Saturday, February 28, 2009

People Love the Trains

The new Siemens SD70s in Portland are popular. And they haven't carried a revenue passenger yet.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

these look like nice cars, cant wait to ride them. it will be interesting to see how these single ended yet permanently paired cars work out.

would have loved to have seen this this morning. never heard about it beforehand though somehow it seems many others did.

Adam said...

Those look so gorgeous. Siemens ALWAYS gets it right. Now if only the MTA would hire Siemens to design LIRR and Subway equipment instead of Bombardier Alstom and Kawasaki.

njh said...

Everyone loves trams! I was in Portland last year and the trams are great. Almost as good as SJ.

Anonymous said...

I was hoping Siemens would win the LINK Contract, so some commonality with Portland can be achieved, but KinkiSharyo won. Plus, LINK has some different requirements, including higher voltage. It has to climb some ramps to get onto viaducts and handle some slight hills, so it runs on 1500 Volts DC.

The SD70/Type 4 MAX LRVs really are great though, and it seems TriMet has decided to eliminate the 2nd cab on them to add a few more seats. If they are run in 2 car trains, that should not be a disavantage anyway.

Robert said...

The S70s are a great LRV. Quiet, comfortable, smooth, quick to board. Isn't Seimens building these in the US near Sacramento?

Good candidate for federal stimulus spending...

crzwdjk said...

EvergreenRailfan: "Some slight hills" is quite the understatement. One of the options for University Link has a 4% grade for 9000 feet, and they intend to run four car trains at three minute headways on that. That's why they went with 1500 VDC, which is a fairly common standard for metro systems, and Link has much more in common with a metro than with light rail.

Anonymous said...

I thought SD70's were built by EMD.

Pantograph Trolleypole said...

http://www.transportation.siemens.com/ts/en/pub/products/mt/products/light_rail.htm

here's a Siemens page with the vehicles. They are called S70 here but I've seen many other places calling them SD70 Avantos

crzwdjk said...

PT: Many earlier Siemens LRVs used the "SD" designation for "Siemens-Duewag", which came about after Siemens bought the Duewag company, which was a major German tram builder, and I believe one of the earliest to make articulated tramcars, which means that they're ultimately responsible for the fact that LRV these days almost automatically implies an articulated vehicle.

Pantograph Trolleypole said...

I know a few folks who abhor the idea of articulation. It's two bogies on a single chassis or nothin

Anonymous said...

arcady

Thanks for the clarification. In a way, by making it more of a Light Metro, prepares it a little for the future, but eliminates some options, but will cross that bridge later. I live in the neighborhood where it has grade crossings that are not protected.

Portland has a good system, 20 years ahead of Seattle in some respects, but although our planners messed up with it being rail ready, we at least had a Downtown Tunnel. Although I try to cut the planners of the 80s some slack, having the DSTT be opened with the rails that turned out to not be properly insulated, was an afterthought, after an advisory vote on rail. Oregon and Washington are fast becoming Little Switzerland in another way, besides rail transit. Everybody wants to second guess the legislature, and the filing fee for inintiatives has not been adjusted for inflation. Still $5, same as it was in Nineteen-teens, but then there were Streetcars and Interurbans connecting cities in the Willamette Valley and Puget Sound(Seperate Systems).

Anonymous said...

http://gallery.alaska.org/akrr.php?g2_itemId=15713

The Alaska Railroad uses HEP equiped SD70's to pull their passenger trains.

njh said...

I know a few folks who abhor the idea of articulation. It's two bogies on a single chassis or nothin

PT, they are just inarticulate. Personally I like the caterpillars.