Re: Melb.Australia Rolling stock

["Roderick Smith" <rodsmith@werple.net.au>]

This was always conventional wisdom, and slow loading is more critical in
Melbourne (which has stations more closely spaced than in Sydney).
However, I have yet to see any evidence of this when travelling on
Melbourne's dd set (which runs on my line).
One reason for adopting dd trains would be to permit all trains on the
various routes to run via the loop, instead of the peculiar hybrid service
in use since the loop was opened.
The latest RER dd trains in Paris have three doors per carriage.
Given the dd emus have electrical equipment shared over two vehicles, a
logical design would be to build in articulated pairs (two bodies on three
bogies), allowing an increase in the double-deck section, and hence
capacity.

I have the figures somewhere for a Netherlands trial of dd
loading/unloading, done on a mockup before creating a fleet.  The critical
factor was not the width of doorways, but the width of access stairways
from the mezzanine level to the upper & lower levels.

Since I first started researching dd sets, most European capitals have
adopted them for urban traffic; many now with dd emus (others with
loco-worked push-pull sets).
-- 
Regards
Roderick Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

Bob Exnarc <gwrly@netspace.net.au> wrote in article
<7ms8r8$2jse$1@otis.netspace.net.au>...

> Roderick Smith <rodsmith@werple.net.au> wrote in message
> > Press releases suggest doing there own thing, mainly because of
> > affiliations with different rollingstock manufacturers.
> > The total disaster is that all predictions are for single-deck trains.
> > While it is comprehensible that a UK company (with infrastructure not
> quite
> > modified to hold dd trains) would feel that 'if we don't have them in
the
> > mother land, those ruddy colonials shouldn't need them'; a French
company
> > inheriting a line with modified clearances shouldn't hesitate.

> I think the problems with double deckers in Melbourne is that having only
2
> doors each side, it  proves to be slow loading when compared to a Comeng.
> Whilst I guess Sydney hasn't found this a problem it is here.
> (Personally I would like to see more 4D's).