🚀 go-pugleaf

greg byshenk wrote:
> 
> 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.

The issue is not to retrofit existing car with more door, it's
building new cars with more door using the the same car body
structural design.

> 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.

That is quite likely to be true, but stainless steel is pound for
pound stronger then aluminium in this kind of application. 

-- 
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NT Geek, MCP
Transit Geek
http://www.chesapeake.net/~cambronj/wmata/	
Model Railroader HO N                                   John R Cambron
http://www.chesapeake.net/~cambronj/sunbelt/        North Beach MD USA
Railroad Geek                                  cambronj@chesapeake.net
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