Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Sydney / New South Wales Transport Discussion
Yerolo
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Yerolo »

Theres also another good cab video here which was shot from the LH side of the driver so you can see the throttle/brake being used and the speedometer

https://youtu.be/F2UVXPXOSbs
moa999
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by moa999 »

tonyp wrote: The public transport system of New York City itself moves about six times the number of people that Sydney's public transport presently moves. The mainstay of the system is metro, the task couldn't be done without that. Like London and Paris, the old metro is fairly dense and compensates for the loss of streetcar (tram) systems that provided the next level of capacity, but nowadays it has become too expensive to build metros with such density and coverage,

So to those who haven't yet gone through the door, I'd ask them whether Sydney's suburban double-deck commuter rail system could do six times the work it does now?
Of course it can't - but those cities have much higher populations crammed into a tiny area - so the public transport solution needs to be totally different.

If you had LR in NYC it would be a conga line of street cars.

Apart from a few small areas Sydney (and even moreso Newcastle) are way less dense.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by boronia »

But NYC has conga lines of buses and coaches.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Swift »

And despite carrying six times Sydney. New York's system struggles to cope. Subway crowd congestion is New York's daily transportation crisis like Sydney's traffic choked roads. At least expansion of a subway isn't a futile exercise.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by tonyp »

The density of a city doesn't change the number of people who still have to be moved. The trains just have to be higher-performance to cover the greater distances in less time.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Linto63 »

Given that this is getting way off topic, have set up a more appropriate thread. http://www.busaustralia.com/forum/viewt ... =2&t=86686
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Newcastle Flyer »

Second tram breaks down - two in two days.

https://www.theherald.com.au/story/5918 ... ine/?cs=12
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by boronia »

Report on the first incident in one paper said the pantograph failed.

Has been mentioned elsewhere these are not usually designed for repeated raising/lowering.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Swift »

Maybe they should consider making them diesel powered. :oops:
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Newcastle Flyer »

boronia wrote:Has been mentioned elsewhere these are not usually designed for repeated raising/lowering.
Wonder what the wear & tear would be when you need repeated raising/lowering? Normal wires for power would be staggered to reduce wear & tear on what-ever-you-call-the-top-of-a-pantograph (slide plate??)
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by boronia »

The weak point would be the motors and gears used to raise/lower the pans.; not the collector head. There is weight and spring tensioning to overcome.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by tonyp »

boronia wrote:The weak point would be the motors and gears used to raise/lower the pans.; not the collector head. There is weight and spring tensioning to overcome.
There are issues and risks around this power supply system that CAF should be well aware of and there are always teething troubles with something new in any case, but hopefully the contract has been drawn up watertight so that CAF is responsible for rectifying all issues and guaranteeing that sufficient of the fleet is available at all times to provide the agreed level of service (which should be the full timetable). Failing this, CAF would be required to pay penalties. I would expect nothing less.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Newcastle Flyer »

If you count Sunday, that's three breakdowns - that I know of.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by matthewg »

boronia wrote:The weak point would be the motors and gears used to raise/lower the pans.; not the collector head. There is weight and spring tensioning to overcome.
It's not the raise motors, it's the high currents through a small stationary contact patch on the contact bar. Normally a pantograph slides and the wire sweeps side to side and that keeps everything polished and clean. These ones are just slamming straight up against the bar. Any dust, corrosion or other contaminants get between the pantograph and the contact bar instead of being swept out of the way. The high current then burns through.
I observed one tram emit a couple of sparks from the contact patch when the charge cycle started - I only saw this happen once, but I wasn't the only person who noticed the sparks when it happened. This only has to happen a couple of times a day for the damage to add up.

Even with accelerated wear on the raise motor and it's gearing, they shouldn't be anywhere near standard cycle life yet, it's not practised in Australia but in Europe it's common for a locomotive or MU to drop pans when the driver changes ends, so they raise and lower many times a day. The Dutch even have lifting bridges on electrified routes where there no wire on the bridge, they drop pans and coast over the bridge.
TGV sets running out of Paris swap between high and low voltage pantographs at least once per trip, many routes switch back to DC at the other end of the high-speed line, so even the TGVs are raising and lowing their pantographs many times a day. Granted these don't happen as often as our ACR trams, but the trams have only been running a month or two so far.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Swift »

Catenary throughout, here we come.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by kypros1992 »

Swift wrote:Maybe they should consider making them diesel powered. :oops:
and call it eNewcastle while where at it :lol:
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by moa999 »

Given its not moving on contact, I wonder why they don't have a larger contact point (obviously wouldn't work in the yard)
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Newcastle Flyer »

Catenary is used around the depot.

https://www.theherald.com.au/story/5918 ... l/?cs=7573.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by tonyp »

Newcastle Flyer wrote:Catenary is used around the depot.
Stand around outside the depot and observe before you conclude that. KD is wrong, this capacitor recharge system has not been used anywhere else that I know and is different from the battery version that CAF uses in Spain. CAF is taking a big commercial risk with this in order to win marketing kudos and I hope the NSW government has made the contractual provisions watertight to protect themselves (i.e. ourselves the taxpayers). CAF needs to paying for resolving any issues and for any shortfall in service.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by matthewg »

tonyp wrote: KD is wrong, this capacitor recharge system has not been used anywhere else that I know and is different from the battery version that CAF uses in Spain. CAF is taking a big commercial risk with this in order to win marketing kudos
It appears is most closely based on Kaohsiung, Taiwan's 'Circular LRT' of which less than half (8.7km) is currently operating using 9 CAF trams. Notably, Kaohsiung has decided to buy 15 Alstom 305s for the 13.4km 'Phase II' extension of the project.
Kaohsiung went wire-free as the region is typhoon prone and they wanted a system they wouldn't have rebuild several times a year when the typhoon tore it down.

Kaohsiung does at least demonstrate by going for storage with recharge by pantograph instead of a proprietary 3rd rail or inductive system, changing car vendors isn't difficult!
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by tonyp »

matthewg wrote: It appears is most closely based on Kaohsiung, Taiwan's 'Circular LRT' of which less than half (8.7km) is currently operating using 9 CAF trams. Notably, Kaohsiung has decided to buy 15 Alstom 305s for the 13.4km 'Phase II' extension of the project.
Kaohsiung went wire-free as the region is typhoon prone and they wanted a system they wouldn't have rebuild several times a year when the typhoon tore it down.

Kaohsiung does at least demonstrate by going for storage with recharge by pantograph instead of a proprietary 3rd rail or inductive system, changing car vendors isn't difficult!
I presume the stop dwells there are of a similar duration, which must drag out a 22 km journey. With 35 intermediate stops that would add up to as much as about 15 minutes on top of a normal journey time. That's staggering, but perhaps the locals don't care about these things.

I note that their depot yard has overhead wiring. How would they have got around Newcastle's pantograph issues?
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by matthewg »

tonyp wrote:
I note that their depot yard has overhead wiring. How would they have got around Newcastle's pantograph issues?
By not actually moving trams with their pantographs up. Only use the wire to charge the batteries, not actually drive about the depot with the pantograph up. Enforce it with a software mod that interlocks traction with 'pan up'.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by tonyp »

matthewg wrote: By not actually moving trams with their pantographs up. Only use the wire to charge the batteries, not actually drive about the depot with the pantograph up. Enforce it with a software mod that interlocks traction with 'pan up'.
I wonder whether it was all designed that way or something that CAF "discovered" while developing the technology. It does make sense having continuous wiring in the depot as it provides flexibity for trams to park anywhere in the yard. A way around the situation if wires are required along part of the system is to have a second pantograph. I would have thought also that ground-level flash charging may have been an option to consider unless some issues have been found for that - so flash charge contact underneath and pantograph for wires on the roof. All getting nicely complex and expensive.

Frankly, if they're going to extend the Newcastle system, they should go for in-motion charging and abandon the flash charge. Parramatta and Canberra should go directly for in-motion charging. However , if the two governments are going to continue to uncritically accept what CAF pushes, they will be stuck with donkeys.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by Swift »

I hope trouble doesn't continue to plague this "beautiful system" and they can make this charging system work.
Hardly the first time teething issues have occurred with something new.
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Re: Newcastle light rail, renewal & integrated transport

Post by mandonov »

boronia wrote:Are single trip tickets available for the tram in Newcastle?. VMs at stops?
Yes, every stop has a cash & card Opal machine that dispenses LR Single Trips. There's also one on the light rail platform at Newcastle Interchange.
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