🚀 go-pugleaf

John R Cambron <*cambronj@chesapeake.net*> wrote:

> I under stand that more doors = less crowding and faster loading and
> unloading that will = shorter dwell times. Their is one problem, the
> base WMATA car design like the bart car has a flaw that will not
> easily make it possible to add more door without making the cars
> heavier. The flaw is the car body it an interracial part of the
> structure the car. Punching more holes in the car sides for door
> would require beefing up the under fram to compensate loss of body
> structural integrity. You got to remember that these car were built
> like cabin of an passenger jet airplane, and out of aluminium to
> boot. Frankly I think the more traditional way of building of
> passenger railroad car would have been a better choice. Stainless
> steel car body on a an undercarriage bearing all of the loading and
> buffering.

I'm not sure whether this is a big issue -- how common is it to change
the door configuration of existing equipment?  It seems to me that 
doing so would be rather a large undertaking -- regardless of whether
the equipment is body and undercarriage or unibody construction -- 
and that such configuration changes would normally be made at the time
that new equipment is ordered.

Also, I suspect that adding more doors would _always_ make the car
heavier, no matter what type of construction is used, because the
doors and their associated hardware will be heavier than the simple
walls they replace.


-- 
greg byshenk  -  gbyshenk@byshenk.net  -  Leiden, NL
hate spam? <http://www.cauce.org>
           <http://www.byshenk.net/ive.been.spammed.html>