I walk between cars all the time In DC METRO especially when some smelly bum walks into the car
That makes sense.
Always thought BART trains had something peculiar but could never put my finger on it. Yes, the track gauge!! Any idea why the constant noise from the wheels? A royal pain.....
Somewhere in my collection of papers collected before marriage, I have the handout that was given by a BART engineer giving a talk to an EE seminar at Cal about the propulsion system for for the Rohr built cars. The cars used two sets of 550V Westinghouse motors in series with a thyristor chopper control, along with braking resistors that cut in when the third rail potential went much above 1,000V.
You may be right on the 750V for WMATA.
- Erik
Yes, BART usses 1000V third rail, but I think WMATA is 750V.
A couple of -um- minor details keep BART and WMTA from exchanging cars - BART uses 5'6" gauge track and 1,000VDC third rail, where WMATA uses 4'8.5" track and presumably 600VDC third rail. The original ROHR equipment for BART used special cab cars, which may have made it easier to allow passage between cars.
A further thought the heritage of WMATA cars - the high windows used on BART cars (and WMATA) sort of follow the window design on the Key System cars built for trans-bay service.
Interesting as I am about 5 miles from there as this is being written. The station near Tyson's corner looks darn near complete from the road level, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Silver line does get stated up. A bit of a shame the silver line wasn't already running as the station would have been two miles from the hotel as compared to ~5 miles for the Falls Church West station.
I was a bit disappointed to note that unlike BART, WMATA trains aren't equipped to allow passengers move between cars, even though the cars can trace some design features to the original Rohr built BART cars.
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