spare ratio of enough accepted M9 cars to put them in regular revenue service. If you put the first six or 12 M9s in revenue service as soon as you have as many, you have no spare to account for cars that come O/S and need to be made whole. For example using six (or even eight) M9 cars, take one O/S you lose the whole drag, as whats left is too short to operate (not mechanically, just practically)DutchRailnut wrote:Even if they did the acceptance plan , you can be assured the cars will not go in service till a decent amount has been accepted.its called keeping the M3s only as a reserve fleet.
no use putting them in equipment cycle if there is no spare equipment.
geico wrote:12 M3s = reserve for 12 M9sYes, but back to what Dutch said about them being where they need to be. The M3s are a moot point in M9 acceptance anyway, as they're not going anywhere anytime soon.
berlintransit wrote: [...]I only just discovered that in the December LIRR Board meeting, the President Mr. Eng made comments allowing to assume that the 30 M9A option coaches are indeed intended for diesel operation.
3. The M9A procurement contract is planned to be awarded in the 2nd quarter of 2019 and will be segmented as followed:Besides the expected regular 416 LIRR M9/M9A, there is a strange mention of 30 'LIRR Option Coaches'. I could not find out anything further about these mysterious coaches from older or more recent board meetings so far. For my understanding, a coach is a non-powered passenger car, a trailer. I have learned on Wiki the M9/M9A specification indeed seems to include something like a 'C' or single car with 114 seats compared to 111 and 101 in the A and B car.
- 100 (up to) LIRR Base Cars
114 LIRR Option Cars (60 planned M9A + 54 previously M9 Cars)
214 Total regular LIRR Cars -- totalling to up to 416 with the M9, 180 for M3 replacement and up to 236 for ESA service and other service expansions
30 LIRR Option Coaches -- more on that topic below
244 Total Cars LIRR
200 MNR Option Cars
444 Total M9A Cars
In addition to the current Kawasaki orders for the M9, President Eng stated that he has directed staff to modify the M9A procurement to make the delivery schedule part of the best value process. Those proposers that can get us the cars the quickest and still deliver quality will be scored higher. He has also added diesel coaches to this procurement, as we know they are much needed on our branches that we have not yet been able to electrify. Our goal here is to provide the capacity to our customers on a regular basis so that we are not experiencing crowded trains [...].If these plans go ahead, by 2023-2025 the LIRR will have the possibility to operate, I presume, up to five 6 car trains formed of these coaches on the Pt Jeff Branch. Capacity of such a train would be about 4.5 C3 cars so the five 4 car C3 sets operating on the Pt Jeff branch could be freed up for other purposes across the railroad. And as the DE/DM Loco fleet is scheduled to begin to be replaced at about the same time, it would be a good opportunity to purchase the additional units required to operate the M9A trailers.
Jeff Smith wrote:Refresh my memory; will the 9’s have over and under running shoes like the M8’s?No they have the over riding shoes only.
