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T says it's ready to motor through the storm

Plenty of spare train engines

The T reports it has dozens of spare engines ready to replace any on the Red and Orange lines that might burn out during tomorrow's storm.

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Maybe they should wrap the whole train in protective plastic like that...

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Long time reader - thanks for everything you do, Adam!!! Love U-Hub & read it every day. Good luck with the snow, I listened to my french toast alert today & we are fully stocked

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The MBTA can't even motor through a Thursday without falling apart let alone a storm.

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Can someone explain to me why these motors burn out? It seems crazy to me that snow causes a train motor to die, especially a new one. What am I missing?? They can't design them better?

Why can I drive my volt through water for 100k miles but a subway train goes over snow and dies?

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And that's how they short out. The light fluffy snow is the worst, and that's what we were getting two years ago.

Besides, if you are driving that Volt 3 decades from now, I'd bet the motor woud short out a lot.

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You're about 99% right.. the snow does break the motors, but its because they are DC motors and are more prone to this. AC motors are a bit more robust to handle moisture.. Most transit agencies have switched to AC motors instead of DC ones in the past 20 years or so. This should have happened if the MBTA did a mid-life overhaul of the Orange Line cars around.. oh... around 1990-1994.

Many of the stalled trains failed because their motors run on direct current, or DC, power, which malfunctions easily in light, fluffy snow like the more than 40 inches that has blanketed Boston in the past two weeks, MBTA officials say. Transit systems around the country have upgraded to newer alternating current motors, which withstand moisture far better.

“If, years ago, the authority had had the money and funds to do a midlife overhaul and replace and upgrade the propulsion system, the traction motors would have been updated with them,” she said, “But some things you don’t get to pick and choose.”

Also:

Of the T’s 218 Red Line cars, 132 are at least 25 years old and run on DC motors. The newest Red Line cars, a group of 86 that went into service in 1994, run on AC systems.

Source with a cool graphic at the bottom (which is just too long to inline here) that explains exactly how it happens.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/02/07/snow-obsolete-motors-disabl...

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We wanted upgrades to AC traction motors during our rebuilds but nooooooooo!

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