Voltage And Amps. How Much?

[ryanbytes]

600 volts seems to stick in my brain for the third rail but please feel free to correct me! What kind of amperage is flowing through it?

[sw4400]

You are correct, ryanbytes. It is 600 volts. Amperage(assuming amperage is current of electric flow) would be Direct Current(D/C) power. The new trains expected in 2009 will be Alternating Current(A/C) and will not be adaptable to the older train series unless the CTA wants to change the Current Power to these cars to A/C as well.

It was rumored that the new series(some say 3500, others say 1000) will be exclusive to the Brown Line, and the 3200's will be dispersed to the rest of the lines.

[Kevin]

It was rumored that the new series(some say 3500, others say 1000) will be exclusive to the Brown Line, and the 3200's will be dispersed to the rest of the lines.

From what I hear, the new cars will be 5000-series.

[Busjack]

That they would be 5000s was previously discussed with a link to the pdf here it is again; also that thread mentioned a report that they probably would go on the Blue and Pink lines (according to Frank, now gone).

As for amperage, that is a measurement of electric flow and depends on the draw that the motors are imposing. According to Krambles, there are 4 110 hp motors on each car, and if you are a mechanical or electrical engineer and can convert that to kWs and then divide by 600, you can get the amperage per motor. I'm not. An Internet source gives the formula. You would then need to know how many cars (and thus how many motors) are operating on a section of track supplied by a given substation.

As indicated in another Internet source, amperage has nothing to do with whether it is AC (like the 15 amp circuit breaker in your house) or DC (the amps in a car battery), but is 6,250,000,000,000,000,000 electrons per second flowing somewhere.