19-06-15 PHOTOS: PATCO Shoppe Tour

In June 2019 I finally got in on a PATCO shoppe tour.  Typically organized by my local West Jersey NRHS chapter, these tours have been happening with some degree of regularity for years, but despite having been a PATCO rider since age 3, I had never had an opportunity to get in on one until this point.  In fact, I had actually gotten in on a Baltimore transit shop tour before  managed to get in on a PATCO one.  You can find all of the PATCO Shoppe tour photos here (mirror) and I encourage you to look at them as I am only going to be posting a small sample here. 

The group met in the parking lot.  It was a pretty good turnout, which is not surprising given the type of event.

First stop on the tour was the axle press that separates or joins various axle components including wheels, bearings and gearboxes.

Next stop was the machine shoppe area with the typical slate of drill presses, lathes and band saws.

 PATCO's wheel truing machine is an older style that requires the trucks to removed and placed onto the machine with a crane.  Newer wheel machines can work on trucks that are still under the vehicle. The machine grinds down worn wheels to restore the profile and remove flat spots.

Speaking of trucks, PATCO is one of two remaining users of the Pioneer III truck, the other being Amtrak with the Amfleet series.  The P-III was designed by the Budd company as a lightweight  truck that would derail less on bad track.  It was available in both powered and unpowered variants and was previously installed on the SEPTA Silverliner II and MTA M1s.

The truck frames some in two halves and as you can see they are very simple affairs. 

 

 These gearboxes are connected to the truck and transmit power from the motors to the axles.

Here we see spare axle and gearbox assemblies ready to be connected to a truck.

PATCO uses GE 1255 A3 motors rated for 140 HP at 650/325 volts DC and 4600 RPM.

 Two motors are mounted on each truck for a total of 560hp/car.

Finally the truck is mated to the car via this bolster, which I think uses an air bag suspension system and creates the soft bouncy ride.

17-08-26 PHOTOS: Baltimore Metrorail Shoppe Tour

So here we continue with Part 2 of my Baltimore transit shoppe tours sponsored by the Baltimore Chapter NRHS. In Part 1 we visited the Light Rail's North Avenue Shoppes, which were constructed ~1992 as part of what would be a pioneering light rail system, setting many of the patterns later replicated across the country. However Baltimore's other rail transit system, the Metro Subway, is a much more traditional heavy rail subway system constructed in the old style of transit that quickly went out of fashion as construction costs ballooned in the later half of the 20th century. The Metro Subway yard and shoppe complex, located in the Reisterstown section of Baltimore feels distinctly different from the Light Rail shoppe across town. At Light Rail there is a feeling of agility and dynamicism. At the Metro Subway one can feel the work rules hanging in the air. It's a great example of why heavy rail systems faded from the scene, Anyway, you can find the full set of photos here. The Light Rail pictures are at the top followed by the Metro Subway photos.

To get to the Metro Subway Shoppes, we took mass transit. However the Metro and Light Rail lines do not have a direct connection. The best that is offered are two block long walking connections at Cultural Center / State Center and Lexington Market. Here we see Maryland LINK painted LRV #5019 dropping off tour participants at the Cultural Center station.

The Reisterstown Plaza station offers a sweeping curve west of the platform where one can get entire trainsets in the frame. A similar vantage is offered for eastbound trains at Millford Mill. The Metro runs with 4 or 6 car consists.

Here we see a diagram of the yard on the Yardmaster's console. The yard is a typical storage facility and shoppe combination, however there is a stub tail track at each end with access being provided via a number of main line connections on the north side. Long story short, you aren't getting out of the yard without at least one backup move.

We begin with the replacement truck storage area, which is currently sitting empty because truck rebuilding has been outsourced and most of the spare trucks were currently off property. The area is also equipped with a pair of lifts so that workers can get more easily to under-frame elements.

Spare motors, however, were on hand. They are of the DC variety in the 120hp range. Like the trucks, overhaul of the motors has also been outsourced to the same outfit that rebuild's WMATA's motors.

One thing the Metro Subway shoppe still rebuilds in house are the thyristor chopper motor controllers. By chopping a DC current, the apparent voltage is reduced and fine grain speed control is achievable with a solid state device. Much more efficient than cam controlled resistance drives, however still note the large heat sinks.

Heavy machinery abounds like this turret lathe.

Ground level spare DC motors (info) with the inspection plates removed to show the commutators. What's not to like about a motor system that is easily repairable with domestically sourced components!

The Metro Subway has 100 Budd model Universal Transit Vehicles on the property. These were purchased in 1983 in conjunction with the Miana Metrorail. The cars are 75 feet long and are capable of 70mph operation, which is achieved for a few miles on the far western end of the line. Here we see #138 standing up on jacks for maintenance.

17-08-26 PHOTOS: Baltimore Light Rail Shoppe Tour

In August 2017 I caught wind of a Baltimore Chapter NRHS shoope tour event via Facebook. The chapter had arranged with the Maryland Transit Administration for a guided tour of both the Light Rail Shoppe off North Ave in Baltimore City and the Metro Subway Shoppe in the Reistertown section of the city. As a West Jersey Chapter NRHS member I was able to glom onto the tour in a way similar to that when I was able to accompany the Baltimore chapter on a SEPTA 1234 Market tour in 2013. Transit shoppe tours are always a blast and provide a lot of real nuts and bolts information about how various transit systems operate and what problems are always gumming up the works. A two-for-one tour such as this was a rare opportunity and something that I was sorely needing to do having been in the Baltimore area for over a decade.

 The full gallery covering both tour stops can be found here, but for the sake of space this post will confine itself to the Light Rail shoppes.

Although I lived in walking distance, access to the facility was possible only by vehicle. However after getting picked up at the North Ave Light Rail stop, I was driven by a Baltimore Chapter member to the shoppe facility.

Our tour guide was a project manager for the Light Rail system and was currently working on some of their capitol improvements, most notably the rebuilding of the entire 1992 vintage LRV fleet.

After getting some special VIP day passes, we entered the shoppe where car #5034 in a Frutopia wrap had just entered while a Maryland Flag wrapped car was up on a lift in an adjacent bay.

Each LRV had three trucks, although only the end trucks are powered. Propulsion is AC and these were one of the first transit vehicles in North America with AC drive. Here we see one of the AC traction motors and a disc brake assembly, which is common to all three trucks.

Here we see a space truck, ready to be installed. The truck frames were fabricated by an outfit in Ohio and every axle had a single inboard disc brake assembly, even on the unpowered trucks.

Here we see a lineup of fresh axles, all with discs and a few with a gearbox assembly for the motor.

Like all transit shopped there was a giant lathe capable of turning axles and other cylindrical components.

Although we did not tour the dispatch office, there was a dispatch workstation located in the Yardmasters office right off the shop floor. Here we see a power dispatch screen to the left and a CTC model board on the right.

Here we see the North Ave Yard. Due to the location of the old railroad bulk transfer facility to the north the yard is single ended and movements heading north of the facility need to make a backup move in the North Ave station pocket track.

13-05-11 PHOTOS: SEPTA Control

While other people were braving crowds in an ultimately futile attempt to see a bunch of private cars in New York City, I glommed on to a tour organized by the Baltimore NRHS chapter to get a tour of SEPTA's 1234 Market St control center as well as other parts of the system. SEPTA is surprisingly good about these sorts of things and most railfans in the Philly area have probably attended several, but i had as of yet never been available for one so I leaped at the chance even though I would have to attend with a bunch of out of towners.

The tour would convene at 10am, but due to some other plans that got made and then canceled I found myself at 30th St station at 7:30am with not much to do. As the local NTD exhibits were not yet set up I made my way to the trusty old 30th St parking garage to get some photos of what was in the yards that day. Later the tour would get back to 30th St en route to 69th St for a shoppe tour, but due to some delays I had to pack it in early in order to make some scheduled appointments.

You can find all of the photos of the tour and related explorations here

We begin at the Race St engine terminal with Heritage painted B32-8W #512 in the dock behind P42DC #160.

NS GP40-2 #3029 was hanging out for some reason.

 AEM-7 #950 was there with a Keystone trainset. In a previous photo I caught it in the act of lowering its pantograph.

The whole menagerie out of "yard" power at Race Street including the afformentioned Geep, Amtrak GP38H-3 #523 and GP15 #578 a the Juniata Terminal road slug pair with 9725 and 8850.

Juniata Terminal SW1500 from above.

PRR #120 in Penn Coach Yard.

Metroliner Cab Cars #9638, #9644 and #9645.

Moving on to 1234 Market the group was given a comprehensive introduction to the SEPTA system in a 10th floor meeting room by one of SEPTA's community relations manager. After that we were taken up to the top floor where the operations center for all of SEPTA's divisions is located. After another briefing in the operations conference room, with its flat screen monitors set to display the entire Market Frankford Line. Unfortunately almost all the "big boards" were down for some sort of maintenance :-( Here is the Heavy Rail dispatch desks covering the MFL and BSS.

VDU display for the dispatcher handling the north end of the Broad Street Subway. Click for a larger view.

MFL dispatching desk showing the model board VDU and display screens for CCTV cameras. Click for a larger version.

10-09-25 PHOTOS: SEPTA Rodeo 2010

Well I am back from my July 4th Weekend break with a really great set of photos. Once again the fact that these photos cover a well attended event exposes me to still being about 9 months behind, but that's a lot better than the 12 month backlog I had built up at its peak so I am making progress!!

Anyway in case you all forgot or missed the plethora of photos posted by more up to date Railfans, last September SEPTA invited a selection of about 200 rail enthusiasts to its annual "Rodeo" and Family Picnic at the Broad Street Subway Fern Rock shoppes. Now I know what you all were thinking, but the event turned out to be legitimate and it was not just some sting operation to arrest railfans taking pictures on SEPTA Property. The even consisted of three main sections. You had the BSS Fern Rock shoppe floor where many of the assemblies and heavy components of SEPTA transit vehicles were laid out for inspection. You had the BSS rolling maintenance shop where one could walk in and between BSS trainsets as they waited for minor inspections and repairs before being sent back out and then there was the Fern Rock Regional Rail station where examples of every piece of SEPTA rolling stock (except for PP coaches) was on display.

 Now this article will be missing one critical part of the show and that is information regarding the original BSS Cam Controllers and the new IGBT replacements. I feel this deserves its own special segment so if you are impatient you can see it here or just read this first and then view it next.

Anyway you can view the entire set of photos at this link. SEPTA vehicles will be near the top with Fern Rock interlocking and shoppe photos further down.

http://acm.jhu.edu/~sthurmovik/Railpics/10-09-25_SEPTA_RODEO_2010/-Thumbnails.html

Alright, we'll begin with a sunny show of Fern Rock tower. The tower was made redundant a few years ago when its operations were taken under control by the dispatch office at 1234 Market, but before then it has hosted a US&S style unit level panel machine, which has fortunately been preserved. There is still a local control station available here for contingency plans, but it us normally under remote control.

While the pneumatic switch machines in the Fern Rock yard had been replaced with electric models back around 2003, the Fern Rock wye interlocking still retains its pneumatics, which were recently upgraded with A-10 machines salvaged from the MFL re-signaling. Here is the #21 switch and you can see the cover for the previous A-5 machine sitting nearby.

As this was a Saturday, Ridge Line train service was still running. Here we can see such a train begining its run around the loop track where one of the direct yard access switched has been removed. Don't worry, the other direct yard access switch and its super diamond are still in place.

Here is a video of the same train emerging from the tunnel portal.



Locals were also running and here we see an example as it emerges from the portal and poses in front of the 14LA, 14LC and 12L signals that divide the yard tracks from the signaled Main Tracks. These too date from 2003 when the terminal area was re-signaled. The original signals were much cooler.

The power operated yard switch machines were changed from pneumatic DA-10s to electric YM2000s back around 2003, but the point indicators remain in their original 1920's housings on high quality concrete bases, although with a modern LED upgrade.

The Fern Rock shoppes were full of everything that a BSS car could ever need. Here we see a collection of BSS axle sets with their attached gearboxes, but note the examples with disc brakes that come from some other vehicle.

As seen with those foreign axles above, Fern Rock is a repair facility for the entire SEPTA enterprise with things like wheelsets, brake packages and gearboxes being trucked in from other shoppes for rebuild and repair. Here we see a truck assembly from an N5 Rt 100 car on display.

Some of the BSS trucks on display were those still attached to BSS cars, like this one seen on a car-lift. Hmmm, not sure I exactly trust that little wooden chock to keep the car from rolling off there :-/

Here we see one of the M-4 trucks that had to have half of their brakes removed for the cars to make weight. If you wonder why the system slowed down after the M-4s were introduced, don't blame the new signaling system, blame the pathetic friction-only brake performance.

The BSS trucks are wonderfully simple compared to the high tech M-5 and N-5 examples. Note the use of "package" type tread brakes that were a step up from older cylinder designs and newer disc designs. 

Hmmm, I'll touch that third rail shoe if you touch it first. The General Steel Castings logo means that most of this truck assembly was made in America. WOO!!

BSS cars needing heavy repair are rolled into the back of the shop where they can be hooked up to 600V jumper cables.

Moving over to the Rolling Maintenance shop where inspections and light repairs are carried out we find...AHHHH!! THE DEVIL CAR!! RUN!!