Metra Bilevel Assignment And Maintenance Changes

Once again, BNSF and SWS traded 8-car trainsets. If everything worked out correctly, an 8-car set with 8592 trailing went out on SWS and another 8-car set with 8476 trailing went out on BNSF.

Hmm, is this that set that is more 'BNSF" than "SWS" with the five 700's? I saw one 8 car set tonight on SWS, but it was the usual.

SWS cut out cab car 8475 at 179th Street. Don't know what was wrong, but the only other time I have seen consist changes made at 179th street was the last Friday before expansion.

8475 went back on the same train on SWS this week, now in the consist are three 8400's: 8475, 8469, 8474.

Being that the amount of trains has gone from 4 to 30 a day and has extended from 143rd to Manhattan, perhaps it was it used for fire/police traning in the increased event that something might happen.

Back In 2003 I Saw A LaSalle Bound Rock Island Train Consisted Of F40PH #104 And 5 Or Six Bilevel Cars Painted In RTA Colors(Orange And Brown) And A 8400's Cab Car Flying Past The Blue Island-Vermont St Station

That set was one of three extra sets added to RI during the bridge fire on Metra Electric which suspended service beyond Kensington. Metra added 14 extra weekday trains on RI...made for quite a site. Metra also added hourly express service on the mainline on the weekend, as it was during the Taste of Chicago.

Continuing from another topic...

F40CFan wrote:It seems that the former CNW has a lot of our Budd cars. I wish they'd swap them back for the stupid 84xx and 74xx cars.

This also seems to be the case with BNSF and SWS.. more and more 700's are showing up on SWS... in exchange for 7400's and 7300's. I do see how this can happen more easily since they are serviced at the same spot, however it used to be a rare site to see a 700 on SWS before January, while SWS was still serviced at 14th Street.

The 8500 which was on SWS Friday night/Monday morning, was gone yesterday.. back to another 8400. It also appeared that SWS once again lost its 9 car train, back to 8 cars.

metraRI wrote:Continuing from another topic...

F40CFan wrote:It seems that the former CNW has a lot of our Budd cars. I wish they'd swap them back for the stupid 84xx and 74xx cars.

This also seems to be the case with BNSF and SWS.. more and more 700's are showing up on SWS... in exchange for 7400's and 7300's. I do see how this can happen more easily since they are serviced at the same spot, however it used to be a rare site to see a 700 on SWS before January, while SWS was still serviced at 14th Street.

The 8500 which was on SWS Friday night/Monday morning, was gone yesterday.. back to another 8400. It also appeared that SWS once again lost its 9 car train, back to 8 cars.

Lately, there's also been a lot of shuffling on the BNSF side. I've seen various trainsets having cars added and/or taken away and they've been testing the double headers on different trainsets. A 12 car set was running for a while, that set is back to 11 cars. One Downers Grove express train had a car removed and a seperate trainset had a car added.

SWS was back to 9 cars today, adding an additional 700 to the 8 car set from Tuesday. Since I last saw 2 sets on SWS Tuesday.. more cars have been shuffled around, one set that has stayed the same is the 8 car set with 5 700's in the consist.

Tonight I saw a 6 car BNSF set that had four 7400's all in a row. This is the first time I've seen that many of the newer cars all strung together.

SWS used to have at least 2 ADA cars on trains besides the 8400, now most trains only have one. I still remember the set that was used for the inauguration, with three 6100's, an 8500 and four 7300's with 162 leading. I'm suprised that there are still two 6100's roaming on SWS. Having the newly refurbished 700's would not be such a bad thing, however the last 700 I rode on SWS still had an old interior.

Starting in about a month, MD-W trains 2237 and 2216 will run with 10 cars.

Cab car METX8532 has heavy dammage on one side, account it was rear-ended on 08/21/2006 by a train following it (8532's train) into the Antioch yard. The car is out-of-service at Western Avenue, for a while anyway.

It looks like two gallery cars from Metra made their way out to Boise for repairs... assuming these are cars involved in recent RI derailments.

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