[Steve X]

you're assuming that no LRV will get totalled by oncoming cars on the surface section.......

I think this is not really a big issue unless Alstom decides to stop making Flexities.

Oh yeah. I think TTC totaled some of their streetcars due to bad practices than being in collision.

That includes the 2 that got flooded. I believe one was told to drive through it. Unless the tunnel floods, I think they’ll be safe. They avoided the Eglinton flats flood plain with an elevated structure.

Then there was the one that has a burnt top thanks to overhead failures. The crosstown has much simpler overhead so it’s less likely it’s going to happen.

I do believe the collision one that ended up in a George Brown building is repairable. It’s more of body damage than component failure.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

Oh yeah. I think TTC totaled some of their streetcars due to bad practices than being in collision.

That includes the 2 that got flooded. I believe one was told to drive through it. Unless the tunnel floods, I think they’ll be safe. They avoided the Eglinton flats flood plain with an elevated structure.

Then there was the one that has a burnt top thanks to overhead failures. The crosstown has much simpler overhead so it’s less likely it’s going to happen.

I do believe the collision one that ended up in a George Brown building is repairable. It’s more of body damage than component failure.

Calgary has definitely had lots of collisions, but the only LRV that was retired due to damage was one that derailed running past the end of the track at Tuscany station.

Calgary Transit 2301-2338 - CPTDB Wiki

cptdb.ca

 

[T3G]

Oh yeah. I think TTC totaled some of their streetcars due to bad practices than being in collision.

That includes the 2 that got flooded. I believe one was told to drive through it. Unless the tunnel floods, I think they’ll be safe. They avoided the Eglinton flats flood plain with an elevated structure.

Then there was the one that has a burnt top thanks to overhead failures. The crosstown has much simpler overhead so it’s less likely it’s going to happen.

I do believe the collision one that ended up in a George Brown building is repairable. It’s more of body damage than component failure.

None of the aforementioned equipment has been officially declared to be unrepairable. There are 6 long term holds. From the original order: the 2 that got flooded, one that smacked a truck in the summer of 2022, another one that had an accident in early 2023, and one that suffered the electrical fire at the end of 2022. From the new one, the one that took a culinary course at George Brown and didn't seem that badly damaged, from the photos. The service summary indicates all 204 cars from the original order are still on the roster.

Of course, part of that has to do with the secrecy surrounding the aforementioned equipment... the 2 cars that got flooded have been out of service for almost 7 years and we somehow still don't know what fate awaits them? The most recent development, posted on CPTDB by a reliable member, indicated that the cars had been cleaned and repaired in NY and were heading on a train to Thunder Bay on October 13, 2019. What the hold up could be, so long after, I can't fathom. I have seen it speculated that they were waiting to finish the 60 car add on order, but that's nonsense, because the original order was completed in March 2020 and the add on order wasn't signed until 2021.

As for the accident victims, I rarely hear of multi section LRVs being written off after accidents. Prague has totalled the front and rear sections of quite a few of their Skoda 15 Ts, and they were repaired by being sent back to the manufacturer, who, in the worst case scenario, scrapped the damaged section and furnished a new one. The all time record for one being out of service was almost 8 years, having suffered a collision in September 2015 and being returned to service in June 2023.

 

[Steve X]

None of the aforementioned equipment has been officially declared to be unrepairable. There are 6 long term holds. From the original order: the 2 that got flooded, one that smacked a truck in the summer of 2022, another one that had an accident in early 2023, and one that suffered the electrical fire at the end of 2022. From the new one, the one that took a culinary course at George Brown and didn't seem that badly damaged, from the photos. The service summary indicates all 204 cars from the original order are still on the roster.

Of course, part of that has to do with the secrecy surrounding the aforementioned equipment... the 2 cars that got flooded have been out of service for almost 7 years and we somehow still don't know what fate awaits them? The most recent development, posted on CPTDB by a reliable member, indicated that the cars had been cleaned and repaired in NY and were heading on a train to Thunder Bay on October 13, 2019. What the hold up could be, so long after, I can't fathom. I have seen it speculated that they were waiting to finish the 60 car add on order, but that's nonsense, because the original order was completed in March 2020 and the add on order wasn't signed until 2021.

As for the accident victims, I rarely hear of multi section LRVs being written off after accidents. Prague has totalled the front and rear sections of quite a few of their Skoda 15 Ts, and they were repaired by being sent back to the manufacturer, who, in the worst case scenario, scrapped the damaged section and furnished a new one. The all time record for one being out of service was almost 8 years, having suffered a collision in September 2015 and being returned to service in June 2023.

That is true that none are officially retired but they are in long term if not permanent hold.

That doesn’t make them part of the fleet anymore. I suspect the cost of replacing all the electrical components is astonishingly high. To the point that they might as well part of the car and buy a replacement instead.

 

[T3G]

That is true that none are officially retired but they are in long term if not permanent hold.

That doesn’t make them part of the fleet anymore. I suspect the cost of replacing all the electrical components is astonishingly high. To the point that they might as well part of the car and buy a replacement instead.

That would only explain the fire damaged and flooded units, and none of the collision victims.

Replacing the electronics might be expensive, but I doubt it comes close to the ~10 million price tag for a brand new unit.

There was an ALRV that had a similar mishap occur in 2007, but they fixed it up and ran it until 2014. I can't imagine a considerably younger Flexity being scrapped.

 

[TOtramz]

Has train testing been ramping up even more since the last few updates?

Given that they will start official simulation soon, I'm still hoping for an earlier opening but more training is always a good thing.

 

[EYorker]

Has train testing been ramping up even more since the last few updates?

Given that they will start official simulation soon, I'm still hoping for an earlier opening but more training is always a good thing.

I was travelling along Eglinton yesterday around 5 PM and I only observed 2 trains on the entire surface section from Kennedy to Leslie. One train was holding WB at Lebovic. Another was doing a good clip heading EB at Wynford.

Seems to be hit and miss as to how much action is happening along the line.

 

[Steve X]

That would only explain the fire damaged and flooded units, and none of the collision victims.

Replacing the electronics might be expensive, but I doubt it comes close to the ~10 million price tag for a brand new unit.

There was an ALRV that had a similar mishap occur in 2007, but they fixed it up and ran it until 2014. I can't imagine a considerably younger Flexity being scrapped.

It does take a lot of time and effort to repair any vehicle than to build one of an assembly line. This is true for a passenger car and for the TTC.

I don’t know how much work it would take to replace everything on a streetcar but I would imagine it is significant and more labour intensive than assembling a new one.

 

[T3G]

Wait, are we talking about the amount of labour required, or cost? Because those are separate criteria. The cars are obviously not designed to be taken apart willy-nilly and it may well be easier to manufacture a new car, but it is difficult to imagine how exactly rewiring a vehicle from scratch is more expensive than having to run wires, and then build an entire new machine around it as well.

If it was not considered cheaper to supply 66 new cars rather than re-welding the old ones, a process during which the cars had to be effectively stripped down to the frame and rebuilt, how can it be cheaper to build a brand new Flexity rather than replace the affected components on the flooded and fried ones? Especially the flooded ones - most of the expensive, high voltage stuff (sans traction motors and gearboxes) is on the roof of the flooded ones, what they had to do was redo the interior and replace the trucks and the low-voltage auxiliary circuits in said interior; which might be a pain in the a$$ but is also not nearly as expensive.

 

[smallspy]

The cars are obviously not designed to be taken apart willy-nilly and it may well be easier to manufacture a new car, but it is difficult to imagine how exactly rewiring a vehicle from scratch is more expensive than having to run wires, and then build an entire new machine around it as well.

It's always going to be more complicated to affect a repair because the initial process of the repair is going to be removing things in the way of what needs to be repaired. And in most cases, removing those things has to be done in a way that allows them to be reinstalled afterwards.

In the case of a rewiring project, ones need to remove all of the interior panels in the way of the wiring loom, and make sure that all plugs are accessible. Only then can the previous wiring loom be removed and replaced. And frankly, hope that there are no other snags.

This is as opposed to building a car from scratch, where the timing of the installation of the wiring is done in such a way that the crews doing the installation have unfettered access to everything that they need. No panels to remove, no plugs to detach, no other modules in the way.

Dan

 

[Steve X]

Wait, are we talking about the amount of labour required, or cost? Because those are separate criteria. The cars are obviously not designed to be taken apart willy-nilly and it may well be easier to manufacture a new car, but it is difficult to imagine how exactly rewiring a vehicle from scratch is more expensive than having to run wires, and then build an entire new machine around it as well.

If it was not considered cheaper to supply 66 new cars rather than re-welding the old ones, a process during which the cars had to be effectively stripped down to the frame and rebuilt, how can it be cheaper to build a brand new Flexity rather than replace the affected components on the flooded and fried ones? Especially the flooded ones - most of the expensive, high voltage stuff (sans traction motors and gearboxes) is on the roof of the flooded ones, what they had to do was redo the interior and replace the trucks and the low-voltage auxiliary circuits in said interior; which might be a pain in the a$$ but is also not nearly as expensive.

When you buy a car, you’re paying for parts and labour. When you get a quote for collision, you have to pay for the labour too.

In TTC’s terms, this would mean either allocating the resources to hopefully fix one streetcar on X amount of hours. If they can’t fix it, they lost those hours paid that could have gone towards something more useful.

 

[T3G]

It's always going to be more complicated to affect a repair because the initial process of the repair is going to be removing things in the way of what needs to be repaired. And in most cases, removing those things has to be done in a way that allows them to be reinstalled afterwards.

In the case of a rewiring project, ones need to remove all of the interior panels in the way of the wiring loom, and make sure that all plugs are accessible. Only then can the previous wiring loom be removed and replaced. And frankly, hope that there are no other snags.

This is as opposed to building a car from scratch, where the timing of the installation of the wiring is done in such a way that the crews doing the installation have unfettered access to everything that they need. No panels to remove, no plugs to detach, no other modules in the way.

Dan

Sure, I get all that - but the question is, which choice is the more economic one?

Considering that it was reported that 4471 and 78 had been cleaned and repaired by October 2019, I would have guessed the latter - but then, I'm not sure why they wouldn't have been recommissioned ages ago.

 

[crs1026]

Considering that they were water/sewage damaged and the cleaning thereof (which happened in New York State) would have required access to all the nooks and crannies, I'm speculating that the two flooded cars are effectively stripped shells at this point. One would think that there would be minimal corrosion impact - it was one event, dried out immediately afterwards - so one would think the shells are still usable, but that's just a layman's speculation.

- Paul

 

[smallspy]

Sure, I get all that - but the question is, which choice is the more economic one?

Considering that it was reported that 4471 and 78 had been cleaned and repaired by October 2019, I would have guessed the latter - but then, I'm not sure why they wouldn't have been recommissioned ages ago.

It's a very valid question.

But consider this - the TTC has far, far more streetcars than it needs for service right now, and not enough places to store them yet. What's the rush to get them back?

Dan

 

[Richard White]

It's a very valid question.

But consider this - the TTC has far, far more streetcars than it needs for service right now, and not enough places to store them yet. What's the rush to get them back?

Dan

The bigger question is, if they have all these extra cars, why are they not attempting to run more frequent service to free up storage space?