NEW HAVEN — At a meeting of the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council Wednesday night it was announced the first pair of new M-8 rail cars for Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven Line are expected to arrive in Baltimore Dec. 2. The cars are aboard a cargo ship that departed from Kobe, Japan.
Speaking to council members in a Connecticut Department of Transportation conference room in New Haven’s Union Station, Eugene Colonese, rail administrator for ConnDOT, said that after the cars are unloaded in Baltimore it will probably require two weeks to prepare them before they can be towed to New Haven.
A total of 300 M-8 cars are on order from Kawasaki Heavy Industries under a $750 million contract. The first 38 cars will be built in Japan with the remainder in Kawasaki’s factory in Nebraska.
In previous announcements, ConnDOT said testing the cars will take several months, possibly allowing some to begin carrying passengers in revenue service toward the end of 2010.
The new cars will be replacing ones in service for 30 or more years. ConnDOT has said they will result in an 18-to-20 percent increase in seating capacity on the New Haven Line.
The existing rail cars have been in service for almost 40 years, and it shows. I take the train a lot into the city, and I envy the Harlem and Hudson lines with their new cars that I see across the platform at Grand Central (there are 3 Metro-North lines that go out of the city, the new haven is ours, and the other 2 are NY State lines that replaced their cars a few years ago.) As usual, CT is lagging behind. I remember the director Ang Lee saying that when he filmed the Ice Storm in New Canaan 12 years ago, that the studio saved a lot of money when filming the movie, set in New Canaan in1973, because the railcars in 1997 were still the same ones that were in use in 1973, which he thought was a strange fact.
So here we are, 12 years later, and we still have the same cars from 1973.
I do feel like I am in That 70′s Show when on the train, surrounded by faux wood panelling and slippery vinyl seats. Great bar car though at evening rush-beer tastes better on a train. Hope the bar cars are being kept!
Bar cars are not part of the initial order. If the state picks up its option for an additional 80 cars, some of them will probably be constructed as bar cars. However, the process of designing new bar cars has not been started, according to Metro-North.
Thanks Mr.Cobin. Maybe we should keep the old bar cars, if they could connect to the new ones, just for nostalgic reasons. The cars from the early 70′s are so old in fact, that they are almost at that magical but elusive point where old and tacky becomes cool and retro.
Art Deco from the 1930′s was despised in the 50′s, and ripped out or covered over, and then became totally cool again in the late 70′s early 80′s. I don’t think our old 1970′s rail cars will ever be missed, after hopping on the ultra-cool Harlem and Hudson trains in Grand Central, but you never know. The antique streetcars from all decades and from all over the world that run on the Market Line in San Francisco, were mostly bought by that city on the cheap, some were abandoned in junkyards and just rusty shells, and have been meticulously restored and are a huge tourist draw.
Keep the bar cars, restore them to their 1970′s look, save some money, and maybe Metro-North could get a preservation award or two, and we can still get a beer on our way into the city.
Am I the only one that looks at these new foriegn made passenger rail carrriges and gets a flasback from the 60′s? Dont these new Japense made carraiges look very similar to the ones we had running up until what 72? Some of those cars dated to the 30′s. Thought we eneterd the streamline age 60 years ago. We are taking smart sleek looking aerodynamical designed carraiges and replacing them with ugly trolly like blunt nose relic looking design from 100 years ago. Guess its true, no matter the technology we still relish yesterday.
Bar cars? Yep get em drunk than drop em off at their personal transports to naviagate to the nest for a short rest, than rinse and repeat. Keep them busy and drunk and they wont notice.
The contract needs to be canceled. Those machines should be made right here in the U.S. Those jobs are needed, right here, right now. And, mark my words, we bought a fleet of lemons, all they need is some yellow paint.
Only the first 30 cars are being constructed in Kobe, Japan. The remainder will be built in Kawasaki’s Nebraska plant. Some work may also be done in Yonkers, N.Y.
H.F.C.
I came across these pictures of the new M-8′s:
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2996808720102930895Ufglkq