Why Brightline use extended ramps at station?

On the NEC, the gap between Amfleet cars and the station is nil. Yet Brightline's high platform station have a signifcant gap with the Brightline cars, and the cars have platform that extend, why? Surely the specs were known before construction of trains and station.

Loading gauge for many freight cars is larger than loading gauge for passenger cars. FEC operates said large freight cars. Such freight cars are forbidden on the NEC, so they can build platforms right up to the train.

Gauntlet tracks are another common solution to this problem. See: Raritan Line (NJT), SMART (Bay Area).

This question would be better directed to the FEC forum.

andrewjw wrote: Gauntlet tracks are another common solution to this problem. See: Raritan Line (NJT), SMART (Bay Area).

Gantlet (both spellings are accepted) tracks on Raritan Valley Line and SMART; also on the South Shore.

I have always wondered which is more costly, flaps or gauntlets. One requires maintaining four switches per station, one requires maintaining the hydraulic rams on the flaps. Neither seems an elegant solution.

The gauntlet also requires trains to enter and exit stations quite slowly because the switches are very low speed. It may not seem like much, but having a train length of low speed on either end of the station is like having much longer dwell time.

If a station is double-tracked, there really only needs to be one set of gauntlet tracks. Also, the Amfleet cars certainly have a gap on the NEC, especially at NYP and WAS.

Having only one through track provided with a gauntlet would require freight movements in both directions to use that one track, causing complications with passenger trains. Also, it seems that Brightline wanted to be a cut above existing practice in all respects.

No problems with ice in Florida. Also, they were coming at it as a freight railroad first. They should be able to use standard high level platforms too where standard coaches would require a manual bridgeplate to use a brightline platform. This wouldn't work in New England.

frequentflyer wrote:On the NEC, the gap between Amfleet cars and the station is nil. Yet Brightline's high platform station have a signifcant gap with the Brightline cars, and the cars have platform that extend, why? Surely the specs were known before construction of trains and station.

Why does it matter? You answered your own question, Brightline at every door has walkway extenders making it so there are no gaps between the train and the platform.... As others have said freight trains are wider and the required clearance is greater. Those are better than anything you'll find on any train the NEC. Nothing wrong with extra clearance...

CentralValleyRail wrote: Why does it matter? You answered your own question, Brightline at every door has walkway extenders making it so there are no gaps between the train and the platform.... As others have said freight trains are wider and the required clearance is greater. Those are better than anything you'll find on any train the NEC. Nothing wrong with extra clearance...

FEC and Amtrak's NEC have different freight clearances, reference various FRA plate sizes for rolling stock. So there will of course be different clearances between passenger cars and passenger platforms.

Brightline has a small fleet of all brand-new passenger coaches. And they don't operate in the snow. So adding extenders to the cars isn't a big deal and makes it simple to run freight trains past the passenger platforms without building station tracks, gauntlet tracks, slowing down the freights or repairing passenger platforms that get sideswiped by freight cars that might be swaying or wide.

If they wanted to run standard passenger cars into their stations, manual bridge plates could be used.