[PRCo] Re: The "Light Rail ex-1600 1700s"

[Boris Cefer]

Tom, you forgot to say one thing. Perhaps the most important.
What took on old equipment two minutes to find and two hours to repair, that
takes two hours to find and two minutes to repair on the most recent
vehicles. Well, it takes two minutes if you don't have to wait six months
for some expensive parts which are not on stock.

Boris

----- Original Message -----
From: "TEP" <tompark at telus.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 8:50 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: The "Light Rail ex-1600 1700s"


> Having been for 44 years, and still am, specifying, testing and
> commissioning new electric rail vehicles I have to disagree with Herb
> Brannon that parts today are inferior in quality to the "old days".
> They are different and often more complex, with far more electronics --
> but the comparable stuff -- motors, gears, brake actuators and control
> valves et. al., are better and more reliable. Quality control is much
> improved across the board.
>
> When I started my career at Westinghouse, East Pittsburgh, in 1962 we
> thought it good to get 10,000 miles per total road failure from a new
> subway or streetcar (tow job or serviceman dispatched), many properties
> averaged less than 5000 miles, some disastrously less. Today we specify
> and achieve 80,000 - 100,000 miles per "dead" failure -- some designs
> exceed 150,000 miles. In part this is due to the on-board electronic
> diagnostics that reports back, and allows fixes, before failure -- such
> as hot motors, doors that exceed pre-set closing times, etc. It also
> depends on maintenance ability and quality. The old adage that "if it
> came in running", it went out the next morning, has gone.
>
>
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> Tom Parkinson Vancouver BC
> 604 733-5430  fax 733-5437
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