With the demise today of car 4000, the first of the Canadian Light Rail Vehicles, a look back on the prototypes when they were brand new.
The photos here were taken on June 4 1978 at St. Clair Carhouse. I don’t know which fleet numbers the cars shown here wound up with, but I’m sure there is a reader who knows these details and will supply feedback.
Updated December 25, 2017 John Bromley has provided additional information about the prototype CLRVs:
The car in the photos you posted is 4003 II. The photo op was June 4 1978, I was there and have a few photos. Perhaps the July date is the processing date on the slides?
Steve: Thanks for the correct date. I had neglected to write it on the slides at the time.
Below pic shows 4000 II from the rear June 29 1977 at SIG, taken from inside the unfinished carbody of 4003 II. Even then 4000 II had the all-white top on front rather than the black just visible in 4001 II behind it. Do I need to mention the pantograph?
Sorry for the delay in sending, we’ve been in Europe for three weeks.
Steve Munro 
Thanks for the post, Steve. But it also makes me a bit sad, knowing that we are slowly losing a bit of our history.
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Any idea why 4000 was not saved for heritage purposes like Witt 2300 or the PCC?
I’m guessing it has to do with space age parts or something but it would be nice to give it a viking funeral in the port lands.
Steve: Some of the CLRVs are in very rough shape physically and would need a lot of work just to preserve for static viewing. The electronics have been very difficult to source and maintain for the TTC, and this is certainly beyond the capabilities of a museum operation. It is a shame to lose a first car, though.
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I’m surprised they didn’t save the CLRV 4000 car and add it to their historic fleet.
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I am unused to the look with black-wrapped front destination board as shown in the first three pictures (and side-by-side with “normal” in the last picture). Do you know when this was changed?
I recall a comment that the Flexity cars have a slightly different shade of red because that is the “correct” one. With the first CLRVs being built in Switzerland, do you know if they simply adopted the standard Swiss transit red?
Steve: I don’t know the origin of “CLRV red”, but maybe there are other readers who are familiar with this bit of transit history.
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Any word if a unit will go to HCRR?
Steve: I have not heard anything yet. If they do get one, the challenge will be to make and keep it operational with the antique electronics.
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Retired streetcars were used for temporary housing at what is today West Park Health Care, then a sanitarium for TB.
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Besides the “CLRV red”, the original prototype ALRV had an orange shade to it. In the link, the orange look is not due to the colouring of the photo, as actual red stripes can be seen on each side of the orange bands.
Steve: I sat on a short-lived “design review panel” for the Flexitys that was created when the design was pretty much put to bed. We asked for a darker red than on the CLRVs although not as dark as the maroon you still see on the older restored cars. The fact that the end treatment on the back is different from the front was one small piece we added. By the time the TTC asked for suggestions, most of the design was locked down.
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The electronics are not insurmountable, but they do require additional skills and test equipment to deal with.
You’d need a good electronics technologist with some tools and test equipment and comfortable with hardware and the design, build, test and validate equipment modifications aspect of the job. You’d need the TTC to provide the service manuals, diagrams and documentation as well as the streetcar itself. I don’t know if the original equipment manufacturers (Garrett etc.) provided specialized test gear to go with the equipment they sold for the CLRVs, but if there was, you’d want the OEM test sets as well. Anything that cuts down on the amount of reverse engineering you have to do is a good thing.
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So are they mothballing the CLRVs that are now out of service and if so, where are they keeping them? No more Wychwood to house them!
Steve: Leslie.
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Closing St Clair Carhouse was a mistake. While closing it, we spend taxpayer money opening up Leslie barns.
Steve: St. Clair Carhouse was nowhere near big enough to house a good chunk of the Flexity fleet and would have required major mods for cars with roof-mounted equipment.
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Am I correct that the first few cars were made in Europe? Perhaps a better choice for preservation would be the first Canadian built car.
Steve: 4000-4005 were built in Switzerland. 4006-4009 contributed carbodies to the ALRV prototyping although I think only one prototype was actually built. That is the orange car shown in a linked photo from an earlier comment. 4010 is the first “Canadian” Canadian Light Rail Vehicle.
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My friends and I went to the first deployment of the CLRV on the Long Branch route. We were very impressed and talked to the Operator at the Humber loop. The Operator was showing off the “modern” electronics and showed us some of the things this car could do. All of a sudden, the car shut down. Nothing the Operator tried wold “wake it up”. He had to call for help to resolve the problem. After he made the call, he said “Maybe you boys should leave”. I imagine he told whoever arrived that the shutdown was spontaneous.
I guess these finicky electronics – now thirty plus years old – are a large part of the reason I so often see a stranded CLRV in front of my townhouse stranded on a non revenue branch from King.
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Just try to remember which computer you were using in 1978. It was a few years after that that I saw my first IBM PC.
Steve: At the time, I was working on mainframes. What’s a PC?
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The electronic choppers were first generation devices that used Silicon Controlled Rectifiers, SCRs. The SCR was a great ON switch but a lousy OFF switch. A very tiny signal could make it conduct in the forward direction. The problem was in shutting it off as it will continue to conduct as long as current keeps flowing in the positive direction.
They are great on AC circuits as the current reverses direction every half cycle but on DC circuits they required a very complicated “commutation circuit” which added about a ton of mass to the car. These are probably the parts that give the biggest problems.
The control circuits were called choppers as they chopped the DC current into varying width pulses 400 times per second. This cause the hum when they are running. The speed of DC motors is controlled by the current through them not the voltage across them. Since I = V/R, the old controllers did this by inserting resistor in series with the motors to reduce the voltage and thus the current. The choppers used a form of pulse width modulation that varies the amount of time that the circuit is on from 0 to 95% of the cycle. Since the coils in the motors act as big inductors they smooth the current out to almost a flat line.
The circuit to turn the SCR off was quite complicated and heavy. In order to make sure that they could turn the SCR off they had to turn it off for at least 5% of the cycle, even when they wanted full speed. The advantage to choppers is that they reduced the I^2 R losses and allowed for an infinite range of speeds and in braking the could convert kinetic energy back into electrical energy. The problem was that if the chopper circuit failed full voltage was applied to the motors. The only way to shut if off was to pop the main circuit breaker which usually resulted in a lovely show of sparks.
The controllers on the Witts had three continuous speeds; inch, series and parallel. They had other positions that put resistors into the circuit but the only [one that] could be left on for any time was inch. If you wanted to run at different speed the motorman had to keep turning the controller off when the speed got too high and then back on when it dropped too low. This was a primitive form of Pulse Width Modulation.
The controllers also had to monitor the motor current in case because if it got too, high the commutator had to switch the circuit off until the current dropped back to safe levels. To aid in this, the commutating frequency at low speeds is lower to reduce heat build up in the commutating circuit. This is why the hum frequency starts low and increases as the car goes faster.
Modern Controllers use Insulated Gate Bi-Polar Transistors, IGBTs, to turn the current on or off. The circuits for these are much simpler and, I believe, only conduct when there is voltage applied to the gate. I do not know a lot about IGBTs as they came long after I finished studying engineering.
Perhaps Halton County could adapt this modern controller for use on a CLRV.
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You also need spare parts, including circuit boards for the controller logic circuits. I doubt anyone makes these any more. The Garrett choppers were designed by a U of T post Doc engineering graduate. He and I used to get into arguments about the benefits of fixed frequency choppers versus ramped frequency ones. The starting frequency is lower than the final one of 400 Hz and ramps up to that speed as the speed increases.
For some reason there was a problem with using 400 Hz at the lower speeds. I can’t remember what but there was a heat build up or something. My undergraduate thesis assignment was to examine this. The solution I tested was to leave the chopper turned on for longer than 1/400 of a second and use the current sensor to trigger the commutation cycle. This reduced the heating problem but he said I was going to create a whole lot of different harmonics than a standard 400 Hz chopper would. My counter argument as that they were going to put a honking big filter on the system and my harmonic frequencies would be lower and would be blocked by the same filter.
He remained unconvinced but got a job at Garrett as the chief engineer on their chopper project. I went to an LRT symposium where Garrett was showing off their new chopper. I asked how they solved the low speed problem. The engineer saw that I was from Toronto and told me that their chief engineer was from Toronto and suggested ramping up the frequency from low speeds until it got to 400 Hz. I guess that I eventually won that argument thought I would not have been capable of designing that chopper.
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I own copies of the CLRV Operator’s Manual, ALRV Operator’s Manual and ALRV Propulsion System Training Manual. (How these came to be surplus I have no idea, but they were obtained through legitimate means.) The first two have numerous diagrams and detailed operational troubleshooting information. The latter features extensive electronic schematics, circuit logic explanations, and numerous mechanical diagrams.
My point in mentioning these is that the maintenance information is obviously there with the TTC, it’s simply a matter of determination to retain it or have someone else secure it. In the end it won’t start with lack of parts that forever dooms preservation efforts. It will be lack of commitment to protect the parts and information that remain. If we’re talking electronics, other than some microprocessors the rest seem fairly simple and discrete even in the later ALRV according to the manual I mentioned.
Lets say for argument’s sake you have 50 remaining CLRVs in service – if you require the parts to preserve one or two vehicles you can’t tell me you’ll ever fatally blow through a spare parts pool salvaged from that many functional vehicles. (Keep the preserved vehicles in sheltered storage during winters and you’ll do even better.) The TTC used to repair every CLRV/ALRV no matter what amount of serious damage happened to them. It was possible for 3-plus decades, it still is now to a great extent where there is a will. Unfortunately these decisions are likely beyond my control, as much as I’d be willing to personally commit my own financial resources to help ensure the preservation of at least one (or one additional) CLRV and a pool of spare parts and the requisite diagnostic information/equipment. (If anyone knows the right contacts to follow through on this commitment, I’d certainly want to know. I’m not even remotely joking.)
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@ Kristian:
You could keep a lot of spare parts from a large number of cars but there are some of the electronic components that are no longer manufactured because they are obsolete and nothing else could be used as a direct substitute. It would require the acquisition and storage of a lot of parts, test equipment and knowledge. There then becomes the problem of storage. It would be probably easier to try and adapt a PCC controller.
Since I have nothing to do with HCRR it won’t be my problem.
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@ Kristian;
You could keep a lot of spare parts from a large number of cars but there are some of the electronic components that are no longer manufactured because they are obsolete and nothing else could be used as a direct substitute. It would require the acquisition and storage of a lot of parts, test equipment and knowledge. There then becomes the problem of storage. It would be probably easier to try and adapt a PCC controller.
Since I have nothing to do with HCRR it won’t be my problem.
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For someone who calls himself a “senior” retired IT clerk, you should know that PC stands for Personal Computer.
Steve: I was variously head of Technical Services and Operations Manager in a very large data centre. You are a nobody who posts under various aliases, and you wouldn’t understand a joke if it bit you. In 1978, the “PC”, to use IBM terminology, did not yet exist although there were machines from other vendors. Hence my response.
Now piss off.
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Calgary also unceremoniously retired its first Siemens U2 car several months ago, stripping parts as spares for the remainder of the fleet. Would have been good to have kept the car intact for static display but likely no place to put it. I guess the same fate for CLRV 4000. Would be nice to preserve at least one, perhaps at HCRY but as they might not be in position to take one, let alone have it in operating condition. The sound of those choppers was very familiar to me – I was still living in San Francisco when they brought in the Boeing-Vertol LRVs (to replace the aging PCCs) and they had what sounded like the same choppers. BART had different sounding choppers (and the cars run on 1000 VDC) – on a last visit I saw some of those same 40+ year-old cars but with what sounded like AC motors and choppers.
Phil
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I guess the most difficult issue with preservation is whether any given modification would be considered safe to operate with passengers. At that point you get into really strange questions. The Peter Witt control scheme Robert Wightman describes is surely considered unsafe by modern standards. Nonetheless, if there are safety certification issues to consider, the Witts are probably grandfathered in. Modifications to a CLRV wouldn’t be so fortunate..
Safety certification aside, a replacement controller should be relatively cheap and easy. For museum level operation, it doesn’t need to be nearly as powerful, or nearly as reliable. Electronics have come a long way in 40 years, and it is pretty hard to imagine you couldn’t replace any part you want to for low cost, if you have the will and skills to make it happen.
On the other hand, I think preserving the original electronics in some form – maybe a static display? – is just as important as preserving the outer shell and passenger compartment.
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@ Kristian (and more broadly, everyone on the thread.)
I wonder if there is an appetite for a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.
Of course, acquiring a car (or two) is really only the first step as it needs to be transported off of TTC property, stored, and eventually displayed. In other words, the objectives would need to be properly scoped out and costed before even attempting such a venture.
That said, a static display might be entirely acceptable in Toronto given that we are fortunate enough to be surrounded by operating streetcars. And a static display doesn’t need to boring if we put a bit of imagination into it!
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On further reflection, we are handwringing about absolute worst, worst, worst, case scenarios here.
Personally, I don’t see what the problem is with the idea of when the day comes, taking one of the remaining good, working CLRVs and driving it on to the trailer at Hillcrest under its own power, trucking it to Halton, and using it until it conks. Then, when it does, determine what’s gone wrong and then, if possible, fix. What’s so unreasonable about that?
Let’s say a total of 6 CLRVs were to be preserved. Two each for TTC, HCRR, Seashore (some people expressed an interest a few years ago in getting one or more of the three that ran in Boston). This means that in addition to the original and subsequent TTC parts orders, there are/were 190 parts units. I hope the TTC hasn’t been sending complete CLRVs to the junk yard without parting them out first, then turning around and claiming no parts.
With respect to electronic components, silicon semiconductor stuff’s quite reliable. It’s rare for things to simply up and die on their on accord. It happens, but it isn’t frequent, and replacement only becomes an issue when replacement is required and for solid state silicon semiconductor electronics, this should not be frequent. If it is, there are other problems, apparently long standing, that should have been addressed long ago like not respecting component ratings etc. that can cause totally abnormal high failure rates that shouldn’t be happening.
So, a few thoughts and observations:
I’ve been asking for years now, of all the electronic components on a CLRV, which ones keep dieing and have to be replaced? Nobody’s answered that. Without that information, I can’t really start thinking about how to avoid the problem from occurring in the first place.
Of those, which ones are difficult to obtain replacements, either original or pin compatible equivalent? Nobody’s answered that. Without that information, I can’t really start thinking about how to deal with the problem when it does occur.
When much of the CLRV fleet was out of service a few winters ago, it’s because the pneumatic systems froze up. So, the mass breakdown was because of the 19th century technology on the cars, and had nothing to do with the electronics.
Down in Montreal, STM evaluated their fleet four years ago and decided to keep the MR-73 cars running for a 60 year service life because it was more cost effective than replacing the fleet.
STM Press Release
Montreal Gazette
These are solid state electronically controlled chopper propulsion package cars contemporary to the CLRV and the H5. STM isn’t discussing keeping a couple of subway cars preserved in running condition, they’re talking about keeping an entire fleet of them going until 2036. The one report I linked to above also makes mention that because they’re 10 years newer than the MR-63s and have 1970s electronics, they require far less maintenance of moving, wearing parts, require less fabrication of expensive mechanical parts replacements, are more reliable and cost less to keep running than the older cars with traditional control equipment. This completely, totally 180-degrees-in-the-opposite-direction bucks the prevailing wisdom in Toronto. Is anybody forming a delegation to go on a car trip down the 401 to tell the STM guys “You can’t do that because electronics” in French?
Western Railway Museum has a preserved Boeing LRV in running condition. Is anybody forming a delegation to go on a car trip down to California to tell them “You can’t do that because electronics”?
Every so often at work, stuff comes into the shop for repair. Less so these days since we do mostly systems level work here now but occasionally the odd piece of component repair comes in. I’ll use the most recent one as an example. The last item was a current product from a company in Belgium. Inside, there were some surface mount FPGAs and microcontrollers. All the glue logic that handled interfacing that with the outboard stuff was done with through hole 7400 low power Schottky TTL logic. None of which failed. The problem was the contacts on some pushbuttons were shot. The early 20th century technology in the box failed. The faulty buttons were replaced and the box went back out in service. I really hope none of you guys are forming a delegation to go to my manager’s office to tell him “You can’t do that because electronics” because I seriously don’t need to deal with that headache.
I know industry has basically decamped from Toronto. I know Ontario, generally, is not the industrial powerhouse it used to be and maybe that’s being reflected in STEM abilities in the population now. But can anybody explain how and why this lack of competence verging on phobia for electronics that’s totally unique to Toronto came to be? I deal with electronics people both in and out of the transit industry elsewhere and nobody has encountered anything like this anywhere else.
Lastly, I’ll say the odds of preserving a CLRV in working condition would be much better if the people detracting from the idea put the same amount of effort into figuring out how to overcome the challenges as they do arguing why it can’t be done. As of right now, most likely the biggest problem is probably getting past the deep seated and widely held belief that it is simply impossible to actually laying the groundwork to take a stab at it.
Steve: A few points here. First, if HCRR is going to get a CLRV, it should be one that has gone through the rebuilding program and has a body that won’t fall apart. The “see through” CLRVs that are wandering the streets in Toronto are definitely not candidates. Remember that the Montreal subway fleet runs in a completely enclosed environment and never had to deal with harsh weather and especially not with road salt.
Second, the TTC considered re-equipping some of the CLRVs with new electronics, but the cost of a replacement package was going to be quite substantial. At best HCRR would keep a CLRV going with spare parts, but engineering a new controller simply for museum use is really not an option. “Bringing it into the shop” assumes that a shop capable of repairing this gear exists, and it does not at HCRR.
The CLRVs had a number of basic design problems including not being particularly weatherproof for street operation, and so, yes, there were some non solid-state problems, but the electronics were rather fussy too. Should HCRR be devoting resources to having the maintenance capability for these cars? I don’t think so.
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4010 sounds like the best candidate along with a couple of cars that have been rebuilt. In any event this is a long ways off at the rate Bombardier is turning out Flexity’s it will be YEARS away!
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Shame that CLRV 4000 has gone to the scrap yard.
I am willing and able to host any other retired streetcar. I’m out in the country, I need a chicken coop.
As a computer programmer (retired), I find it incredulous that the CLRV/ALRV systems cannot be maintained or updated. It ought to be simple. What’s happening on your smartphone today, for example?
I used to program in ones and oh’s, before zeros.
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Rob Ford would have had a field day with TTC Passenger’s MR-73s’ new found 60 year life span. Does outdoor storage do 20-30 years of aging to our H5s, or did Montreal invest in a better product from the start?
As a child, I don’t remember any of the 30 to 45 year old TRC cars breaking down or, beyond a slight leaning down of both ends, appearing corroded. Were they [the post 1906 4 truck design] superior to the CLRVs?
Steve: How prevalent was salt then?
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Steve: There was either no salt or VERY little. I didn’t do much driving, but I remember a lot of hard packed snow covered streets that would stay that way for days after heavy storms. Snow tires were useless compared with today, but a lot of people used, or at least carried, chains. I think that they were better drivers on snow and ice, because, for them, it was sink or swim.
I was being somewhat facetious re the superiority of the TRC cars, but, for their time, they appear to have been exactly what Toronto needed. The CLRV design could have used many more modifications before Toronto salt et al was used to attack it. The UTDC was certainly familiar with Toronto conditions.
Steve: Some of the design snafus were amusing such as the blowdown valve for the air tank that would spray slush from the street directly onto the air intake for the cooling system thereby causing the electronics to overheat. Then there were the motor cables that, once coated with heavy ice, would pull out of their casings allowing slush to enter and short out the motors.
It’s ironic that the CLRVs probably lasted as long as they did because they were overbuilt including a top speed that was excessive even for suburban operations.
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Milano Italy still operates about 200 Witts from 1920s in base service, at least they did in 2015. They did not seem to have any safety concerns.
Steve: The issue would be certification of any new propulsion system for the CLRVs. The Witts have been around for almost a century and their control systems, while almost certainly non-compliant with current rules, have existed on thousands of vehicles over time. A one-of for the museum is a completely different situation. I suspect that their insurance company might have thoughts on the subject.
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@ Computer Geek;
I have known Steve for a very long time, more than either of us would probably like to admit to, and I can verify that Steve was programming main frames in the mid 60s while still in high school and doing most of it machine language or assembler; whatever it was called.
Steve: Late 60s, early 70s for an IBM mainframe. An LGP-30 as part of an enrichment program (what’s now called “gifted”) earlier.
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There’s a rumour that San Francisco is interested in attaining a few CLRVs (maybe even an ALRV?). Any confirmations about this? On the same note, if say San Francisco do intend to attain a few CLRVs would they be rebuilding them?
I ask as I was in Boston a few months ago and noticed that MBTA had put the Type 7 LRVs through a refurbishment program with Alstom. It brought up the thought, how different are the CLRVs/ALRVs to the Type 7? I never found any detailed discussions or comparisons of the CLRVs/ALRVs and the Type 7 other than the fact that MBTA had borrowed them for testing. This might be an interesting discussion itself alone.
Steve: The type 7 overhaul cost the MBTA $1.4 million (USD) per car. See page 5 of this summary. The costs specific to the propulsion system are not cited, and there was a lot of structural work too. All of the conditions cited in that document are very much the kind of things the TTC faced with the CLRVs. The cost for the Type 7 project was not out of line with major rebuilds of transit equipment in other cities.
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When did they do so? If we are talking about the motor drive electronics (choppers etc.), power electronics (in which I have a degree or two) has advanced a lot in the past 15 years, new technologies have popped up, the cost of established technologies have gone down. I don’t see how I replacement motor drive would cost more than a few thousand dollars in parts for a streetcar. OK, maybe it’s a lot of money if you want to upgrade all the C/ALRVs in the fleet, but not if you want to do 2-3 for museum/preservation purposes. As for controllers, as long as one has detailed specifications that show how an output vector should look like for each input vector, designing a drop-in replacement (even without knowing the original internal structure) should not be difficult.
Of course, it’s always possible that 1) some crucial pieces of original documentation are lost, meaning that one would have to reinvent the wheel, and that costs more money and/or 2) someone made some in hindsight really bad design decisions, e.g. making too many modules of the system dependent on one another and thus making it really hard to just do a drop-in replacement of a module or two. If you have to redesign half the streetcar just to replace the motor drive, then of course it doesn’t make sense. It also begs the question of what you are actually preserving in that case – just the outer shell (like the oldtimers in Cuba who have had their engines and transmission replaced entirely)? Might as well just make a static display then indoors.
Steve: This was a few years back, but as you will see in a previous reply on this subject, the costs other systems are vehicle refurbishment are very substantial.
This is not just a question of a stand-alone power control package, but a unified set of electronics that is responsible for propulsion, braking and other on-board subsystems. Any new package must be interfaced with existing equipment on the vehicle unless you plan to replace that too. Remember too that the CLRVs use DC motors and all propulsion electronics these days is designed for the simpler AC motors.
In the specific case of the CLRVs, I suspect that replacements would be complicated because the designers had a military, aircraft background and designed things to the specs they were used to, not rapid transit. This was in the early days of solid state controls, and these are not simply units one can unplug and replace at will. There is also the small matter of test equipment which is specific to the cars as they exist.
To make a highly simplified analogy, if you have a 30-year old PC, you cannot just go to a computer store, buy a 21st century part and expect it to work.
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I think that they just have to reprogram using new computer technology. It’s like saying we can’t reprogram because we lost the original punched cards the programs were written in.
Steve: I’m going to stop responding on this thread now. It’s a system, not a discrete box, and it’s not just programming but all of the interfaces to existing components on the vehicle which have their own collections of antique technology.
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