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Those cab cars, were they retrofitted to have the new front ends or are those brand new units?
 
Those cab cars, were they retrofitted to have the new front ends or are those brand new units?
Hi Sean:

Those are new Cab Cars with 'Crash Energy Management' including an enhanced structure, pushback couplers, and crumple zones with the operators' cab positioned 29 inches higher.

But I don't know about that all white front! After a run up to Barrie on a hot summer evening...it was pretty well covered in bug splatter!

http://www.gotransit.com/public/en/news/newcars.aspx
 
I hope they are retrofitted. The Bombardier-Hawker bi-level is one of the worst cars on North American railroads.
They are the smoothest riding coaches I've been on outside of Japan, and perhaps even comparable. I have no qualms with them. I do, however, have issue with the awful HEP unit, but that's an issue with the F59PHI.
 
The ride might be good, but their proclivity to telescope and have their side welds unzip in collisions still qualifies them as terrible.
 
The ride might be good, but their proclivity to telescope and have their side welds unzip in collisions still qualifies them as terrible.
The tables don't give way, which killed a couple folks in other accidents. But the telescoping thing in Chatsworth was an anomole all the way around. Hadn't seen that that happen before or since. Hawker was involved only in the earliest versions of the coaches which were still riveted rather than welded. Not sure when they went to welded seams, but to call out the weldment is probably unfair as the Chatsworth coaches were likely the riveted Hawkers.
 
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The first was Glendale where some passengers were crushed against the immovable tables. Dinner more were crushed in the forward section. Yes, there were also casualties in the "short" section of the ends of the cars.

Chatsworth is the latter you reference, and it was going at a considerable closing speed to the freight train. This was a cab car first accident where the first car telescoped into the second.

Both of these accidents involved the first generation (out of 8 or 9 now) of the HigH-level coaches and Hawker was involved only with Gen 1 & 2. Not sure when the welded aluminum frames on the steel body replaced the riveted ones, but ALL Metrolink at that time were riveted. It's much easier to tip skin that perforated.

Disclaimer - All this is my personal recollection and data based on what I can come up with on my mobile. The NTSB reports should be much more detailed and are available. I retain the right to change my mind with hard data. :)
 
The incident at Chatsworth had the locomotive pulling, not pushing. The primary reason the locomotive was pushed back into the trailing car was a matter of physics: A three-car-plus-locomotive passenger train vs. a seventeen-car-plus-two locomotive freight train. The freight was more than triple the mass of the passenger train; both were traveling in opposite directions at roughly the same velocity.

The collision made over a half-million pounds of Metrolink train with passengers reduce speed from 40 mph to a standstill, and then reverse direction for over 100 feet in an instant. Its no wonder the locomotive ended up occupying 2/3rds of the passenger car behind it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chatsworth_train_collision

That said, as GML points out, the earlier versions of the Bombardier bi-levels have design flaws which make them prone to failure. Its highly unfortunate that Metrolink suffered the most out of the flaw, but roughly 80% of their whole Sentinel fleet is made up of Generation 1 and 2 Hawker/Bombardier rivet-sided bi-levels. And because of the inability to convert any of the new Hyundai Guardian fleet cars to carry bicycles or surf boards, Metrolink will continue to use the Sentinel cars for the foreseeable future (though, with the entire lower level area devoid of seats.)

As an aside, Bombardier's cars DID pass the FRA crush test that Nippon-Shariyo infamously failed. And did so without needing a redesign. :blink:
 
Actually, all you need to do is look at the way everything starts failing on most Asian/American cars the moment IIHS changes their testing procedures. Impact in a slightly different way, and you bypass the system set up primarily to ace a specific test. European cars tend to fare better- MB needed a software change to most of their cars to get the airbag to deploy in the small-offset tests, but otherwise passed, while all Volvos passed, and the XC90 was best performer period- despite it being a 10 year old design at the time.

Safety designed around a specific test is an inherently flawed concept, because accidents dont happen in specific laboratory environments. Eschews comes to mind- it wasnt designed to deal with snakeheads, bridge pillars, or bridge collapses. I doubt if American equipment would have done much better, though.
 
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