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| Re: PHOTOS: MBTA MPXpress Locomotive #010 In Delivery (1024592) | |||
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Re: PHOTOS: MBTA MPXpress Locomotive #010 In Delivery |
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Posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Wed Jan 12 01:14:31 2011, in response to Re: PHOTOS: MBTA MPXpress Locomotive #010 In Delivery, posted by aem7ac on Tue Jan 11 19:12:56 2011. In the 1960s-1980s, the fashion was to convert failing commuter rail lines to modern rapid transit systems. That wasn't a bad bet back then. It probably still isn't a bad bet now.The problem is that in the United States, the choice ends up being between the Red Line at 45 mph MAS and direct access to downtown, and a EMD-powered diesel locomotive with higher MAS, but awful acceleration performance with a terminal at some out of the way place. The Europeans have something that serves as a compromise between this with a somewhat high performance multiple unit geared toward more higher passenger capacities and one person operation with tunnels for access to downtown. The big difference is that the Europeans attempt to use their "mainline" railways to provide such a service, while in the States, we end up providing nearly duplicative trackage to do this. So to make a half-assed example, I'd probably be content with MBTA if they ran some service from one side of Rt 128 to the other via the Washington Street tunnel without building some specialized and separate tracks. The problem is that no American railway operator would be willing to do anything like this, hence Will's remark that operators are stuck in the 1950s. |
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