The Original Breda 3000 series cars are fading into the dust

Each time I ride the Metro, I see less unrehabbed Breda 3000 series trains and more Breda Rehab trains.

Bye bye original Bredas! (actually the 4000 series are staying the way they are)

Love Train has a good point. I'm now beginning to see more and more 3000's particularly the last of the 3100's and 3200's Bredas being rehab. Some time in the next two years the Red line will have as many Breda Rehabs as Rohrs.

Yeah I'll miss the original propulsion sounds of the unrebuilt 3Ks, but I won't be missing the hard to read LED Signage from 23 1/2 years ago when they were first introduced, nor the 1970s McDonald's look. Nice new rainbow colours, and new, brighter, more cheerful easier to read LED signs with a darkened black background.

Plus I also won't be moaning over those brown rubber bars on top of the transverse seats, they'll be replaced with a silver metal bat on top of the seats. I like the silver bars instead, there were also too many fingernail scratches on the bron rubber metal horizontal bars on top of those seats that looked very unsightly.

Robert Paniagua wrote:Yeah I'll miss the original propulsion sounds of the unrebuilt 3Ks, but I won't be missing the hard to read LED Signage from 23 1/2 years ago when they were first introduced, nor the 1970s McDonald's look. Nice new rainbow colours, and new, brighter, more cheerful easier to read LED signs with a darkened black background.

Plus I also won't be moaning over those brown rubber bars on top of the transverse seats, they'll be replaced with a silver metal bat on top of the seats. I like the silver bars instead, there were also too many fingernail scratches on the bron rubber metal horizontal bars on top of those seats that looked very unsightly.

The old signs are not LEDs. They are flip-dots. The new signs are LEDs.

If you like the original Breda propulsion sounds the 4Ks will still have them. The 4Ks are not getting rehabbed.

I agree with you about the bars. In fact, the whole interior of the old cars gives a brown impression. I like the cream colored interior of the rehabbed and CAF cars.

To tell you the truth, I won't miss the old 3Ks one bit. I like the rehabbed Bredas much better. At the same time I'm glad they're not rehabbing the 4Ks because that means the legacy of the old Bredas won't fade into the dust completely. I can still get a taste of the old Bredas with the 4Ks.

Actually the 4ks are planned to be rehabbed 5 years but as we know that could take another 5 years to happen.

And the rehabbed 3K/2Ks are unreliable POSs despite being nicer to ride. I can remember 5 times when all of them were pulled overnite to have "fixes" performed on them that could have resulted in bad wrecks etc....
All of them should have been rehabbed by now.

I wonder if Breda or a different company will get the nod to do the 4ks when that comes up...

I kind of don't like the idea of redoing the train cars, even if it is supposed to make them better. That takes away the classic Breda look. I assume the Breda cars to stay the same as they were 20 years ago. Sometimes I wish I grew up 10 years earlier, so I would have been able to live the legacy of the Breda cars as an adult before they were redone. When I rode the Metro with my parents as a little kid in the 1990's, I didn't know anything about the Metrorail cars, except that some of them had silver handrails on the tops of the seats and some of them had brown handrails. I figure that if they were going to redo the Breda cars at all, they only redo on the Bredas what they redid on the Rohrs in the mid-90's, and keep the physical appearances of the car interiors (the original Breda cream color and the original Breda seats with the brown rubber coated handrails) the same.

hardyboyz1999 wrote:I kind of don't like the idea of redoing the train cars, even if it is supposed to make them better. That takes away the classic Breda look. I assume the Breda cars to stay the same as they were 20 years ago. Sometimes I wish I grew up 10 years earlier, so I would have been able to live the legacy of the Breda cars as an adult before they were redone. When I rode the Metro with my parents as a little kid in the 1990's, I didn't know anything about the Metrorail cars, except that some of them had silver handrails on the tops of the seats and some of them had brown handrails. I figure that if they were going to redo the Breda cars at all, they only redo on the Bredas what they redid on the Rohrs in the mid-90's, and keep the physical appearances of the car interiors (the original Breda cream color and the original Breda seats with the brown rubber coated handrails) the same.

Rohrs only got a general overhaul, not full rehabs.

Out of all the Metro car interiors, past and present, I like the rehabbed 2K/3K interiors the best. I like the look of the LED door entry lights and next station displays (although they are dumbly blocked by a horizantal grab bar) in the rehabbed Bredas more than the ones in the 5K and 6K cars. After the 2K/3K rehabs I prefer the other car interiors in this order:
2. 6000
3. 5000
4. 1000
5. 4000/original 2000&3000

Some of the Rohr's (such as one I rode today on the Red Line) had their original brown/orange/yellow seats replaced with the red/blue/yellow ones of the newer cars and rehabs. The result is atrocious. The red and blue seats clash strongly with the 'classic' 70's style interior. What's worse is that even though the seats were changed, the orginal orange/yellow/brown armrests weren't replaced.

"realtype"
Some of the Rohr's (such as one I rode today on the Red Line) had their original brown/orange/yellow seats replaced with the red/blue/yellow ones of the newer cars and rehabs. The result is atrocious. The red and blue seats clash strongly with the 'classic' 70's style interior. What's worse is that even though the seats were changed, the orginal orange/yellow/brown armrests weren't replaced.

None of the seats in the 1k cars are original. The original seats were foam rubber with a dull vinyl coating on them. The colors of the foam rubber vinyl seats were the same colors as the seats in the cars today.

The foam rubber vinyl seats were replaced by the present seats in the late 1970s when it was discovered they had an undesirable flammability property.

Personally speaking I preferred the confront of the foam rubber seats compared to the seats that are in the cars today.

The foam rubber seats were more resistant to slashing compared to the to the present seats. They were not very resistant to graffiti applied with felt markers.

So then one would assume the seats on the money train, and the feeler car are the original seats?

I'll bet the map inside the feeler car is cool.

Also, what is the device that is beneath the exterior door indicator light on the Rohr cars? (The lights the operator looks for to find an open door.)

Does the money train even have seats anymore? I've tried to get a good look whenever I have seen it zip by late at night. However, whenever I was able to see inside, it looked as if they had ripped out the seats for room to store the metal rolling safes from stations.

Duh... of course they would remove the seats...my bad.

"jerryinva"
So then one would assume the seats on the money train, and the feeler car are the original seats?

No. Those cars were converted to the service they perform now after the seats were changed.

I'll bet the map inside the feeler car is cool.

If the car still has maps, they would be the maps showing: Silver Spring - Dupont Circle, Addison Road - National Airport and New Carrollton - Ballston. The maps during that era did not show future segments with hatched lines, only white circles at the unopened station.

Also, what is the device that is beneath the exterior door indicator light on the Rohr cars? (The lights the operator looks for to find an open door.)

Not sure what you are talking about, I will defer to other for the answer to that question.

Not sure about that device, I've wondered the same thing. The 4000s have it, too.

John, if you look closely above the door in this photo of 4018, you can see what we are talking about. This seems to be the best photo I have where you can see it. However, it seems that 4072 does not have them (or at least not on the door visible in the photo I have on my site):