3200-series - Updates

[andrethebusman]

Back in the 1960's and 70's New York ran all series together in trains. (Or at least any IRT car could train with any other IRT car, and same for IND. IRT and IND cars COULD run together, and did on non-revenue moves, but are different size). Then starting with the R-44's you started getting cars that could only run with their own kind. At that point, the IND fleets of the time were segregated, and almost never mixed again. IRT continued mixing until the R62's started re[placing all old cars. However, last year's "railfan special" had six cars of four different series, including an R-11 that had last run circa 1970 (45 years ago!)

[chgofan78]

Spotted a rehabbed 3307-3308 on the test track at Skokie Shops yesterday.  

[BusHunter]

#3363-64 are finally released from skokie shops. They are fully rehabbed now. If you remember these were the last of the cars from skokie south and 98th yard. The cars still had problems though. They were red tagged which means the atc wasn't working. Hence why they were in the middle of a consist.

[garmon757]

Ex-White Sox wrapped #3311-12 are rehabbed without the new LED run number boxes. Currently lonely at the Kimball Yard. 

[BusHunter]

On 2/26/2016 at 3:35 PM, chgofan78 said:

Spotted a rehabbed 3307-3308 on the test track at Skokie Shops yesterday.  

Good eye!! Since they stated they will be rehabbing all the #3200's, I wonder if the retired ones are on the list? Or are they unrepairable? I should have pictures of one of the pairs that was up there. #3351-52

After a 5 minute search here's the shots, but they look pretty rough!!

http://chitransit.org/topic/3525-cta-92-year-old-historical-cars-ran-saturday-sept-13/?do=findComment&comment=64355

[sw4400]

1 hour ago, BusHunter said:

Good eye!! Since they stated they will be rehabbing all the #3200's, I wonder if the retired ones are on the list? Or are they unrepairable? I should have pictures of one of the pairs that was up there. #3351-52

After a 5 minute search here's the shots, but they look pretty rough!!

http://chitransit.org/topic/3525-cta-92-year-old-historical-cars-ran-saturday-sept-13/?do=findComment&comment=64355

Well the contract is for 257 rehabs, but 3351-3352 look pretty bad(I can't tell about 3435-3436). But both were involved in accidents at Kedzie(3351-3352 derailed and ran into the Kedzie platform). 3435-3436 hit a plain clothes CPD car going around the gates. One thought is what will happen to 3457-3458? Obviously, only 3457 will be rehabbed and 3458(ex-3032) will ultimately be unmated and retired sometime down the line. Will 3457 be a loaner spare?

[garmon757]

#3307-08 are rehabbed without LED run number boxes while I'm riding them. Wassup with the lack of LED run number box installments???

[BusHunter]

4 hours ago, garmon757 said:

#3307-08 are rehabbed without LED run number boxes while I'm riding them. Wassup with the lack of LED run number box installments???

Probably one of many things that don't work. Unfortunately you get what you pay for. You try to save money doing this in house and you develop more problems than bringing in a professional to do it. It's like my neighbors roofing tiles, her son put up the tiles, they blew away in the wind storm we had. I have a new roof built by professionals who looked out for me and gave me a premium tile. My roof has no problems and works beautifully.

[Busjack]

1 hour ago, BusHunter said:

Probably one of many things that don't work. Unfortunately you get what you pay for. You try to save money doing this in house and you develop more problems than bringing in a professional to do it. It's like my neighbors roofing tiles, her son put up the tiles, they blew away in the wind storm we had. I have a new roof built by professionals who looked out for me and gave me a premium tile. My roof has no problems and works beautifully.

1. You don't know what the shipment schedule is at Axion.

2. An electronic run box seems the least of priorities.

[garmon757]

5 hours ago, BusHunter said:

Probably one of many things that don't work. Unfortunately you get what you pay for. You try to save money doing this in house and you develop more problems than bringing in a professional to do it. It's like my neighbors roofing tiles, her son put up the tiles, they blew away in the wind storm we had. I have a new roof built by professionals who looked out for me and gave me a premium tile. My roof has no problems and works beautifully.

Hell, have those professionals give my mother a hookup with a better roof! 

4 hours ago, Busjack said:

1. You don't know what the shipment schedule is at Axion.

2. An electronic run box seems the least of priorities.

Then what's the point of some of the rail cars having them for? Something isn't adding up unless we gotta wait years for the remaining to have them installed. 

[MTRSP1900-CTA3200]

7 hours ago, BusHunter said:

Probably one of many things that don't work. Unfortunately you get what you pay for. You try to save money doing this in house and you develop more problems than bringing in a professional to do it. It's like my neighbors roofing tiles, her son put up the tiles, they blew away in the wind storm we had. I have a new roof built by professionals who looked out for me and gave me a premium tile. My roof has no problems and works beautifully.

Do they fix car sunroofs too? They might have my business soon. 

In-house stuff has worked before though. See the R68 in New York City for example.

1 hour ago, garmon757 said:

...Then what's the point of some of the rail cars having them for? Something isn't adding up unless we gotta wait years for the remaining to have them installed. 

I can kinda see what Busjack is getting at though. If the CTA cared more about the run number boxes, they'd be delaying the rollouts for rehabbed cars even if they had the other components installed. So if Axion wasn't shipping, we'd see less rehabbed cars on the rails. Fortunately that's not the case. Either way, I'd take a partially rehabbed car over an original car, and if I was in charge, I'd be doing the same thing. However I'd still be looking for the missing run boxes, but that would be more on the back burner.

[briman94]

On 3/4/2016 at 7:30 PM, BusHunter said:

#3363-64 are finally released from skokie shops. They are fully rehabbed now. If you remember these were the last of the cars from skokie south and 98th yard. The cars still had problems though. They were red tagged which means the atc wasn't working. Hence why they were in the middle of a consist.

LED Run # boxes?

[briman94]

I was on a 4-car brown line last night (I think it was 3389-3390-3410-3409 but I can't remember for sure). The first two cars were rehabbed (3389-90) and the last two weren't. Most of the time when the driver would take power out of a station, it would get up to about 5-10 MPH with minimal jerking (typical for 3200s) but then it would reach a point where it'd start MASSIVELY LURCHING back and forth as if it were going between full power and full brake about 3-4 times a second (count that in your head; it's fast). I can't imagine it would have been easy to stand up without holding on with both hands. People on the train were actually commenting about how bad it felt. A few times it was fine, and accelerated very smoothly and evenly, but most of the time it did the lurching thing. The driver would coast and then take power again whenever it would happen and it would be fine until they stopped again.

Not exactly sure what would cause that; I would imagine it had something to do with the unrehabbed set in the back, but I've seen a number of rehabbed ones with blue lights, so maybe they're doing something during rehab that's messing up the motors somehow.

[BusHunter]

Probably is the rehabbed pair. I took a walk through Kimball yard at the height of the rush and out of a good 16-18 cars, a good 10 of them were rehabs. #3267-68 was up on the fence, #3271-72, #3443-44 was on the same track, #3345-46, #3213-14 (no longer wrapped) were there too. That's a high ratio considering only 32 are rehabbed and close to 100+ are not. I have totally lost what happened to #3375-76, it's gone like for a week or so. Maybe it's either back at Skokie, stuck in a shop or at Midway.

[briman94]

34 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

Probably is the rehabbed pair. I took a walk through Kimball yard at the height of the rush and out of a good 16-18 cars, a good 10 of them were rehabs. #3267-68 was up on the fence, #3271-72, #3443-44 was on the same track, #3345-46, #3213-14 (no longer wrapped) were there too. That's a high ratio considering only 32 are rehabbed and close to 100+ are not. I have totally lost what happened to #3375-76, it's gone like for a week or so. Maybe it's either back at Skokie, stuck in a shop or at Midway.

They're probably rushing the rehabs and just putting them together with duct tape and glue shoulda had Bombardier convert them to AC! They'd last longer!

[BusHunter]

13 minutes ago, briman94 said:

They're probably rushing the rehabs and just putting them together with duct tape and glue shoulda had Bombardier convert them to AC! They'd last longer!

Either that or they got some bad parts. They should know what their doing. The #2400's were not a fail and they were done in-house. Seems to me all there issues are door relays and electrical issues. Hate to say it, but maybe they are better off leaving the old door relays back in.

[briman94]

1 hour ago, BusHunter said:

Either that or they got some bad parts. They should know what their doing. The #2400's were not a fail and they were done in-house. Seems to me all there issues are door relays and electrical issues. Hate to say it, but maybe they are better off leaving the old door relays back in.

I didn't even know they were having problems with door relays. I've just seen a large quantity of rehabbed cars with blue lights, and then this one pair that seemed to be trying to give everyone on board severe whiplash.

[sw4400]

10 minutes ago, briman94 said:

I didn't even know they were having problems with door relays. I've just seen a large quantity of rehabbed cars with blue lights, and then this one pair that seemed to be trying to give everyone on board severe whiplash.

I ride the Brown Line pretty religiously now after late nights at work, and haven't noticed any issues with hard stops/starts, or blue lights on cars. May just be random cars..... I know I do hear that ATC going off in the front and usually that causes a hard, jerking slowdown followed by a jerking speedup. May just be ATC related.

[BusHunter]

#3367-68 is sitting over here in kimball yard rehabbed. That was another former Orange line car. I still haven't seen #3375-76. Maybe it went back to orange.

[BusHunter]

#3291-92 is now fully rehabbed. It's at chicago brown nb. 

[BusHunter]

On 3/23/2016 at 6:03 PM, BusHunter said:

#3367-68 is sitting over here in kimball yard rehabbed. That was another former Orange line car. I still haven't seen #3375-76. Maybe it went back to orange.

Forgot to upload these yesterday. Here's shots of #3367-68. They were still in the yard today. (I left them high res so you can see the numbers)

 

[BusHunter]

#3305-06 are now fully rehabbed. This is the first one done that had LED color signs already installed. I thought maybe those would be last, I guess not.

[garmon757]

15 hours ago, BusHunter said:

#3305-06 are now fully rehabbed. This is the first one done that had LED color signs already installed. I thought maybe those would be last, I guess not.

#3267-68 has yet to return to service while it's been sitting in the same spot at the Kimball Yard for almost a month now. Is #3289-90 fully rehabbed???

[BusHunter]

I don't think #3267-68 has ever went in service. If it did maybe one time. #3367-68 was out yesterday for it's first trip.  #3271-72 went out a few days but it's stuck on the fence just inside the lawrence side all week. #3289-90 is rehabbed on my list page one of this thread. I should be up to date but I think I'm missing two cars because usually they send over eight cars and this weeks new ones are #3305-06, #3291-92 and #3367-68.

[garmon757]

19 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

I don't think #3267-68 has ever went in service. If it did maybe one time. #3367-68 was out yesterday for it's first trip.  #3271-72 went out a few days but it's stuck on the fence just inside the lawrence side all week. #3289-90 is rehabbed on my list page one of this thread. I should be up to date but I think I'm missing two cars because usually they send over eight cars and this weeks new ones are #3305-06, #3291-92 and #3367-68.

Yes, I saw #3271-72 by the fence also. #3289-90 is sitting in front of the shop entrance.