Post 1386503 by coryw@cronk.stenoweb.net
(DIR) More posts by coryw@cronk.stenoweb.net
(DIR) Post #1379599 by pony@blovice.bahnhof.cz
2018-11-21T18:15:28.997814Z
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> grossraumwagenwish we had some simple word for the same thing in Czech (or even English for that matter)
(DIR) Post #1380152 by coryw@cronk.stenoweb.net
2018-11-21T18:27:52Z
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@pony [American but knows some German, and has google dot com]Query: is compartmentalized coach seating still "a thing" in Europe/Czechoslovakia in general? I know it's basically gone in Britain and that outside of sleeping accomodations has been extremely rare in the USA/Canada.So, like, here, by coach seating it would be implied that you're gonna go inside the train and then go through another door and it's gonna be a single big room most of the length of the car.
(DIR) Post #1380153 by pony@blovice.bahnhof.cz
2018-11-21T18:39:19.775438Z
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@coryw yes it is, though of course increasingly unpopular (with procurement) and almost absent in recent purchases (and i haven't really heard about an EMU in that configuration). not a wonder, given the same car can either have 11 compartments of 6 seats (so only 66), or 80+ in an open configuration.but there's a lot of existing stock, DB are getting their ICE4 (and the stopgap IC2) to replace a lot of them, but certainly not all, OeBB is acquiring ton of railjets and some newer EMUs, none with compartments, but they still have relatively new-ish cars with compartments they won't get rid of.and when they do, funnily enough, most of them ended with Czech railways or a certain private Czech operator. Polish railways (PKP IC mostly) also have a lot of such cars, some recently upgraded and i don't think they plan to remove themthen of course, there's this old lovely series of (mostly Bautzen made) cars of the Czech railways that are still in service and probably will be for quite some time to come: https://www.vagonweb.cz/fotogalerie/CZ/CD_B.php
(DIR) Post #1380302 by pony@blovice.bahnhof.cz
2018-11-21T18:46:43.289514Z
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@coryw same in Hungary where they have both old local cars and newer/modernized eurocity compartment cars, so in the old central powers (we like to say central europe, but nobody takes it very seriously outside of the self-proclaimed central europe), compartments would be very common
(DIR) Post #1385398 by coryw@cronk.stenoweb.net
2018-11-21T21:55:48Z
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@pony The CD_B cars you linked look pretty similar in concept to most US single-level cars, except that those stairwells look.... "harrowing" to my particular "everything is big" senses.Picture shows an Amfleet 1 vestibule dropped down. At a high platform it would stay up and boarding would be exactly even.
(DIR) Post #1385399 by pony@blovice.bahnhof.cz
2018-11-21T22:26:17.952163Z
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@coryw most of it is very generic, other railways would buy very similar cars too, most oddities would be found in cars not meant, ever, for international use, but in this case, a lot was standardized in a wayat the time of manufacturing, these were quite modern replacements, offering things like fully electric heating, which, in Czechoslovakia that only managed to phase out steam locos from regular traffic by the end of the 1970's, was quite a big dealhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIC_passenger_coach_types
(DIR) Post #1385554 by coryw@cronk.stenoweb.net
2018-11-21T22:03:14Z
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@pony Also thank you!Off and on, I've wondered whether or not Amtrak or another US carrier could or would offer that here. Some private cars have small rooms, Amtrak has a few officer special cars that have compartmented rooms, I believe ex-metroliner 9800 is one such car with a few, basically, two-person roomettes but without a bed.Superliner/Viewliner designs could be adapted, but I doubt it's worth the investment, alas.
(DIR) Post #1385555 by pony@blovice.bahnhof.cz
2018-11-21T22:31:03.540930Z
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@coryw there's a huge second hand market of these cars in europe, as the railways are buying new emu's and don't need them anymore, but these cars aren't really that old (30-40 years, that's nothing, lol) and can easily be refurbished, ideal to start a new open-access carrierif you could import them to the us and make something out of it, that's another question. probably not. not cheaply
(DIR) Post #1386503 by coryw@cronk.stenoweb.net
2018-11-21T22:56:45Z
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@pony Yeah, the majority of Amtrak's fleet, amfleet and superliner, are from the '70s, with additions of similar design made in the '80s.I did some clicking and it seems like some of the newer designs such as https://www.vagonweb.cz/fotogalerie/CZ/CD_ABfhpvee395.php updated the end vestibule design a bit.
(DIR) Post #1386504 by pony@blovice.bahnhof.cz
2018-11-21T23:09:22.528710Z
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@coryw this is a bit of an odd one, few years ago, they refurbished some old bi-level cars and made this one out of an older ordinary car to supplement newer EMUs during rush hour at minimum cost(cheapness is apparent from the max speed of only 140km/h, as increasing it higher would push the costs beyond reason)
(DIR) Post #1386591 by coryw@cronk.stenoweb.net
2018-11-21T22:58:23Z
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@pony Here, in terms of open access future, Amtrak runs things hard, is wildly underfunded and doesn't even have enough resources (employees, tools, workshop space) to fix everything even if it wasn't, so at the end of their life, cars tend to be truly and well unfit for service. This would be different if, say, US/CA/MX all used compatible cars (IDK about MX but US/CA use different head-end power voltages), and ordered more cars overall.
(DIR) Post #1386592 by coryw@cronk.stenoweb.net
2018-11-21T23:00:23Z
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@pony or in the case of, say, brightline (which is partly/mostly an owned subsidiary of the freight railroad that it runs on), buy new trains.Granted: I think that investment in rolling stock for regional/long-distance use is way too low. Mostly every time Amtrak orders something, once it has "enough" (or runs out of money) the company that was building it either goes out of business or goes back home.Vs. say commuter coaches (like bombardier bilevel) which are in near constant production.
(DIR) Post #1386593 by pony@blovice.bahnhof.cz
2018-11-21T23:12:09.003933Z
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@coryw there appears to be less and less of a difference between long-distance and regional. manufacturers are selling the same stuff, they just change the interior arrangement and add/not add certain features
(DIR) Post #1386851 by coryw@cronk.stenoweb.net
2018-11-21T23:11:45Z
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@pony Fair note. I see a similarly enclosed-and-not-sideways vestibule staircase on, say, https://www.vagonweb.cz/fotogalerie/CZ/CD_Bpee237.php and https://www.vagonweb.cz/fotogalerie/CZ/CD_Bmz226.php which look like they started that way.
(DIR) Post #1386852 by pony@blovice.bahnhof.cz
2018-11-21T23:23:13.470479Z
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@coryw http://www.atlasvozu.cz/share/nakresy/cd/69-Bpee237.pngthat's how all these cars areBpee237 is, surprisingly, a (large) upgrade of much older car (70's), which is something the Czech railways done a lot around 2000's. you'd strip down the old car to the frame, remove everything from the interior and build a new one, supposedly more modern, including AC, power sockets and all these things people want nowadays. you however keep the trucks, you only fix them and maybe add extra dampers. which is why these ones are quite horrible, honestly, it was fun while it lasted, but I think they are near the end of their useful life (also 160 Vmax)Bmz226 are ex-OeBB purchase :) essentially unmodified, just repainted. they are also quite old (80's), but were much more modern from the beginning (they still had a modernization during early 2000's, but much less radical was needed), so those are quite decent