Author Archives: Oren

Bus Photo of the Month: May 2018

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Mercedes-Benz O500u-1725

Mercedes-Benz O500u-1725

Location: Libertad at Tucuman, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Operator of Vehicle: Transportes Santa Fe SACI
Date of Photo: January 10, 2018

Buenos Aires used to be known as the “City of Trams” and had the highest tramway to population ratio in the world.  However, as is the case in many of the world’s cities, the trams were replaced by buses in the 1960s and while the Argentinian capital is home to the oldest subway in South America, that subway covers relatively little ground in this dense but sprawling city.  The subway’s utility is further diminished by its relatively limited operating hours (the last trains leave their origins just after many Portenos sit down to dinner).  Fortunately, there is an extensive network of buses, known as colectivos, that provide the bulk of the public transit service in Buenos Aires.  These colectivos are privately owned and operated and receive no government funding aside from highly subsidized fuel.  Each operator operates a single line or a handful of lines, and their buses are painted differently in order to distinguish the various companies from each other, such as the brown and gold livery seen here.  As a result, you get a very colorful cavalcade of buses on any major street.  This bus operates on Line 39, which serves Avenida Santa Fe, one of the most important thoroughfares, though at this point in its route it is in front of the Teatro Colon, the premiere opera house in Buenos Aires with seating for nearly 2,500 people in its main hall.  Like all colectivos in Buenos Aires, Line 39 operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For more photos of Buenos Aires Colectivos, please click here. 

Rail Photo of the Month: May 2018

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AEM-7 2302

AEM-7 2302

Location: Temple University Station, Philadelphia, PA
Operator of Vehicle: Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority
Date of Photo: April 19, 2012

The AEM-7 electric locomotive was a mainstay on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor as well as on SEPTA and MARC commuter rail trains for over 35 years.  Nowadays, SEPTA is the only agency that still operates these locomotives, and even in the Philadelphia area their days are numbered.  SEPTA is currently testing its first ACS-64 locomotive and upon the delivery and acceptance of all 15 of these locomotives, the AEM-7 locomotives will be retired.  Affectionately nicknamed “toasters”, these locomotives outlived the newer and more powerful HHP-8 locomotives that were introduced at the start of the 21st century, proving that in some circumstances, older can be better.

For more photos of SEPTA Regional Rail rolling stock, please click here. 

Rail Photo of the Month: April 2018

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CAF 5085

CAF 5085

Location: Rockville Station, Rockville, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: December 12, 2017

On some subway systems, each line has a dedicated (or nearly dedicated) fleet of cars.  For example, you won’t find anything but 1995 Stock on the Northern Line in London.  Or in New York, seeing something other than an R62A on the 1 train is a notable event.  However, in Washington, DC, this generally has not been the case.  Except for a period when all the 2000 Series Breda cars were assigned to the Red Line shortly after their delivery, WMATA has put just about every car on every line, especially when it was “bellying” the 1000 Series cars and later the 4000 Series cars between 2009 and 2017.  Now that those car types have been retired as of last summer, WMATA has decided to assign certain cars to certain lines with generally few exceptions.  In the case of the Red Line, this means seeing anything other than 3000 Series Breda Rehabs or 7000 Series Kawasakis is now a notable event.  One of those moments is captured here, when CAF 5085 made it on to the Red Line in December 2017. 

Do you like “predictability” in your transit car assignments when transitfanning, or is it more fun when any type of train or bus might show up?

For more photos of WMATA CAF 5000 Series cars, please click here. 

Bus Photo of the Month: April 2018

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Gillig Advantage/HEV 4027

Gillig Advantage/HEV 4027

Location: A.W. Willis Avenue at North Main Street, Memphis, TN
Operator of Vehicle: Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA)
Date of Photo: November 25, 2017

Memphis is probably best known for its music scene and role in the civil rights movement in the United States.  However, the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) is one of Tennessee’s largest bus network.  With the Main Street Trolley heritage streetcar service in the midst of a service suspension that started in 2014, buses are the only form of public transit within the city.  In the past, MATA’s fleet had a wider variety of vehicles.  RTS models were a mainstay of the fleet from 1980 until 2010.  Buses used in the past also include GM TDH-5300 and TDH-4500 “New Looks”, Flxible 40-102 New Looks, AM General 40 foot buses, and MAN articulated buses.  Now, the fleet is made up almost entirely of Gillig Advantage low floor buses, and MATA is looking to make the fleet powered entirely by hybrid engines.  Here is one of those hybrid Gillig Advantages with the Memphis Pyramid, a sports arena that has been repurposed as a Bass Pro Sports outlet store, in the background.

 

For more photos of MATA buses, please click here. 

Oren’s Reading List: SEPTA Tokens or Jewelry?

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B-IV 510
SEPTA is the last transit agency in the United States to accept tokens.  However, even in Philadelphia, the token is about to become a relic of the past.  As this milestone approaches, a number of businesses are planning to make various keepsakes, such as necklaces and earrings, out of tokens.  Read more about these businesses here.  Would you buy SEPTA token jewelry?  

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Rail Photo of the Month: March 2018

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MP89CC Stock 89 S 103

MP89CC Stock 89 S 103

Location: Bastille Station, Paris, France
Operator of Vehicle: Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP)
Date of Photo: March 20, 2008

I visited Paris for the first time ten years ago this month, so I thought it would be appropriate to share a photo from that trip for the March 2018 Photo of the Month.  The Paris Metro is an impressive subway system for a host of reasons.  For one thing, you are never more than a few hundred meters from the nearest metro station no matter where in the city you may find yourself.  However, what Parisian rolling stock might be known best for is that on several lines, the trains have rubber tires instead of traditional steel wheels.  The MP89CC stock shown here is one of those trains.  RATP converted three lines (1, 4, and 11) to use rubber tires in the 1950s and 1960s.  There were plans to convert the entire system to use rubber tires, but the costs were prohibitive and it would have taken decades to complete the project, so the RATP opted instead to convert one additional line, Line 6, because it has long elevated stretches and the rubber tired trains are quieter than their steel wheel counterparts.  In addition, new lines such as Line 14 are built for rubber tired trains.  You can see how the wheels of the train in this photo are not like what one usually sees on trains, and that the track for this line has running boards and guide rails as opposed to steel rails.  Have you ever been on a rubber tired train, either in Paris or elsewhere?

For more photos of the MP89CC Stock, please click here. 

Bus Photo of the Month: March 2018

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NovaBUS LFS 107

NovaBUS LFS 107

Location: Tower Road and East Avenue, Ithaca, NY
Operator of Vehicle: Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit
Date of Photo: April 16, 2007

Last month, the first four of eleven new Gillig Advantage buses for Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) arrived in Ithaca.  These buses will be replacing all of TCAT’s remaining NovaBUS LFS buses (such as the one in this photo) and some of the New Flyer D40LF buses as well.  Like Orion I 914, which was featured as the bus photo of the month in February 2016, the NovaBus LFSs are now about as old as many of their passengers.  These buses were delivered in 2001, so a Cornell freshman is about as old as the bus he or she might be riding to class.  Does anyone want to hazard a guess as to how many of them might be aware of that fact?

The NovaBUS LFSs were the first 40 foot buses in the TCAT fleet.  This made them outliers initially, but that is no longer the case.  As the fleet has been renewed over the years, ordering 40 foot buses has become the norm for TCAT and now nearly every bus in the fleet is a 40 footer.  These buses also operated for about half of their service lives before and about half of their service lives after the implementation of a major route restructuring that took effect in 2010.  

For more photos of TCAT’s NovaBUS LFS buses, please click here. 

The End of an Era…For Real This Time

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Breda 4052
I’ve spilled quite a bit of digital ink writing about the retirement of the WMATA 1000 Series and 4000 Series railcars.  Yesterday, car 4014 was trucked from WMATA’s Greenbelt Yard to a scrapyard in Baltimore.  This car was the last of the 4000 Series cars to be removed from WMATA property, truly making the end of the retirement process.  While it is possible that the 8000 Series cars (which are just modified 1000 Series cars) that were used for revenue collection are still on the property, these are scheduled to be scrapped as well and replaced by 6000 Series trains that have been refitted for use on the money train.  All that are left from these two car classes are the 1000-1001 and 4000-4001 pairs, which are being retained for historical purposes.

As I have written before, as someone who grew up in the DC area and has always considered the 1000 Series trains to be my favorites, this is a significant moment in the region’s transportation history.  Once the 1000s were relegated to the middle of train consists after the Fort Totten crash, only when a 4000 Series car was at the head end of a train did it feel like I was on the Metrorail that I grew up with, complete with yellow and orange interior colors and the buzzing of the DC motors on the Breda cars.  Those days have been over since July, and are truly over as of yesterday.

Photo caption:  Breda 4052 (left) and Rohr 1124 at Gallery Place. As of yesterday, all of the 1000 Series and 4000 Series railcars have been removed from WMATA property to be scrapped. Photo taken February 16, 2004.

Oren’s Reading List: Inside the Theater of Moscow’s Metro

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Photo of the Moscow Metro from https://pixabay.com

While I haven’t been to Russia and don’t expect to anytime soon, these photos of the Moscow Metro remind me of how I’ve heard from many that the subway there is a work of art in and of itself.  Check out the pictures by clicking here, and if you’ve been to Moscow, post a comment and tell us if these pictures do the system architecture justice.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Bus Photo of the Month: February 2018

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New Flyer XN40 2959

New Flyer XN40 2959

Location: Columbia Pike at Joyce Street, Arlington, VA
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 4, 2017

When compressed natural gas (CNG) buses made their entry in to US transit fleets, the buses were notable for the large hump on their tops.  This hump was for the fuel tanks.  Many agencies highlighted the fact these buses were running on compressed natural gas as opposed to diesel, and some even used special paint schemes on these buses to draw attention to that fact.  This included WMATA’s first CNG buses, the New Flyer C40LF buses ordered in 2002.  However, the fuel tanks on these must be replaced after 15 years, often resulting in the bus being retired at that time.  As bus designs have evolved, the fuel tanks have been incorporated in to the bus design in less obvious ways and agencies have moved away from highlighting their CNG vehicles.  As a result, there is little indication to most passengers boarding one of these newer buses that they are boarding a bus powered by CNG.  As someone who enjoys seeing variety in bus fleets, I am sorry to see the special liveries for alternative fuel vehicles such as hybrid and CNG buses.  That said, it is remarkable to see how new CNG buses, such as this New Flyer XN40 that replaced WMATA’s original C40LF buses, now look so much like their diesel counterparts.  Do you like when alternative fuel vehicles get special paint schemes?  Post your thoughts in the comments below!

For more photos of WMATA’s New Flyer XN40 buses, please click here.