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When that new Orange Line train slid off the tracks at Wellington, there was a bit of an explosion

WCVB posts video of the Wellington derailment that led the T to pull all of the new Orange and Red Line trains off the tracks back in March:

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Comments

Impressive

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n/t

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Seriously.. its like when I put a SSD into a 1998 era Macintosh computer. It works.. sorta. But the drive is too fast for the bus of the computer so it barfs on large file copies.

Thats pretty much what happened here. Nice new train didn't like our 1970s era trackage.

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World class!!! Lolzzz omgomgomgomg

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Should have gone with Siemens

Edit: should have updated our tracks

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Siemens never put in a formal bid. They did attended the pre-bid info session and they did verbally said they would bid (here's a link to an article talking about the meeting and who said in that meeting that they would bid).

But they never did - 5 companies did reach the part where the MBTA gets to select an actual bid (here's a link to the presentation), but Siemen isn't one.

Of the 5 that did reach. Two of them was CNR and CSR which is I need to note become the CRRC that making the trains now. Apparently their technical review found CNR, regardless Chinese quality memes, had both a good history and a good technical submission. CSR was deemed "Unacceptable" both in their technical submission and in history.

I think it is important to note the MBTA selected CNR and disqualified CSR. Something to consider when the inevitable comment "why we selected CRRC - did anyone look how their f-ed up their Singapore order?". Well, we didn't, but they merged after the bid. How to judge the merged company after is beyond me.

Bombardier put in a bid waaayyy higher than average bid. It's was probably not a serious bid, but "we-know-this-will-be-a-headache-so-we-don't-really-want-to-do-so-here's-the-price-it-would-take-for-us-to-bother. I'm sure we would have raged "Why can't America do transit at reasonable prices, we are paying twice the prices per train versus other countries for the same trains!" And if you follow NYC, picking Bombardier isn't a guarantee of better results anyways.

I still don't understand why Hyundai-Rotem even bother. If nobody remmebers, back in 2014, Hyundai-Rotem was in a fiasco in how they f-ed up a major order of commuter rail coaches- as in Commuter Rail. Their was the next closest price but everyone here would absolutely rage if we choose Hyundai-Rotem - with something like "they failed those commuter rail coaches and we hired them again, wtf????"

The one that alternative timeline that was kinda plausible was Kawasaki. The price was near average. No Hyundai fiasco. Unless you're from the 80's, everybody trusts Japan. Maybe if we didn't required a "buy in Massachusetts" maybe it would have meant Kawasaki could submitted a cheaper bid (CNR had no US factory, so they had to build one anyways - but Kawasaki already have one, so either price in that cost or eat the cost of a factory that would be used just once)

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Thank you for the detailed info. I do recall the pickings for manufacturers were slim...

So much red tape. I can appreciate "made in America" along with Patrick trying to bring jobs to MA.. but sometimes, its best to let people who do it the best do it, regardless of location.

We already source so many products from other nations who just 'do it better', why not rail cars? Why did we try to reinvent the wheel?

Oh right to save/create an industry that didn't really need to exist when others do it better elsewhere.

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I voted for him but he was a turkey. He waited until the final year of his term to these trains ordered when it's one of the first things he should have done.

The "Made in Mass" thing was always going to greatly increase the price without any logic that the quality would be better. They would have been better off ordering from someone else and invest in education instead. MA is leader in biotech because of the universities around Boston, not due to some state mandate.

Wasn't Patrick the one behind the failed solar factory too?

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How they forgot to mention the explosion when the incident happened months ago. I bet they forgot to notify the Office of the State Fire Marshall of the explosion.

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The train struck an electrical box and shorted it out during the derailment, that's the "explosion", smoke subsided quickly as that blew the power section.

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What you saw was a junction box that feeds the rails (a local shut off) that was torn up and when the 600 volt supply shorted to ground that is what happened.

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I guess thinking "oh, it will make it through that" was wrong ...

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No, it's not.

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cars navigate an extremely tight curve at Bowdoin multiple times, daily. It is crazy that these new trains have issues with rotating when switching tracks. That said, the MBTA is also to blame for poor track conditions that persist despite constant shutdowns and diversions.

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Remember, Blue Line trains are shorter than the orange line ones. They can do the tight curve better.

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