|
|
| Re: R16 Scenes (1150474) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: R16 Scenes |
|
|
Posted by CJ on Thu Apr 12 19:16:17 2012, in response to Re: R16 Scenes, posted by Joe V on Thu Apr 12 19:04:53 2012. Someone else posted it here back in 2007, so I'll copy the article from five years ago and post it.The New York Times December 11, 1986, Thursday REQUIEM FOR SUBWAY CAR 6321, AGE 31 By RICHARD LEVINE Section B; Page 1 Car No. 6321 was pronounced dead last week at the Transit Authority East New York maintenance shop after a long illness. It was 31 years old. No ceremony was held, no tears were shed. If anything, riders of the M line should rejoice. It was one of - if not the - biggest lemons in the 6,000-car fleet. That the gray and graffiti-scarred veteran of 897,214 miles was diagnosed as terminally ill and put out of its, and everyone's, misery was the result of a Transit Authority program to spot, repair or simply banish from the system persistent offenders that all by themselves can scramble a rush hour and the schedules of tens of thousands of passengers. 'A Lot of Complexity to These Cars' ''Some people don't think there are such things as lemons,'' Lawrence P. Greenfield, manager of maintenance analysis and planning for the car-equipment department, said. ''They think they should be fixable. But there is a lot of complexity to these cars. ''Riders see a roof and a floor and two sides. They don't see the electrical equipment and pneumatic connections that make it go. You have to get down into the pits to see the switches, motors, relays, wiring. When you have to replace parts that wear out'' -and a subway car has 40,000 parts - ''then you see how complicated it is.'' Every month, an I.B.M. 38C computer compiles a list of all cars in the system, worst at the top, best on the bottom. It is up to the supervisors at the shops to decide what to do about any bad car in their jurisdiction. They might send them out for special repairs, move them to the head of the line for complete overhauls, tow them to the back of the yard to be used only as spares or, as was finally the case with No. 6321, simply get rid of them. With new equipment arriving, the authority plans to scrap a total of 414 cars this year and 530 next year. Just which car is the biggest clinker is hard to say. At the top of the latest lemon list, for the 12 months ended Oct. 31, are three cars averaging fewer than 1,000 miles before breaking down - an R-10 averaging 480 miles, an R-44 averaging 898 and a second R-10 averaging 941. No. 6321, an R-16, was averaging 1,456 miles, making it the 10th worst by that measure. Lemons at Their Ripest By comparison, the fleet, as whole, was averaging 12,369 miles between breakdowns during October, and the gleaming, Japanese-made R-62's on the Lexington Avenue IRT were at 46,791. But to catch lemons at their ripest, the authority scoring system gives more weight to recent failures. Breakdowns are worth 10 points each in the latest three months, 5 points in the previous three months and then 2 points and 1 point in the second and first quarters. No. 6321 had broken down 24 times in the 12-month period, but nine times in the three months ended in October. That gave it more points than any of the nine cars ahead of it on the lemon list. Below No. 6321 on the list were at least two cars with even higher totals - one a relatively new R-46 that had already undergone a minor overhaul and whose problems, Mr. Greenfield said, have been resolved. The shop superintendent in the East New York section of Brooklyn, John S. Cox, started worrying about No. 6321 as it crawled up the lemon list over the summer and became, in his words, ''No. 1 on the hit parade.'' Wouldn't Stay on the Sidelines An overhaul was out of the question, because the R-16's - the second oldest cars in the fleet and a class that Mr. Greenfield says ''aren't anything to write home about now and haven't been for a long time'' - are scheduled to go out of service soon. Instead, Mr. Cox tried to use No. 6321 as little as possible. Because of car shortages, however, it sometimes found its way into rush-hour service, and Mr. Cox tried as best he could to keep it moving. On Aug. 15, No. 6321 was accelerating too slowly at Essex Street in Manhattan, forcing the train it was part of to be taken out of service. There were problems with its doors Aug. 21 and 26. On Sept. 23, it started smoking - what the authority gingerly calls a ''heat generating mishap'' - at Ninth Avenue in Brooklyn. On Oct. 1, it lost power at 95th Street in Brooklyn and was taken out of service. On Oct. 2, the brakes failed to charge, and it was taken out of service at Broad Street in Manhattan. On Oct. 13, 14 and 15, it suffered repeated door problems and had to be removed from service. Series of Miseries The period covered by the lemon list ends in October, but No. 6321's miseries went on. These are some of the details from the Transit Authority's computerized log: * Nov. 11. The train that includes No. 6321 is reported ''dead and dark'' - no power or lights - at 7:20 A.M. at the Fresh Pond yard in Queens before it can even begin its day's work. It turns out that No. 6321 has blown motor-generator fuses. Remarkably, seven of the eight other cars in the train also have problems. It was, Mr. Greenfield said, ''a rolling wreck.'' * Nov. 13. Behaving sluggishly, No. 6321 is taken out of service at the Knickerbocker Avenue station in Brooklyn at 6:30 A.M. because the conductor does not think the train can make it over the Williamsburg Bridge. The passengers are discharged, and the train heads for the East New York shop. One other train is canceled as a result. * Nov. 21. Trouble at Marcy Avenue in Brooklyn is reported at 5:13 P.M. This time, it is not the fault of No. 6321. A trip arm on the track is up when it should have been down, setting off the car's emergency brakes. Fortunately, there are no injuries, and the train stays in service. * Nov. 25. No. 6321 breaks down in the Essex Street station at 3:22 P.M., its doors failing to open. It is not clear why. The train is taken out of service, and the delay causes one other train to be canceled. * Dec. 4. No. 6321 fails in the Broad Street station at 8:49 A.M., backing up three other trains. Its four motors are dead because of deteriorated wiring. The train is taken out of service. #10 Pages of Failures By then, Mr. Cox had made up his mind. The career of No. 6321 formally ended the next day. Some parts were scavenged at East New York; others will be stripped when the car arrives at the main maintenance plant at Coney Island on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn. No. 6321 left as an epitaph a computer printout covering its last troubled year - 10 pages of brake failures, power failures, smoky motors, blown fuses and malfunctioning doors interspersed with scores of repairs. ''This car is telling us that something is wrong,'' Mr. Greenfield says, reviewing the record in his office in downtown Brooklyn. ''We are listening now, rather than ignoring it.'' An optimistic man, Mr. Greenfield can envision a time when he will no longer be facing a monthly lemon list. ''That great day is coming soon,'' he insisted. ''By the end of 1989, we will have a fleet that is completely new and overhauled, so we should have a drastic reduction in major lemons. ''Then I'll worry about improving the quality of the new cars. There's always plenty of work to do around here.'' |
|
|
|