Azur trains will be delivered by truck
The new Azur trains will have to be brought to the STM’s Youville shops by truck, the railway spur that was used to deliver the old trains having been demolished in the 1990s.
An Azur train is 152 meters long and, unlike the existing trains, can’t be split into three modular sections.
Mathieu 07:56 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
If the cost of bringing the cars by train were really cheaper, it could have been arranged, I believe. They don’t have that spur going inside the shop anymore, but the track still passes right by! Or they could have brought the new cars by trains/boat and put them on a truck for the last mile.
Alexandre 08:38 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
The new trains can be split in nine separate cars, just like the old ones. Each car is 17 meters long, which is still a big piece of equipment to carry.
Mathieu 08:57 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
The new trains will have nine cars, but can we assemble trains of less than nine cars, technically speaking?
SN86 11:24 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
They’ve moved metro cars in the past they can do it again. Hope for no spontanous sinkholes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmJodiUfDMQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=239s
Kate 11:51 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
Alexandre, the trains are going to be pretty unitary. When I was at the Youville shops last November they were pretty clear about having to make major changes in their maintenance sheds because they don’t expect to be able to take the new trains apart. At that point they were finishing building several 152-metre-long repair trenches so an entire train can be slotted into place for maintenance and repairs from below – here’s a photo by Ben Soo.
There were separate segments of MR-63 and MR-73 trains here and there being worked on individually – another Ben photo – but the STM guy said this would be ending when the older trains were phased out.
ant6n 15:10 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
Well, multiple unit trains can be taken apart; they could probably be put together in a different configuration other than 9 cars, but then you need a different ratio of end-cars to middle-cars. So you will be wasting cars.
Anyhoo, this is major work, i.e. much more work than usual maintenance — that’s why building a long trench makes more sense, you don’t want to have to disassemble the train to look at it. But for example, if two trains collided and a bunch of cars got destroyed beyond repair, you could probably put the working parts together to build a new trainset.
Why would you want a car length other than 9 cars?
Stefan 16:19 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
ant6n: in vienna the trains get shortened from 4 to 3 wagons (or 3 to 2, for lines with shorter stations) at off-peak times (“kurzzug”). i guess it saves electricity.
SN86 16:20 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
6 car is the maximum for the Blue line due to the St Michel platform being only 2/3 the normal length. Also the yellow line is variable length. Also they used to run 6 car trains on the green and orange line on weekends in the 1990′s, so it’s useful.
Robert 19:16 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
All I can say is it was really stupid of them to demolish that spur without thinking to replace it. They didn’t think they’d ever be buying more trains?
Doobish 20:26 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
Love that Ben Soo photo set.
ant6n 23:04 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
Ok, so you can probably change the length of the trains, but it will need a major operation taking on the order of weeks. So using trains with different lengths at different times of the day are not feasible, because you need all trains at full length during rush hour (modulu some maintenance ratio), and they cannot be changed quickly enough. If there are trains you can never use during rush hour, then you wasted money on rolling stock.
As for the blue line – the current rolling stock is going to be operating for quite a while, it’s going to take more than a decade to replace it all, if not two. By that time, the blue line will be extended, increasing the ridership to the point where they it makes sense to use full length trains.
So my question why you would want to have shorter trains, I am asking given the realities in Montreal.
Kate 08:40 on 2012/09/28 Permalink
SN86, why is the Saint-Michel platform short?
OK, I looked it up on the Métro de Montréal site. “The platforms themselves are shortened, being the length only of a six-car train rather than the nine-car length of every other station. The full-length platform was built, but the remainder was not decorated and is closed off to allow a control room to be built. The unfinished platforms are visible from the western end of the platform.”
I’m guessing the idea is that when the blue line is extended, the control room will be moved and the station will be able to have a full-length platform.
Robert, it’s one of the smaller stupid decisions made here that make me wonder what kind of stupid decisions we’re making now that will seem incredibly short-sighted in future years.