Intercar Safety Barrier/those white fin-like things & the former A cars
So last night I'm heading into SF and while waiting at BayFair I see an 8-car DBPN train with 4 of the 8 cars equipped with the fins (the last three cars in sequence). Is BART going ahead with the installation of this feature? Over the past few weeks I've been noticing more and more individual cars with them, sometimes a single car out of 9/10 configuration or like the DBPN train above with multiple cars.
Also, this may be a strange question to ask but I am curious as to whether BART keeps records/info on which original A cars went through the conversion during the rehab to become B2 cars (i.e. the original A car number and it's current B2 car number). I know the original set of 303 B cars have a "1" attached to the front of the number but what about those after around 1800s and leading into 1900s?
Yes, the intercar barriers
Yes, the intercar barriers are still being installed, at Concord at least 2 to 4 cars a week, it takes 2 mechanics a whole 8 hour shift to install them on a car. As for the converted A cars, I do believe they are 1800 and 1900 cars. The only way I know how to tell is that on the X-end of the cars the hostling light mounts are different from the original B-cars.
why does it take so long?
why does it take so long? looks like some basic rivets. shouldn't take more than 30 minutes to do a car.
The shark teeth must be
The shark teeth must be perfectly aligned, otherwise orthodontic care would cost 2 mechanics 16 hours of work.
there's a lot more to it than
there's a lot more to it than you can see, no rivets, there's 2 Riv-nuts for each tooth, they have to be aligned just right, and because the riv-nuts are steel and the car bodies are aluminum everything has to be sealed to prevent corrosion. the teeth themselves mount to a bracket that attaches to the car body, so that if one breaks just the tooth can be replace without having to tear it all apart again.
sounds overly
sounds overly complicated.
they should have designed something easier to install.
another waste of taxpaer money i guess.
But then they'd fall off and
But then they'd fall off and you'd complain that BART didn't engineer it right and are wasting money on a repair...
maybe i am crazy or something
maybe i am crazy or something but it seems like there has got to be a middle ground between where it takes a whole freaking shift for a team of highly paid engineers to install some aluminum fins and where it is not going to fall off but does not take so damn long. i mean the fins hardly do anything so it is an obscene cost to have them installed when it takes that long.
but i guess that is why bart is always in debt.
after reading this thread
after reading this thread yesterday, i noticed the fins on the trains. what exactly do they do? the OP calls them an "intercar safety barrier" - has anyone ever fallen out of a train through the rubber seals when trying to walk between cars? or perhaps these are to stop people from falling INTO the trains via the rubber seals?
maybe the teeth serve some other purpose that i am missing, but they seem like a total waste of money to me.
also, doesn't the installation of these teeth mean that cars are no longer interchangeable? you can't exactly put a car with impaling teeth as the lead car, can you?
A blind woman fell between
A blind woman fell between two cars when trying to board a train, she sued and instead of asking for money just wanted the problem fixed, this is BART's fix, which the judge accepted, although BART probably won't get it done by the deadline.
thanks. personally, i think
thanks. personally, i think i'd rather fall down than get impaled by the jaws of death.
can the cars with teeth still be made into lead cars?
Yes, I've seen quite a few
Yes, I've seen quite a few C-cars with the teeth as lead cars. the jaws are parallel with the cars so that you don't get impaled, you're supposed to just bounce off...
Ahhhh, i see now why they are
Ahhhh, i see now why they are installing them
Interesting. Something to
Interesting. Something to keep an eye out for next time I ride an 1800/1900 series car.
What happened to the noses of the converted A cars? Did BART keep some as spares in case some damage occurs on one of the 59 A2 cars?