Friday, January 30, 2009

Gold Line Pull

They're testing on the Gold Line Eastside Extension in LA. In the video a service truck is pulling an LRV but those new Bredas are quite heavy. Looks like the truck has some torque.


Gold Line Trains In Movement from curbed los angeles on Vimeo.

H/T AF

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

in theory once you get them moving they are very free rolling. in industrial settings, I have seen a worker reposition a loaded car using a "come'along"

crzwdjk said...

If you look closely, the truck is actually carrying generators, and there's a cable going into the LRV. I'm not sure what it's powering, but at least the low-voltage systems are powered on, and the brakes seem to be working. I wonder who's pushing whom here.

crzwdjk said...

And as the Metro press release helpfully reminded, this new line is in large part a restoration of one of the LA Railway's last streetcar lines, since it basically follows the route of the eastern half of the P line. At the corner of First and Indiana, there were even some rails visible right up until they tore up the street to put in the new tracks.

kenf said...

The B&O railroad had a "tractor truck" as in tractor/trailer, to move freight cars around in Fells Point, Baltimore. The tracks were in the middle of the street, and they went to the truck after the streetcar system went defunct and their electric locomotive would no longer function. Last time I looked, both the truck and the electric locomotive were at the B&O Museum in Baltimore.

njh said...

It seems a little late to be checking clearance when all the slabs have been poured?

Exciting times anyway.

Anonymous said...

Better to find close clearances now than on opening day. Metro did the same thing on the LA-Pasadena section of the Gold Line; it was quite a while before they ran the test cars with live overhead. Last week I checked progress, and they still have some feeder cables to connect at Union Station.
And just in case someone wonders why the old streetcar tracks weren't re-used, the LARy/LATL tracks were 42" gauge, and the Gold Line is 56.5" standard gauge. The surviving operable LARy/LATL cars are at Orange Empire Ry. Museum in Perris CA, where some of the track is dual gauge for running both LARy and Pacific Electric cars.