jackintosh11 wrote:But if the Comet 1s ran in mixed consists with low door and high door cars, were there separate door commands for the low cars and the high cars?
Comet Is did run in mixed consists. They ran with the non-long door equipment which consisted of high door Comet Is, low door Comet Is, and Comet IBs... and sometimes with Metro-North's older/non-long-door equipment. When running in these types of consists, crews were responsible for opening the doors in a safe manner as all of these different car types could open up simultaneously from a single door command. Typically, these cars were setup with like types of cars grouped together. Low-door Comet Is were almost always grouped together next to the engine and high trap door cars (of any type) were grouped with the cab car as all cab cars became high-door equipment. A crewman stationed at the right location and setup could open up all of the low doors together at low platforms and all of the high cars together at high platforms. There were non commands with these equipment to differentiate between the different level of doors.
Please note that when I'm referring to high doors or high trap doors, I'm not referring to the more modern cars with long doors, as in Comet IIMs, Comet IIIs, Comet IVs, Comet Vs, and the Multi-Levels.
The Comet IBs were also capable of working with long door equipment in a pinch, but this rarely ever happened. There was a switch somewhere in the cars that enabled this to work. I do not know how the doors handled the trainlining in this setup. I've always assume that the IBs would react to an "Open/Close High" command but not to an "Open/Close Low" command. I've also always assumed that the IB would pass on an "Open/Close Low" command to the other cars.