Testing the new DART Silver Line trains

[CMStPnP]

FYI-,

These will travel on a former Cotton Belt line that ran from the NE Suburbs of Dallas to the airport  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1ulJq1MNFo

 

[Overmod]

It'll be cool when they finish this.  I was in Plano a couple of years ago and saw the very rusty end of track continuation that will be the starting point  (as I recall this will give Plano two routes to the airport by very different routings!)

I had ASSumed the line would be electrified, but those Flirts solve the issue...

[CMStPnP]

Overmod

It'll be cool when they finish this.  I was in Plano a couple of years ago and saw the very rusty end of track continuation that will be the starting point  (as I recall this will give Plano two routes to the airport by very different routings!) I had ASSumed the line would be electrified, but those Flirts solve the issue...

Lots of Nimby's blocking extension of the Plano line from Parker Road station North.   Commonly heard refrain which I think is a little racist.   "DART light rail brings crime with it".    If you challenge that mindset in a public forum your going to get a lecture with racial or social class prejudice crap just under the surface.   But the silver lining on all of this is unbeknownst to the current set of Nimby's....

McKinney is having meetings with Plano on their own to ram the line through the Northern suburbs blocking it (hilarious).    They have not decided on if it will continue to be DART or if they will use these vehicles pictured above.    They like the much cheaper cost of the vehicles above and so they have adopted a wait and see approach to gauge public acceptance and wait until the Silver line opens before they do their Hail Mary pass and take on the suburbs blocking expansion north.    DART owns the line between Plano all the way to Sherman.    The line is still in place between Sherman and Dennison and eventually ends at the MKT Depot in Dennison but I think that small segment of the line is either abandoned or rail banked and the current shortline that operates South of Sherman on the DART owned portion to McKinney uses parallel BNSF or UP to go from Sherman to Dennison.

So in the past when a suburb attempts to block the DART light rail.   DART just builds through that suburb and does not build any stations in it, they have done this before and even did it with the Silver Line (North Dallas).