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CTrain - U2 cars Retirement Watch


LRT

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2064 and 2080 must have been put in a yard somewhere over the weekend. No spotting of them on Friday. Both myself and @LRT had been looking out for them at different times on Friday, and I thought we had just managed to miss them. Although I didn't go around until later in the day, I thought it was odd I still didn't see some evidence of them being unloaded.

I'd entirely forgotten about them when I remembered no one had spotted them as I was approaching Coliseum, and low and behold, there they were.

Given that E track has been cleared of snow, it's possible they were unloaded Monday, or most likely Tuesday. Pantographs have been removed since their departure from Calgary. No sign of activity at 13:00, so it's likely the cars aren't being moved until tonight or later.

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That's awesome! Those two cars are actually pretty decent I remember driving them late spring of this year.

They ran all by themselves to Anderson from OBMF and from Anderson to Haysboro until they were towed off mainline to the CPrail spur.

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5 hours ago, chills_on_the_train said:

Curious - if those trains still had their pantographs, what would stop them from moving under their own power once plunked down on the Edmonton tracks?

Different track and wheels - Calgary uses streetcar rail, Edmonton standard railway rail, with wheels profiled accordingly. In the early 1980s when both systems were receiving U2s, Edmonton cars were assembled at Anderson Shops while D.L. MacDonald was being built. While at Anderson, the Edmonton cars were on shop trucks.

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Calgary only uses grooved rail along 7th Ave, some level crossings and within shops/garages, the rest of the  system uses standard rail. Because of the groove, the flanges on the Ctrain wheels are smaller. Also, some shop and yard frogs have shallow grooves thus the reason for the Edmonton cars that have taller flanges to use the shop trucks but technically, Ctrain cars can run on standard rails as is the case when transferring cars between Haysboro and the CP spur.

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Calgary's streetcar rail also has a flatter profile on the rail head then standard rail head. You can actually feel it with your foot when you walk on it at Somerset when you're Crossing CP Rail and C train rail crossing 

I also have a sliver of a wheel from one of the C train tires. My dad has a chunk of regular rail and I made a comparison there's quite the difference on the profile.

The Calgary cars can easily be towed on the Edmonton rails.. but an Edmonton car would have to be on trucks because it would tear up the frogs in the switches because of the flange difference.

Prime example would be the Calgary cars crossing into the CP spur at haysboro.

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3 hours ago, Pantograf said:

Calgary only uses grooved rail along 7th Ave, some level crossings and within shops/garages, the rest of the  system uses standard rail. Because of the groove, the flanges on the Ctrain wheels are smaller. Also, some shop and yard frogs have shallow grooves thus the reason for the Edmonton cars that have taller flanges to use the shop trucks but technically, Ctrain cars can run on standard rails as is the case when transferring cars between Haysboro and the CP spur.

Edmonton's choice of railway rail was dictated by the fact that for the first 5 years, until D.L. Macdonald opened, trains operated from Cromdale, and had to cross the CN mainline to enter and leave the barn. CN may have insisted on that. Once that choice was made, ETS was more or less locked into it.

Another significant mod from German standard, possibly carried over to Calgary and San Diego as well: an oversize pantograph, to cope with high trolleybus overhead. That was to meet TB overhead clearance requirements, whether CN or Transport Canada I don't know. The Edmonton system had 2 LRT/TB crossings, at 95th Street just east of the tunnel portal, and 115th Avenue. Both had special work that allowed the LRT pan to cross the TB overhead at about a 45° angle. The height of the TB overhead shows in my picture of BBC 197 at 95th Street in August 1989.

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1 hour ago, Mark Walton said:

Edmonton's choice of railway rail was dictated by the fact that for the first 5 years, until D.L. Macdonald opened, trains operated from Cromdale, and had to cross the CN mainline to enter and leave the barn. CN may have insisted on that. Once that choice was made, ETS was more or less locked into it.

That's the general myth to explain the difference between the trucks on Edmonton's and Calgary's LRT fleets. If the Calgary cars and their shallower flanges could operate on Edmonton's trackage then if the Edmonton cars have used a different wheel/ flange profile surely they would have had a no problem with the CN/ ETS crossing? Lets not forget that 2066 was towed to DLM from Cromdale.
Could it simply be that Edmonton went with a standard railway profile as there wasn't any planned street running sections planned when the system was designed?
Personally I'm leaning towards this as the reason unless I can find an authoritative source on the matter.
What I do have is this:
Under the heading "Trackwork:
"We started with a definite heavy rail bias in the design of the LRT system. We learned the subtleties of LRT operation and construction and the differences between heavy rail and LRT."
Source: Edmonton Transit's Light Rail Transit Experience http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr221/221-035.pdf

It's worth noting that there were a few streetcar/ railway crossings in the streetcar days and girder rail in use in Edmonton which apparently didn't cause any problems for the streetcars. The details actually probably exist in George Buck's thesis "A Technical History of Edmonton Transit" 

1 hour ago, Mark Walton said:

Another significant mod from German standard, possibly carried over to Calgary and San Diego as well: an oversize pantograph, to cope with high trolleybus overhead. That was to meet TB overhead clearance requirements, whether CN or Transport Canada I don't know. The Edmonton system had 2 LRT/TB crossings, at 95th Street just east of the tunnel portal, and 115th Avenue. Both had special work that allowed the LRT pan to cross the TB overhead at about a 45° angle. The height of the TB overhead shows in my picture of BBC 197 at 95th Street in August 1989.

While I agree on the ETB OCS clearance requirement at a railway crossing, presumably this applied to the LRT/ CN crossing as well. Additionally, the San Diego line had a freight railroad operating when the LRT trains weren't operating so they would have required to have higher mounted contact wire. 

Although, at the end of the day, there doesn't seem to be a big difference in size of pantographs between North American cars and the later Frankfurt cars.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Merry Christmas and Happy new years friends!

I've been extremely busy the last few months and I haven't been able to post as much as I wanted too hopefully this will change soon in the near future.

Anyway much talk about Ctrain wheels and rail profiles here. I finally have a sliver cut of a Ctrain tire and an actual chunk of CP heavy rail. 

Check out the difference of the Ctrain tire profile and the difference of the CP rail head profile.

When I get a chance I will compare the  Ctrain tire / Ctrain rail difference

 

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