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[CNJRoss]

Release Date: 01/03/2019

 

As Fleet of the Future grows, the plan for decommissioning BART's legacy fleet takes shape

 

 

With a steady flow of new Fleet of the Future trains arriving in 2019, BART is planning what to do with the fleet of the past – the “legacy” train cars that have served the Bay Area with many dating to the start of BART in 1972.

 

There’s lots of public interest in what will happen to the old train cars: Could they be donated to museums? Turned into homeless shelters? Used at tech schools for mobile classrooms? Repurposed into container-cart coffee shops? Or sold off as scrap metal to the highest bidder?

 

The BART Board of Directors will get a look at early plans for the fleet decommissioning at its Thursday, Jan. 10, 2019, meeting. The decommissioning is a complex process because BART will operate with a mixed fleet of new and old cars for some time. The new and old cars can’t join together in one train, but there will be full train sets made up of new and old running simultaneously for several years. And -- hint -- it's not as easy as you might think to get rid of an old train car. 

 

Read more for the fascinating calculus of retiring the old cars with their millions of service hours while blending in and ramping up a new generation of cars, with all the technological, logistical and practical issues involved. 

 

[CNJRoss]

RT&S, 1/11/19:
 

BART prepares for legacy train car retirement as ‘Fleet of the Future’ draws near

 

 

With Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) preparing to welcome its new Fleet of the Future trains in 2019, BART is making plans regarding what to do with its “legacy” train cars, some of which the transit agency said date back to 1972.

 

The BART Board of Directors was set to discuss early plans for the fleet decommissioning at its Jan. 10 meeting, according to a statement.

 

“The decommissioning is a complex process because BART will operate with a mixed fleet of new and old cars for some time,” a post on BART’s website explained. “The new and old cars can’t join together in one train, but there will be full train sets made up of new and old running simultaneously for several years.”

 

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[CNJRoss]

Curbed San Francisco,1/7/19:

BART considers turning old train cars into housing

Retired cars could also be donated, recycled, or kept for emergencies.

 

 

As BART slowly begins rotating its newly designed and delivered, multi-billion dollar “Fleet of the Future” cars into service, it must begin pondering what to eventually do with the old train stock.

 

SNIP

 

Among the possibilities the board will begin considering this week:

• Creating a BART car museum or selling cars to an existing rail museum.
• Donating cars to the US Army for training exercises.
• Donating to technical schools so that students can learn about and practice on rail tech.
• Selling cars to be converted into new housing.
• Donating cars to be converted into homeless shelters or shelters for fire victims. (At least one California county has already inquired about this.)
• Donating some old cars to artists for use in future projects.
• Selling off old cars for scrap.
• Hanging onto older cars for “emergency service” or other special needs.

More here.

[CNJRoss]

SFBay.ca, San Francisco 1/10/19:
 

Creative retirements imagined for legacy BART cars

 

 

Homeless shelters, taco trucks, scrap metal — these and other possibilities were discussed at a BART board meeting Thursday morning for what to do with hundreds of old, soon-to-be-junked legacy BART cars.

 

“I went to an event the other night and five people came up to me just to share their ideas for old cars,” BART Director Rebecca Saltzman said at the presentation, which was strictly informational in nature.

 

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[CNJRoss]

9/2/21

 

 

 

Versatile but problem-plagued, the last 1990s-era

C2 BART car is gone

 

 

 

Infographics of the last C2 car now fully decommissioned.

RELEASE DATE: 09/02/21

By MELISSA JORDAN
BART Senior Web Producer

 

The last of BART’s most problem-plagued 1990s-era train cars, known as C2 cars, has left the building. The C2s had more than their share of issues affecting riders and workers and were strategically targeted to be the first cars in the legacy fleet completely decommissioned. The last one was scrapped in August.

 

C2s were the most likely to have HVAC breakdowns leading to hot cars and rider misery. The operator cab was cramped with failure-prone sash windows. Engineers and mechanics had to come up with do-it-yourself fixes for problems like overshooting windshield wipers and passenger doors that popped off their tracks, taking cars out of service and causing delays.

Watch a video with BART maintenance staff remembering the C2 cars here.

 

However, the C2 cars (and their close cousin, C1s, which are next on the list for fully decommissioning as BART replaces its fleet) had some important distinctions that made them significant in BART history. Because of their versatility to be placed anywhere in a multiple-car train, they ushered in the modern era of train dispatch efficiency. And riders knew them as the first to have a blue interior color palette, instead of the 1970s-vintage drab brown and orange of BART’s early days.
 

 

 

 

A C2 car being used in the end position.

 

THE ABC’s of BART CARS

BART’s legacy fleet includes three series of cars, known as the A cars, B cars and C cars (C1 and C2), which are in the process of being decommissioned to make way for new Fleet of the Future cars.

A cars have the iconic slanted end for the lead car with the operator’s cab, and can only be used at the end of a train. B cars, known colloquially as “cattle cars,” can only be used in the middle of a train set; they don’t have an operator’s cab. C cars have been the switch-hitters of the BART fleet; they can be used as a lead car and have an operator’s cab, but they can also be set up to work as middle cars without an operator. (Lead cars at BART are called “trail” cars when they’re on the other end of the train set; the trail becomes the lead at the end of the line when the train reverses direction.)

 

PUTTING MAINTAINERS TO THE TEST

Dave Hardt, BART’s Chief Mechanical Officer for Rolling Stock and Shops, said the C2s brought out the best in the men and women who maintain BART’s trains, pushing them to find ingenious solutions to myriad problems.

 

“Near the bitter end before the Fleet of the Future cars started arriving, there were a few days when I personally recall walking into Hayward Shop and literally every shop space was occupied by a C2 car,” Hardt said.

“When I think of the C2s, I remember the cab’s sash windows that had this crazy spring mechanism that was supposed to make it easier to raise and lower, but was very difficult to adjust and maintain; it would jam. Also, the windshield wiper, when it would rain, it would overtravel off the windshield and land on the side of the car, and not be able to swipe back the other way,” he said. Maintainers came up with fixes for both. 

 

“We ended up retrofitting a bunch of the cars with a window we designed in-house, that worked much better and was easier to maintain. For the wipers, our engineers designed a bracket, a retaining clip, that kept them from overtraveling off the windshield.”

And then there were the passenger doors.

 

“Another specific to the C2 cars, our mechanics knew it all along, the door track and the guide that keeps the door on the track was an issue. We noticed in our analysis that door delays for C2s were far more frequent and more severe than for any other type of car."

 

Another issue that affected overall performance of the C2 cars was the APSE system, or auxiliary power supply equipment, which takes the 1000 volt DC power supplied by the electrified third rail and converts it to AC power that keeps the air conditioning, compressors, and other control systems on the car running.

“We fixed what we could on them,” Hardt said. “There were some things that we couldn’t realistically fix within typical budgetary restraints. Once we were into the procurement for the Fleet of the Future, we didn’t want to overinvest in the old cars. So we ended up making incremental low-cost improvements.”

 

 

 

Promotional button issued for next generation C2 cars in 1995; appears to be a stork “delivering” the new baby car.

USHERING IN A NEW ERA OF EFFICIENCY

The C2s may have been bad news for maintainers, but they were instrumental in helping BART modernize and maximize efficiency of how trains are put together and sent out again from rail yards, ultimately benefiting the riding public by allowing BART to more easily match train length to rider demand at any particular time.Promotional button issued for next generation C2 cars in 1995; appears to be a stork “delivering” the new baby 

There were 80 C2 cars in all, and they arrived in the years between 1990 and 2004. The vast majority, 61 of those cars, arrived in the year 1995. (Image at right: Promotional button issued for next generation C2 cars in 1995; appears to be a stork “delivering” the new baby car.) For historical context, in the year 1995 when most of the C2 cars arrived, Bill Clinton was president, “Toy Story” was the top-grossing movie and “Gangsta’s Paradise” topped the Billboard music charts.

Paul Oversier, now retired, was BART’s Chief Transportation Officer during the time when most of the C2s were delivered. He arrived as CTO in 1990 from the New York City Transit Authority and became BART’s Assistant General Manager for Operations in 1999.

“In general the C cars were more complicated than BART’s original A and B cars because, among other things, they had to be able to function as both control and mid-consist cars,” Oversier said. “This flexibility ushered in a new era in BART operations. Previously, to resize the trains for lower ridership periods of the day, there had to be a short train waiting in the yard, ready to be dispatched to a terminal where the longer train would go out of service to the yard to be replaced by the shorted train dispatched from the yard. These were called ‘run cuts’ and were pretty inefficient because it required extra cars (the shorter train waiting in the yard) and higher deadhead miles as the two trains swapped. Putting C cars in the middle of course allowed one long train to be split into two shorter trains right at the terminal. This saved money, equipment and arguably improved reliability.” 

“The last thing I would say, and this applies to just about every new car I’ve ever dealt with, it takes time to work the bugs out,” Oversier said. “BART’s car maintenance and car engineering department is really amongst the best in the business. The longer they have to own, operate and maintain a car, the better and more reliably it will run. That being said, the C cars, and in particular the C2s, had some inherent design challenges that negatively impacted their performance, no matter how good the maintenance.” 

 

 

 

A worker prepares the last C2 car for decommissioning at Hayward Shop in August 2021

 

IN THE WORDS OF THE WORKERS

Perhaps the final word on the C2s comes from workers who maintained and operated them.

“I won’t miss coming to work and seeing a C2 in my stall,” said Ralph Sermano, a Quality Team Leader at the Hayward Shop, from inside the shell of the very last C2 car to be decommissioned. “It’s a high-maintenance car. I used to work on them a lot. I prefer to work on the Fleet of the Future cars. They’re cleaner; they’re easier to work on, and they don’t break down as much."

 

“They were very versatile,” said Vince Louie, Assistant Superintendent at Hayward Shop. “We did have a lot of problems with them, things like train control, that affect the lead car, the cab car with the operator. When the C2s had problems, we could just make them middle cars so we could bypass those issues.”

Paula Fraser, who is now an Assistant Chief Transportation Officer at BART, was a train operator back in the early days of the C cars.

“From the operator side, they drove us crazy,” she recalled, especially the cramped cab compared with  the A cars. “They were terrible on the taller operators. I’m 5-foot-2, but it was really tight for the taller people. Sometimes they’d have to turn a little sideways to fit.

Fraser appreciated the versatility of the C2s in her later roles as a train controller in the yard’s Towers and in the Operations Control Center.

 

“We didn’t have to use as many operators,” she said. “We could keep yard operators in the yard doing the yard work. It saved a lot of time and made us more efficient.”

 

“It showed the excellence of the workers in how they kept those C2 cars going,” Fraser said. “What I’m proud of at BART is that we make things work. Little by little we modify and improve things. I’ve always been amazed at how all the workers come together and step up to challenges like the C2s.”

Michael Thomas, a Transit Vehicle Electronics Technician at Hayward Shop, has mixed feelings about the end of the C2s.

 

“I’m sad to see them go because I just got really good at working on them,” said Thomas, who’s been at BART nine years. “They were fun to fix. It challenged you to use your brain a lot more. But the good part is that we’re getting more up-to-date trains. I’m happy to see the new cars come. It’s time for an upgrade.”

 

[CNJRoss]

Railway Age, 9/3/21

 

Versatile But Problem-Plagued, the Last 1990s-Era C2 BART Car Is Gone

 

The last-ever BART C2 car was decommissioned in August 2021 at the Hayward Shop. Note the headlights on the end as well as the flat-shaped front. The The C2 could serve as a lead car with an operator cab or as a middle car, which ushered in a new era of efficiency in dispatch operations when they arrived in the 1990s. (Photograph and caption, courtesy of BART)

 

 

The last of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District’s (BART) most problem-plagued 1990s-era C2 cars has left the building.

 

The C2s, built by Morrison-Knudsen, had more than their share of issues affecting riders and workers and were strategically targeted to be the first cars in the legacy fleet completely decommissioned. The last one was scrapped in August.

 

C2s were the most likely to have HVAC breakdowns leading to hot cars and rider misery. The operator cab was cramped with failure-prone sash windows. Engineers and mechanics had to come up with do-it-yourself fixes for problems like overshooting windshield wipers and passenger doors that popped off their tracks, taking cars out of service and causing delays.

 

Watch a video with BART maintenance staff remembering the C2 cars:

 

Remembering BART’s C2 Cars

 

The last of BART’s most problem-plagued 1990s-era train cars, known as C2 cars, has left the building. The C2s had more than their share of issues affecting riders and workers and were strategically targeted to be the first cars in the fleet completely decommissioned. The last one was scrapped in August. C2s were the most likely to have HVAC breakdowns leading to hot cars and rider misery. Engineers and mechanics had to come up with do-it-yourself fixes for problems like overshooting windshield wipers and passenger doors that popped off their tracks, taking cars out of service and causing delays. However, the C2 cars had some important distinctions that made them significant in BART history. Because of their versatility to be placed anywhere in a multiple-car train, they ushered in the modern era of train dispatch efficiency. And riders knew them as the first to have a blue interior color palette, instead of the 1970s-vintage drab brown and orange of BART’s early days.

 

Continue here.

[CNJRoss]

Trains News Wire

 

BART to offer final rides on original equipment on April 20

 

By Bill Buchanan | April 8, 2024

 

'Riding into History' event will operate on original 24-mile segment to Fremont, Calif.

 

A Bay Area Rapid Transit prototype train poses at the Lake Merritt station in Oakland prior to the start of service, in late 1971 or early 1972. While BART removed the last of the original equipment from service last September, it will hold a farewell event on April 20. BART

 

OAKLAND, Calif. — Bay Area Rapid Transit, the 131-mile electrified rail network in the San Francisco Bay Area, is offering the public a last chance to ride the 1970s-era futuristic railcars that made up its original fleet.

 

On Saturday, April 20, at 1 p.m. at the MacArthur station in Oakland, BART will commemorate the cars with a ceremony and then run two 10-car trains using original cars for the last time. Anyone can ride for the usual fare.

 

“We understand that BART cars are iconic, especially the sloped-front A cars,” said BART spokesperson Jim Allison. “We just wanted to give them a proper sendoff so that people had a chance to say goodbye to the cars that have been serving the Bay Area for more than 50 years.”

 

 

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[CNJRoss]

4/25/24

 

 

Thousands bid farewell to BART’s legacy trains at

retirement ceremony and final ride

 

 

 

This past Saturday, April 20, BART fans caught a final ride on the trains all of us will soon miss. Thousands of people, many wearing their favorite BART outfits, including those they made themselves, came to MacArthur Station to bid adieu to the historic legacy fleet and take their last ride on the 51.5-year-old trains. The event included a celebration in the station plaza, a retirement ceremony, and a final journey aboard three legacy trains brought from the yard just for the day. Some people traveled from outside the state just to attend the event. 

“I’m coming out here to pay my respects to an old friend that I’ve been missing these last few weeks," said one rail fan who arrived over an hour early to the event. “It’s going to be sad to see it go, but it’s nice to know I’ll be here for its final moments.” 

 

 

 

In the plaza, throngs of BART fans enjoyed food trucks and activities, including a stamp rally, as well as a raffle for legacy car number plates. There was also a Railgoods popup shop so folks could top off their collections of BART merch and purchase the latest product offerings, including a shirt made specifically for the day.  

The party in the plaza was followed by a ceremony opened by BART Board President Bevan Dufty and including remarks by General Manager Bob Powers, FTA Region 9 Regional Administrator Ray Tellis, and BART Chief of Police Kevin Franklin. There were also representatives from groups who will receive legacy cars after successfully submitting proposals to repurpose the vehicles , including the Western Railway Museum, which is establishing a Rapid Transit History Center that will include three legacy BART cars; the Sierra Train House, a forthcoming residence and short-term rental in the Sierra Foothills constructed from a BART car; and the Original Scraper Bike Team, who will use a car for a bike shop, providing free repairs and bike repair lessons to local youth, as well as a clubhouse for community events and the organization's mentorship program.  

 

 

 

At the end of the ceremony, it was time for the last hurrah aboard the legacy trains. Incredibly, the line to get on a train was so long it reached MacArthur Boulevard. Despite the line, everyone was able to get onboard a train. 

The trip ran from MacArthur to Fremont Station – the reverse of BART’s inaugural run in 1972. Some of the cars in service for that momentous day were hauling passengers for this last ride, more than fifty years after their wheels first touched rail. 

 

 

 

After the trains reached Fremont, they rode off into the sunset and came to rest at BART’s Hayward Yard. A crowd on the station platform at Fremont, their cameras rolling, was there to see them off. 

 

 

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