BusHunter Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 Saw a youtube video here that shows the manufacture of a bus shell at Nova bus. Kind of interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUZoNJZERJk I looked around on the net and discovered New Flyer manufactures it's own shells too in Winnipeg, Canada and then brings them down on flatbed trucks to St Cloud,MN which is basically an assembly plant. Found a few cool pictures of bus shells sitting in the back lot in Winnipeg. Too bad no CTA ones though!! http://www.flickr.com/photos/flyer_901/5864823429/in/photostream/ Note: you can scroll through Busologist's pictures here and see about 6-7 different bus shell pictures Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 ... I looked around on the net and discovered New Flyer manufactures it's own shells too in Winnipeg, Canada and then brings then down on flatbed trucks to St Cloud,MN which is basically an assembly plant. Found a few cool pictures of bus shells sitting in the back lot in Winnipeg. Too bad no CTA ones though!! .... That may no longer be valid, as the LFR appears to be discontinued, and all Xcelsior production is in the U.S., both according to the New Flyer website. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BusHunter Posted February 7, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 That may no longer be valid, as the LFR appears to be discontinued, and all Xcelsior production is in the U.S., both according to the New Flyer website. I see, the bus shells must be manufactured now in Crookston. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 BTW, the video has the old style back of the bus, but confirms that a Nova has a fiberglass exterior, like an RTS and Xcelsior. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nflyer22 Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 After snooping around the CUMTD Flickr page once again, looks like the 2011 DE40LFRs were manufactured in St. Cloud but couldn't get further details on their 2013 XDE40s. I tried narrowing the choice based on one worker's shirt of the CWA, but turns out they have workers in both the St. Cloud and Crookston plants, so no luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 After snooping around the CUMTD Flickr page once again, looks like the 2011 DE40LFRs were manufactured in St. Cloud but couldn't get further details on their 2013 XDE40s. I tried narrowing the choice based on one worker's shirt of the CWA, but turns out they have workers in both the St. Cloud and Crookston plants, so no luck. BusHunter may have mixed up the two plants, but Internet sources are also mixed There is one WMATA order that the Press Release says was manufactured in both Winnipeg and Crookston, but a later Metro Magazine that a VTA order is completely manufactured and assembled in St. Cloud. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BusHunter Posted February 7, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 BusHunter may have mixed up the two plants, but Internet sources are also mixed There is one WMATA order that the Press Release says was manufactured in both Winnipeg and Crookston, but a later Metro Magazine that a VTA order is completely manufactured and assembled in St. Cloud. It makes better sense that the bus shell is made in one plant and assembled in the other. From what I can gather, the bus shell operation must have been moved to Crookston as a strategic operation to benefit from the buy US initiative. Wouldn't want to lose business to competitors now. The Canadian buses I'm not so sure of. They might be still done in Winnipeg, unless that is just the corporate offices. This way if they have a buy american customer they have a fail-safe ready. Reading the link from Metro magazine though does support a bus shell operation at St. Cloud, so maybe all three plants can do this, it just depends on the model ordered where it's shell is made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nflyer22 Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 Turns out those XDE40s for CUMTD are from St. Cloud also. A fellow transit enthusiast claims that the XD60 for New York's MTA in the background of the MTD's XDE40 is part of an order of 90. The supporting press release from New Flyer says they were manufactured in St. Cloud. Judging from this, along with that one photo I found of 4334 in the background, we can also conclude that the CTA's order of 4300s are from St. Cloud too. Reading the link from Metro magazine though does support a bus shell operation at St. Cloud, so maybe all three plants can do this, it just depends on the model ordered where it's shell is made. I think it is very valid to conclude that all 3 plants can do this. As for which order gets manufactured where, it probably depends on the number of orders that are currently assigned to a particular plant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jajuan Posted February 8, 2014 Report Share Posted February 8, 2014 I'm actually kind of jealous that CUMTD has a sizable number of Xcelsiors in terms of proportion out of the total fleet number that will be in regular service for a standard bus life duration while the closest CTA will come in the near future is two test buses that won't be around too long since the total number is only two. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nflyer22 Posted February 8, 2014 Report Share Posted February 8, 2014 I still have not had too many opportunities to ride the Xcelsiors here in Champaign-Urbana, considering there's only 10 of them out of 102 total buses. The times I have ridden, I notice that they creak quite a bit when making turns or going across uneven road, like a bump for example. The flush windows gives the bus a sleek look on the outside, but on the inside, not much of a noticeable difference compared to the LFR. Then again, the CTA will only have two of them out of the 1800+ buses currently in the fleet. The chances will be far slimmer, and as jajuan brought up, they might not be here for an entire duration of service life, further reducing the opportunity to ride them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BusHunter Posted February 8, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 8, 2014 It's not written in stone however that the buses will only run for a year or two. As the technology progresses, these buses have a good chance to last longer, like the #900's. There are no 300 mile refueling trucks, or difficult to maintain hydrogen fuel cell systems like the #5900's, Once the infrastructure is in place I don't see a problem in those being kept. This is where bus technology is headed anyway. As more bus fleets go all electric, we stand a better chance that this will be the bus of the future here in Chicago. NY is trying out a new bus, with a new electric bus manufacturer, BYD,( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_electric_bus ) a Chinese manufacture that just opened a plant in Lancaster, California in Oct 2013, and I believe Nova bus is developing this technology too. So all the companies if they want to be competitive will have one of these soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jajuan Posted February 9, 2014 Report Share Posted February 9, 2014 It's not written in stone however that the buses will only run for a year or two. As the technology progresses, these buses have a good chance to last longer, like the #900's. There are no 300 mile refueling trucks, or difficult to maintain hydrogen fuel cell systems like the #5900's, Once the infrastructure is in place I don't see a problem in those being kept. This is where bus technology is headed anyway. As more bus fleets go all electric, we stand a better chance that this will be the bus of the future here in Chicago. NY is trying out a new bus, with a new electric bus manufacturer, BYD,( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_electric_bus ) a Chinese manufacture that just opened a plant in Lancaster, California in Oct 2013, and I believe Nova bus is developing this technology too. So all the companies if they want to be competitive will have one of these soon. The technology may be improving in electric buses, but Big Oil still has a strong grip and influence on what gets implemented in the national energy policies. Along those lines, any form of diesel use in buses is here to stay for a long time to come. Add in CTA's money crunch and its history of choosing the cheapest available option, and it's pretty safe to say completely electric buses as a significant portion of the CTA fleet is a large number of years down the road. There may be an increase in hybrids, but diesel in buses isn't going away all that quickly. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted February 9, 2014 Report Share Posted February 9, 2014 It's not written in stone however that the buses will only run for a year or two..... My betting is that they'll go on 124, someone will put a charger under Wacker Dr. or at Navy Pier, and they will stay a while. As it is, CTA already must have a contact for electricity to run the L. However, unless something really advances in battery technology, I can't see them on long-haul routes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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