New Discussion Group 11/7/2019
Our old discussion group was on Yahoo. Yahoo recently decided to withdraw support
for all groups. By 12/14/2019, they will erase them all.
Our old conversations have been downloaded and saved, but they are not in readable
format. Over the next few months I hope to clean them up and post them on our website.
A new discussion group has been started on group.io. Invitations to join have been sent out to
the email addresses of the members of the old forum on Yahoo.
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NC Bullet Train
Currently, (spring and summer of 2016), the wye at Raleigh is out of service due to
construction of the new station. Without a practical way to turn
the Piedmont train sets each night, NCDOT decided to run the trains with
an engine at both ends. The seats in each coach have been reconfigured so that
half face forward and half face backwards. When the cars were originally reconstructed,
they were outfitted with multiple unit (MU) cables. These
allow the engines to work together as one, even though they are located in different parts of the train.
Once the Raleigh wye is put back in service, the push+pull operation will continue. When all the
double tracking, curve realignments and siding installations have been
completed on the Piedmont line, the plan is to add another Piedmont frequency. With less time between arrivals
and departures at Charlotte, there won't be enough time to turn the trains anyway. NCDOT has purchased
additional locomotives which will be refurbished, but will have the prime movers removed.
These will serve as operating platforms for the engineer.
When the two newest locomotives, 1755 and 1797, are used in this push+pull operation,
to me it looks like an NC version of a bullet train. Here is a video of train 73 stopping at
the Cary station in late May, 2016. The video was shot by
Susan Bobinyec.
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