Back To Business

And so I unceremoniously return to the internet. Various side projects, research work, and adventures have kept me from updating this as often as I would have liked. At any rate, enough of my life story... This afternoon I was rambling around town and wound up in Dudley Square. I got a few photos of the dual-modes subbing on the 749's ("SL5") and 751's ("SL4"). To my surprise I also spotted 1018 on the road with them:

Usually during snowy and very rainy weather Neoplan AN460's (such as 1018) are taken off the road and the DMA's and C40's sub-in to meet the schedule. Why the substitutions? Well - as the below photo taken last winter shows - let's just say that the Neoplan artics don't do so well in slick conditions.

My guess is that a combination of the SL Waterfront services getting first dibs on the dual-modes and a shortage of C40's (6001 is at Everett for repairs and several others are out for other maintenance, leaving only about five of the sixteen buses in that fleet in service), 1018 was put on to avoid any impact on service. Thankfully, I spotted it again later in the day non-jackknifed.

Speaking of maintenance, during the blog's hiatus I paid a visit to the Everett Shops and got to see first-hand the NABI mid-life overhauls. About 175 of the 299 NABI's are being overhauled in-house at Everett, while the remainder are out in Michigan. A handful of buses are withdrawn from service at any given time and completed buses can be identified by their new bike racks.

While at Everett I also went out back to the RTS graveyard, which is home to some other seldom seen equipment as well:

Scrap-list RTS buses parked out back

The craptastic Orion hybrid buses which averaged

about 60 miles between failures

Type 8 shell slowly being cannibalized for spare parts

Neoplan AN460 #1000 -- used for maintenance training

Orion #5001 and the "magnetic induction" bus

An engine-less bus

Other than that I went up to the Seashore Trolley Museum's annual transit day; have taken up the "hobby" of riding the T before 5:00 AM; spent some time working on a book(let) about Boston's horsecars; and recently went to several of the MBTA fare increase/service cuts public meetings. But more on that stuff later.

Failure, Thy Name Is Route 111

Snow & Ice: 100 Points
Route 111: -50 Points

After the series of storms that hit the region this past weekend, I would expect surface transit to be a little slow. Maybe even some moderate delays (10-15 minutes). But the 111 seems to have had some trouble bouncing back.

It all began Monday morning. The AM Peak had just ended and I had a few errands to do. During the AM Base, there are about five buses on the line. Whenever I catch the 111 at this time, I can count on having ample seating to choose from. Today was a little different...

0732 arrived at my stop, packed to the gills. I managed to squeeze on and find a spot near the driver. He informed me that some buses had been pulled off the line and/or broke down. He was really feeling the crunch. En route to Boston, we were drop-off only. Well, we tried to be at least. At Fourth Street, the driver announced that he had room for only one more person.

Naturally, seven people attempted to board.

We made it into Haymarket at last. The TransitMaster was running so late that it reset itself. They tend to do that, it seems, when they are running over 35 minutes late.

0732 was forced to deadhead back to Woodlawn. The driver wanted to make sure that there was at least one bus in Chelsea.

The PM Peak, frankly, was not much better:

The Lynn operators had to exit the station carefully,
lest they strike someone waiting for the 111 in the busway.

The berth at Haymarket was overflowing with people. Perhaps 50-75 cold souls waited for the 111. The bus on the right was a 111, but was pulling back to Charlestown Garage. Several more followed suit, much to the dismay of the waiting passengers. Fed up, they "surrounded" a bus (0686 I believe) about to pullback, with hopes of forcing the driver to do another trip. Two more buses were roped in as well.

The Angry Masses. Oh the humanity!

The bus in the above photograph held off on opening its doors. A second bus pulled in behind it and felt the brunt of the crowd. That driver had to kick several people off, just so passengers were not pressed against the windshield. I boarded 0686 (Central made the operator do some overtime), which was not too crowded (about twenty passengers). When I reached my stop, the TransitMaster proudly proclaimed that the bus was 22 minutes behind schedule. A mere 22 minutes!

I believe I will be taking the Commuter Rail into town from now on. Those locomotives seem able to power through just about anything.