Hey, there! Log in / Register

New Orange Line cars are now arriving

By adamg on Wed, 08/29/2018 - 3:33pm
New cars coming to Wellington

Miniature Bumblebee spotted a fresh Orange Line car arriving on a flatbed at the Wellington yard this morning, presumably from the new CRRC assembly plant in Springfield.

The two initial test cars, shipped direct from China, have become a familiar sight on the normally unused third Orange Line track north of Boston. The MBTA says it hopes to begin putting the new cars into passenger service starting at year's end.

Neighborhoods: 
Medford
Topics: 
The T
Free tagging: 
Orange Line
Wellington


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

By bike nerd on Wed, 08/29/2018 - 3:57pm.

the irony of a truck delivering a train

By roadman on Wed, 08/29/2018 - 6:28pm.

Unfortunately, it would be highly impractical to deliver the new cars by rail. Besides the incompatibility of couplers, brakes, and running gear with standard railroad equipment, moving the cars from Springfield to Wellington or Oak Grove by rail would be a very complicated move. Additionally, the rail connection between the Orange Line and the Commuter Rail at Oak Grove was severed sometime back.

While an alternative might be to ship the cars on flatcars, that poses the problem of transferring the cars from the flatcar to the Orange Line tracks.

Let's just hope that none of the drivers of those trucks delivering these cars, or their pilot car drivers, decide to take a shortcut via Soldier's Field Road and/or Storrow Drive.

By geep9 on Wed, 08/29/2018 - 6:52pm.

Storrowing scenario does make me wonder what Adam’s headline would be for the story...

By Michael on Wed, 08/29/2018 - 7:02pm.

Train crash on Storrow puts T in a fix,
New cars now delayed til 2046

By SamWack on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 7:16am.

MBTA trains on Storrow Drive would open up whole new rhyming opportunities for Adam.

However, this can never happen; the Cosmos could not bear the strain of such a convergence. Universal Hub would truly become Universal, and the End of Time would come.

By anon on Wed, 08/29/2018 - 4:13pm.

Did they have to pay 10 cents for that plastic bag?

By Hugonaut on Wed, 08/29/2018 - 8:38pm.

18 months of "testing" before the public actually gets any use out of them.

By DTP on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 8:31am.

The MBTA says it hopes to begin putting the new cars into passenger service starting at year's end.

Try again. Year's end is 4 months away.

By Michael on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 9:08am.

is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence

By roadman on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 2:22pm.

they don't specify which year.

By roadman on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 2:21pm.

Remember the Boeing LRV? Or when the Breda Type 8 first arrived. Both streetcars were rushed into service without adequate testing beforehand. And both streetcars immediately exhibited problems - some major, some minor - that took some time to correct.

I rode the first pair of Type 8s (3800 and 3801) on their first revenue trip. Cars had deadheaded from Riverside to Government Center, and were put into service at Government Center westbound, where I boarded the train. Got into Park Street, where both cars had a complete meltdown - they couldn't even open the doors until officials came to help from the outside. Needless to say, the train was taken out of service - the first of countless times that happened to a Type 8.

By Swander on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 6:54am.

A welcome sight for weary Orange Line users.

By SamWack on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 7:21am.

So Orange Line trains are not born orange? I must say I feel a certain concern for the poor colorless thing, so naked and vulnerable. I hope it grows its orange coat soon.

By editrickster on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 11:53am.

Perhaps it will form a chrysallis and emerge some time later as a beautiful butterfly Orange line train.

By Daan on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 9:55am.

An police investigation turns into a disaster. Trains held up for up to 15 minutes at rush hour. A train finally arrives and the head car is out of service.

Naturally the cellular twits are in full volume; the mosquito heads are blasting the earbud bleed and the air conditioning can barely keep up with sardine packing.

Will enough new cars arrive to prevent another day of no train service. It seems to be held together at this point with glue.

By Waquiot on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 10:45am.

How would the new cars have helped when the source of the delay was a police action?

By Dickiec on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 4:55pm.

Why did they have to come from China, why not the old U.S.A. can we build anything here anymore...

By adamg on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 7:49pm.

And CRRC submitted a lower bid than the Korean, Canadian and, hmm, Japanese companies that did bid.

By Waquiot on Thu, 08/30/2018 - 10:41pm.

The last American company that could build something like this went out of the business in the 1980s. Pullman out of Philadelphia, I believe. The last cars the T got that were from an American firm were the Boeing Vertol LRVs. Read up about them some day.

By David Plantz on Mon, 09/03/2018 - 1:03am.

Test cars were made in China while the Springfield, MA plant was built. The rest of them will be assembled in the Springfield plant as these cars are.

By Turkey on Sat, 09/01/2018 - 1:32pm.

The next White Line train is now arriving