[sustran] Re: fwd: MRTS Thane

[J.H. Crawford]

>I am far from being a railway expert but I can at least give an opinion on
>Professor Dhingra's track gauge problem for Mumbai (Bombay).

Me, either, but:

>1       Use 4 ft 8.5 ", only 1435 mm and nothing but 4 ft 8.5".
>
>2       Ignore rule (1) only if there are cost advantages in going down to
>metre gauge (unlikely for 40 000 passengers/ hour one way) or if
>inter-operability is a deciding factor.

Absolutely agree.

If you want a sure-fire, excellent, and inexpensive solution, use PCC
streetcars, most of which were manufactured to standard gauge. The
design is more than 60 years old, the cars were designed to be cheap
to manufacture, and were, and they provide fast, quiet service. The
only design I know of that actually improves on the PCC is the
EuroTram from ADtranz, and these must be very expensive. (The PCC
car actually has much better acceleration than the EuroTram.)
All the patents on the PCC design must long since have expired. It
might make sense to replace the original 99-step controllers with
solid-state controllers for better energy efficiency; the old ones
give an excellent ride quality that probably cannot be improved on.

Tatra in the Cechz Republic was still making PCC cars the last I knew.
They should be a low-cost supplier. It's also possible that enough
cars could be bought second-hand and refurbished. Ten of thousands
of these cars were made, I believe.

Best of luck!



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J.H. Crawford    joel at xs4all.nl    http://www.carfree.com/