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| Re: A few snaps of MTA Maryland Subway (379973) | |||
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Re: A few snaps of MTA Maryland Subway |
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Posted by WillD on Thu Feb 1 17:07:13 2007, in response to Re: A few snaps of MTA Maryland Subway, posted by R42 4787 on Thu Feb 1 12:17:15 2007. I may be wrong but I don't think the resemblance between the Miami/Baltimore Metro cars and the LA Red Line cars is completely coincidental. I believe the original idea was to get LA's system up and operating around the same time as the Baltimore and Miami systems, with all three ordering a 'standard' subway car. I came across a USDOT/FTA (or maybe it was still UMTA) article in Railway Age from the late 1970s which made reference to the three systems, and the prospects for decreasing the costs of subway construction through the use of standardized components. Of course this has completely not come to pass and both attempts to take advantage of standardized transit rolling stock in the US to fuel expansion, be it subway or LRT, have failed miserably. I may be wrong, but I think the strangest thing about the article was that it mentioned the Budd/TransitAmerica subway cars possibly being chopped down to size and built for SEPTA's Broad Street Subway, and MBTA's Red Line. Of course in the end SEPTA went with Kawasaki for the B-IVs in 1981 and the MBTA with UDTC for the 01700s in 1987.As for why the Bredas look so similar to the Budd/TransitAmerica cars I'm afraid I have nothing concrete. Based on that Railway Age article I'm willing to bet that when LA's politicians were dragged kicking and screaming into the Red Line and the very ground the subway was being built through conspired against the effort the delays mounted to the point that when it finally came time to order the cars Budd had long before bowed out of the railcar business and LA was left with nobody to build their "standard" subway cars. LA has never been known for being particularly revolutionary with their transit (at least since PE folded), so they probably just drew up a car slightly different from the Budd car and shopped it around at the railcar builders then looking for US contracts. Breda got the contract and built the semi-Budd knockoffs. The somewhat amusing thing is that while the Red Line is the newest subway in the country its operation is nearly identical to the 10 year older Baltimore and Miami systems. The trains use wide-cab OPTO even though by 1990 a closed circuit TV OPTO would have been easily doable. Wayside signalling with (IIRC, and if I'm wrong I apologize) trip arms rule the road and no form of automatic train control exists anywhere on the system. The line opened in 1993, yet its operation is the exact same as systems almost 10 times its age (such as SEPTA's BSS, MBTA's Red, Yellow, and Blue lines, the CTA L, etc). It's almost as though the designers were looking to create one big anachronism, and if they were they certainly succeeded. |
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