[PRCo] Re: SE DE

[Fred Schneider]

A lot of reasons for single-end equipment:

1) you can put more people in more seats.   Depending on how wide the  
center doors are or whether or not there are center doors, a single- 
end car will seat 9 to 23 more people than a double-end car.   
Therefore you have more happy customers.

2)  Happy customers produce more revenue.

3)  Seats cost less than additional controls, wiring, air brake  
piping and hand brake rigging.

4)  Turn around time at the ends of lines using single end equipment  
is shorter than that required for double-end equipment.   The  
operator doesn't have to lug the handles, money changer, his supplies  
and the fare box to the other end of the car and flip all those  
blankety-blank seats.   You can go through a loop, fill in the day  
card, and be out in 30 seconds.   The double end car will require  
several minutes.  So single end cars on a line might save a car or  
two in the rush hour and that, in today's dollars is $2 million for  
an articulated or about $1 million for a single car.

5)  Traffic congestion favors single end equipment because you can  
turn it on private property.

Working against it and in favor of the double-end cars you already have:

1)  loops, either on private property or around city streets cost  
money.   Special work is incredibly costly to fabricate.   ("Special  
work" is the term used for track frogs and switch points.   It is  
usually a manganese steel which is much harder and more durable than  
ordinary carbon-steel.)

2)  If you build the loop on private property, the real estate costs  
money.   If there is already a house there, it costs money to  
demolish it, fill in the basement and level the property.

3)  If you have a large fleet of undepreciated and not fully  
amortized double-cars, you really don't want to write them off and  
buy new single-end cars if you can you don't have to.   You also  
don't want to spend the money shopping those double-end cars to  
convert them into single-end cars if you don't have to because that  
costs money.

4)  Stockholders don't like you spending their money on things you  
don't need.

5)  When I say double-end cars you already have, remember that  
everyone already had double-end cars.  That is the way the industry  
started.

6)  You can also turn double-end cars on a spur onto private property  
but once you have the land for a spur, you might as well take  
advantage of items i, 2, 3 and 4 in the first section.

And then there is the narrow versus wide streets issue.

Finally there is the status quo issue.   Every business is filled  
with people whose mentality favors "we've always done it that way and  
we should continue to do so" regardless of whether or not it makes  
any sense at all.


On May 17, 2008, at 2:38 PM, Phillip Clark Campbell wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: John Swindler <j_swindler at hotmail.com>
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>> Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2008 8:34:55 AM
>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: SE DE
>>
>>
>> Ah, Fred,
>> Russ Jackson told us a very valid reason for large cities to go to  
>> single end
>> equipment, and Ed Tennyson has told us about the 1700 series  
>> interurban
>> purchase.
>>
>> Russ' stories about MUNI also says a lot about the Third Ave. Ry.  
>> route
>> structure in Manhattan.
>
> Mr.Swindler!
>
> ....And those stories are?
>
>
>
>
>
>