Quote:
Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007
Lol, burecracy is killing evertyhing everywhere...
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Oddly, when the MTA in NY was created by Nelson Rockefeller in the late 60's, they sucked up the Long Island Rail Road, and created the M-1 railcar, which blew the old LIRR MP54/72/65 cars clear out of the water.
The old cars had no air conditioning, terrible heating, slow speeds ( they accelerated slowly and topped out at about 65mph), noisy (straight cut gears!), lousy ride, and poor reliability, not to mention were uncomfortble.
The new cars could hit 100 (tested but never officially run that way. There's rumors there was a track in Queens where if you held the speed control button down, it'd allow it), had air conditioning and forced heat, rode well, were quiet (though they had an odd howling once they hit 80 or so). They were supposed to operated in a semi-automatic mode. They never were. You can guess why...
They were exceptionally light (under 100,000 lbs per car - very few mainline self propelled train cars in the US came close), but used too much power, so the high performance mode was disabled. When all cars worked, they were pretty good anyway.
Of course, the follow on M3 was worse, and the M7s are total junk. The M9s are late, even slower than the 7's (which don't move unless you throw one off a cliff), I hear they're somewhat quieter and ride better (they were made by Kawasaki, not a snowmobile company) at least...