MHV9218

13 minutes ago, R32 3838 said:

First group of R46's, it has been said to be 100 cars were built with regular steel frames vs stainless steel frames. 

I didn't believe this ether since I actually like the R46's 

Don't believe that's true. The only carbon steel on the R46s is the end bonnet. The sort of steel that can and will rot and rust is carbon steel. On the R44s, the chassis and side bands were carbon steel and stainless sections were welded on. The bands were painted over initially, but you were able to see the difference in material types after GOH and the removal of the stripes. You can tell carbon steel visually – R42s have a carbon steel chassis. SIRTOA R44s have had the carbon bands replaced with stainless (not sure about the underbody). The R46 structure is entirely stainless steel, none of the shotwelding of the R44s. Frame rot should not be an issue beyond the bonnets. 

No. Somebody wrongly posted that on Wikipedia. As far as I'm aware the fleet is down six sets at most. Already reported are 2 cars retired, some talk of 12 total gone. 80 are set to go first. There are rumors of a total March 31st retirement, but I truly doubt that'll happen. Smart money seems to be an / split keeping the 46s off the to avoid the issues at 168th and Euclid, with the chance of a return to the  and  in the summer if they last long, and if ENY allows the fleet to go back from NTT.

Nice surprise to see an R46 running today. Still out there.

Pretty interesting to have reduced service the 27, 30, 31, and I assume the 1st too. That's a long stretch of time until service is normal again, but then again the city does feel pretty empty – just a lot of tourists.

16 hours ago, WestFarms36 said:

8338 never got repainted, only the rear got replaced back in 2017 or 2018. The rest of the Bus is still in its Factory Paint Job.

[pic]

Well that looks horrendous. Is Helen Keller doing these repaints? Goddamn...

On 12/21/2019 at 2:10 PM, VIP said:

The smaller text font sizes came about around 2002-2004 during their SMS. The same with the R32’s. The smaller font signs were added if the scrolling was tough, stuck, or simply if the signs were really dirty and not legible. The larger font/abbreviation rollsigns are from the 80’s 

Come to think of it, the larger ones are extremely similar to the R68A originals / R68 1988 replacements. I wonder if it's a similar order.

Zero chains out for this quick snow squall. Could be slippery...

That MTS order was unfortunately quite a bit away from happening. MTS didn't have the infrastructure to produce the number of test buses the MTA needed without confirmation of an order, since only large-scale companies can afford to produce units without a confirmed buyer. I think that was halted pretty early on once that was an issue.

My understanding back in 2012 or so was that the MTA came damn close to locking in an order for 90 Designlines. I remind ENY and I were talking about that at the time, both hearing the same thing from different places in the system. I never figured out why exactly that got canceled, since my impression was that there was decent progress on the order. Ancient history now though, I guess. 

And they almost, almost managed to put on all the stickers without a crooked one...

11 hours ago, trainfan22 said:

Was lucky to bump into R68 2755 which still as its factory delivered number plates. This car got into an accident with a flatbed car IIRC and was sidelined for quite some time before returning to service.

Nah, the number plates you see on R68s and R68As are the factory delivered ones. After the accident that car lost its plate, so the TA made up a new one using stickers (the same types they used to cover R10 plates, work cars, etc.). That's why it looks so beat – porcelain ages better than that.

18 minutes ago, S78 via Hylan said:

They could be at GA just for maintenance.

14 minutes ago, Snorunts said:

For maintenance or service?

Nope, these buses are (for now) assigned to GA. That's why Novabus 5000 posted them.

Buses there for maintenance aren't re-assigned in the system. I'm surprised to see a lead acid bus leave Manhattan myself – it's been 10 years since the 3900s were in Brooklyn.

3 hours ago, Jemorie said:

But if they continue this on weekends every summer from next year and onwards, you’d have to consider that permanent. Generally, they’ve been doing this since Summer 2016, even if not all the previous years were for the whole summer. That’s why I feel Wikipedia should be more simplistic unless the  has something else up their sleeves in the coming years.

Oh, I thought you meant permanent as in year-round. I suppose it is a semi-permanent summer change, but they've never said that, so probably best not to speculate.

23 hours ago, Jemorie said:

@Union Tpke, I stumbled upon that Rockaway Park  shuttle article page on Wikipedia and read its history section. Does anybody who are members of that site even aware that the summer weekend extension to/from Rockaway Blvd is permanent or no?

It's not permanent, but it ran it for the whole summer this year as opposed to only part of it. It's a great service that people are surprisingly unaware of. 

26 minutes ago, Calvin said:

1942, 1938, 1926, 1924 (just one rollsign is single lined, the other one is original) and 1934: The single units set

This was the 1947-1948 etc. set, which is also still original. If I remember right, on 1924 that rollsign is original but it's from an R62, with Akzidenz, not Helvetica.

Also, has anybody checked if the original floors remain on 1958/the 214x set that had them (incl. a piece of redbird floor)?

194x set on the still rocking original lights, original rollsigns, and original stanchions. Not to mention the bulkhead rollsigns every single car has.

That stat about the number fonts is exactly what drove somebody like Vignelli crazy. Cohesion was the goal – hodgepodges of fonts and sizes were a sign of bad design. 

Any ideas on the last time we had an R46 ? Pre-GOH R46s? 

52 minutes ago, Around the Horn said:

I had 1916-1920 in my  train this morning and I can confirm that all five cars have the new single line rollsigns. The entire set except 1918 also has the LED circle/diamonds 

@MHV9218

Such a bummer. Waste of money replacing signs that were in perfect shape (and far better designed than the single-line ones). Surprised to hear 1917 finally got the LEDs too, I actually thought they'd stopped adding those. The ex-240th cars have been rehabbed and all without them.

The cancellation would not be based on underground/overground conditions, but whether a Plan is put into effect for the snowstorm. Depending on the Plan, G/Os are canceled and trains may be stored in tunnels. If we end up looking at a possibility of 5 inches of snow, I'd expect changes.

When it comes to throwing passengers around, I will say that the last car leaving Grand Central on the  s/b is always astounding to me. People go flying, but it's such a norm that TSS protocol must be to allow it these days. 

3 hours ago, Q23 via 108 said:

Just out of curiousity, why were some R33s painted Green in the mid - late 80s?

Always liked how "Greenbirds" look but never knew the reasoning behind it

There was only one full train of greenbirds to my knowledge. It was a trial color that was probably introduced around the same time as the R10 greenbirds, but on the IRT the red replaced it. Supposedly the repainted set looked essentially brown since the red over green came out so dark, even with whatever primer.

Didn't this happen in 2013? I remember the / via the  that year with the holiday train but can't remember what the  was doing. 

1 hour ago, Around the Horn said:

Yeah that was my train on the on Thursday, so the LED on 1917 must be recent. I was totally unaware that those cars had original rollsigns so I just though the single line signs were normal.

To be clear, 1918 did have an original R62 sign with single-line Akzidenz text. The new rolls are single-line Helvetica. I'll have to see the trains in person but if you saw it that recently it's possible it was the original sign on 1918, just the 62 part. Up to Calvin's account.

On 11/20/2019 at 7:51 PM, RR503 said:

It isn't like we _can't_ single track, we just choose not to in many cases. Especially with work involving river tunnels, we've become much more reroute-happy over the years, and generally do not leverage crossovers to the extent they could be. 

The MTA's cost-minimizing philosophy on crossovers: don't use it, might be unreliable -> locks into place from lack of use -> can't use it, unreliable.

Just now, Future ENY OP said:

All they do on the UWS is COMPLAIN..

Eh, I'm with them on this. These announcements are both completely useless and pretty annoying. If I lived above a route with buses using them (I'm near 40-footers, not 60-footers) I'd be pretty sick of it after a while. If you think about it, most of the neighborhoods where these announcements play are commercial corridors. UWS is different that way. 

Whoa–here's hoping they save those, cause they're great pieces of history. I wonder if the pillar mosaics are also preserved, though unfortunately those were already covered with new signs. I've gotta make a trip there. Only shame will be losing the early-1980s Akzidenz porcelain signs, which made this one of the last stations to have a full set of Akzidenz pillar/wall signs.