Let's talk about the M3s

For the majority of LIRR riders, at least those in electrified territory, the train that comes rolling into the station each morning. You peer off the platform, and most of the time, a train made of M7 equipment rolls in. That is fair, as the M7 easily represents the largest portion of the fleet, with 836 of them rolling around electric territory. For the most part, the majority of trains are run by M7 equipment, however, every now and then, commuters will get a pleasant surprise and get an M9, or get an unpleasant surprise with a Budd M3s. 

M3s coming into Syosset (Photo: The LIRR Today)

The M3s a dying breed, currently represent a very small portion of the RR’s fleet. That’s bad considering the equipment coordinator will avoid these cars due to their age and reliability. The thing is, you either love their old nostaglic 80s retro design that gives you a blast to the past, or you hate the reality which is beaten-up, held together only by duct-tape.

Recently, the LIRR has finished rolling in the "M3 replacements", the M9s. You may ask why these cars are still in service, well that’s because the LIRR still needs extra capacity after East Side Access opened. These cars are expected to remain in service for another 3 or so years, as the MTA is funding additional replacements to get the last of these cars out of service.

In the rare cases where an M3 would quietly slither into a station, you would normally hear a couple of mumbled annoyances and sighs from commuters. Many people (especially commuters) do not like M3s, and it’s hard to blame them. These cars are from the 1980s, are aging, and did not go through a fancy mid-life overhaul like their Metro-North counterparts did. I mean, for many regular passengers, it’s not a nice surprise to see cars that are dirty and don’t gleam in the sun like the M9s or M7s. 

While I (and most commuters) wouldn’t call the M3s our favorites, there are also some unseen advantages to this equipment. To start, they feature more seats then the M7s, when they were first introduced, a two-car pair could fit 234 passengers seated, and a twelve-car set could seat 1,404 passengers, compared to the M7s which can only seat 1,266 passengers, a mere 138 less!

Now, this may not seem like a lot of extra capacity, but, when it’s rush hour, every seat counts and an extra 137 seats can mean the difference between people sitting or standing. The MTA knows that and they try to assign the M3s to the busiest rush hour trains; however, as these trains age even more, it’s become more difficult to rely on these cars.

If you’re a railfan or even just a normal passenger yet you're dying to some M3 action before they are gone for good, they are very commonly placed on the Jamaica - Atlantic Terminal shuttles during weekdays. They also make some appearances on rush hour trains, like #1515, the 6:44 AM from Huntington to Penn, where I’ve seen it multiple times and they normally are assigned to at least 1 PM rush hour run to Ronkonkoma, however, recently, it's been getting more sparse where. I've noticed in the last month or so they've been running more 12 car sets of them around, and while they still make up a shadow of their former fleet numbers, they are starting to return them to service slowly now that they have the excuse that the new M9As are on the way. During off-peak hours, apart from the Atlantic shuttle, it’s pretty rare to see them, only for equipment moves or passenger extras, they’re normally in yards during those times. They aren't normally found on weekends though. 

The M3s also aren’t really capable of going on the West Hempstead branch due to the substation near Malverne having issues with dealing with excess amperage, meaning that if they exceed P1 on the throttle, in either direction, the fuses will overload and blow up, causing the M3s and/or third rail to shut off. This makes it especially rare to catch them here.

Now I also recommend checking out Metro-North, which while doesn’t use them that much, it’s much easier to find them their then it is on the LIRR. To be honest with you, I haven’t been on the M3s too many times in my life, so they definitely don’t compare with the M7 or M9s for me, but I do like them and it will be sad to see them go.

Whether you're a railfan that enjoys them or a commuter that loathes them, the last of their replacements are on the way, so I recommend that you enjoy them before the Budd Metropolitans are gone for good.

Alstom Officially Awarded $2.3 Billion Contract for M9A Cars

After years of waiting, the contract for the M9A cars has finally been awarded. The annoucement came on Monday, June 23rd at the MTA's Board Meeting, where they voted on it. The base order consisted of 316 railcars, 160 for the LIRR, and 156 for Metro-North, and the contract also includes options for up to a impressive additional 242 cars, (180 for LIRR and 62 for MNR) to support future ridership growth. 

The M9As will finally replace the M3 fleet, which if I remember correctly, were supposed to be fully replaced by the M9s. On the Long Island Railroad, they'll also provide additional capacity, and as the M3s can't go into Grand Central, giving the railroad even more flexibility (maybe this will make them be more willing to at least divert service to Grand Central since they're not willing to do it to the more then capable Hunterspoint Avenue).

Concept rendering of the M9A

To me, this concept almost reminds me of something that would be made by AI, but nonetheless, it's a very futuristic-looking concept. The blue front is definitely something that'll take some time to get used to, but these are pretty sleek looking cars.

Is it just me or are the M9As the train-version of Kathy Hochul?

And while little is known still about the M9A's actual design apart from those concept renderings, we can expect these features: glass windows less prone to sun damage, push button doors on the bathrooms, and USB ports in every row. 

The Long Island Rail Road expects to have M9As ready for testing by 2029, with them scheduled to enter actual revenue service on both railroads in 2030, and be completed by 2032 (hopefully Alstom won't screw up like my beloved Kawasaki did!) It's crazy to me that the next generation of railcars will be out the year I graduate highschool! 

The LIRR sent concept interior photos just an hour or so after I finished this post, so I better add them in. The design, which I can probably guess the prompt in Veo 3, is very similar to the M7. This was the first thing I noticed when I saw these images. While I expected some similarity, considering this is being made by the same company who made the M7s (Bombardier and Alstom merged), it was a bit startling just how similar these cars look. While I expect this will change from an AI prompt concept to an actual change, the inside is basically just an M7 with the display boards changed to look more modern in addition to a couple of other changes. 

In all, the future for LIRR rolling stock is quite positive- we weren't even supposed to get a second  as if the Chargers don't get delayed they should be rolling in on the rails in 2027, followed by these in 2030. Not to mention the While it's sad to see the M3s so close to retirement, customers hate them and it probably has some minor part to do with the LIRR's lower satisfaction rates considering how torn up they are, and at this point they were supposed to be long gone. 

Now the question to be asked is, what will the propulsion sound like?

What Happened to the C1's?

For those of us (myself proudly included) who live out in LIRR diesel territory have heard of the C3s- (or even better have not just heard of them) the LIRR’s cool-looking bi-level coaches that get pulled by diesel engines.

But what few know is that the C3s actually had a predecessor- the C1s. The C1s were prototype cars built by Kawasaki for the LIRR to tour around the railroad to show off these new, futuristic systems and amenities to see if it appealed to passengers and to see if it would “work” on the LIRR.

To be honest, the C1s were basically just a scaled-back version of the C3s. They had the same basic general design, and the same basic features, with the C3 just including a more full “suite of amenities.” The LIRR and Kawasaki basically just collected input from passengers to create the trains we now call the C3s. They only built them for testing purposes and not to stay in the fleet, explaining why only 10 were built. Time for a fun fact? Did you know that the FRA changed it’s definition in the book therefore the way that some C1s were coupled would be considered a “married pair”, similar to what we see on the M3s, M7s, and M9s, therefore technically there were 5 sets of C1s roaming around!

Here are a couple of videos for if you’d like to see these cars when they were in service:

When the LIRR made one of it’s best decisions to purchase the beloved C3s, the C1s became the oddballs of the fleet with no real purpose. They could only be pulled by certain modified engines, and to add insult to the injury, they couldn’t even be paired up with the C3s. And why weren’t they you may ask? They’re literally supposed to be very similar cars? Well, it’s the LIRR and who knows why. The C1s had different couplers and the C1s couplers proved to be a big limiting factor for those cars. The C1s couplers were actually quite similar to those found on the M1s and M3s, however, they obviously couldn’t be coupled to them as those were MU cars and these were powerless coaches and they couldn’t be coupled to C3s (or their engines for that matter) as the C3s had more conventional couplers and the C1s had 27-point jumpers (like just about every other railroad in the world), meanwhile the C3s had 36-point jumpers, a very odd choice. The C1s were also known to be a pain maintenance-wise requiring heavy maintenance and being a pain to maintain.

So, in the end, it would’ve cost much more to retrofit these cars for service with the other cars then it would to just buy 10 more C3s, therefore the LIRR chose the sad but much more logical decision. While the C1s had a short life, it was a fulfilling one and as a matter of fact, the C1s were also the first cars to get to experience dual-mode technology as they were the first cars to run on the LIRR’s new dual-mode train from Port Jefferson to Penn Station on weekday and as you can guess, people really took a liking for these 1 seat rides as we now have 11 of them per weekday!

(Photo: s2vAA777 on YouTube)

But whatever happened to the C1s?

When the LIRR was through with the C1s, they sat collecting dust for a while before being sold elsewhere to various heritage railways.

These C1s belonged to the Saratoga & North Creek Heritage Railway in Upstate NY which as of July 2018, sadly closed its doors. 

These C1s have been found on the Rio Grande Senic Railroad, however I can’t tell whether or not those cars are still there.

And if you'd like to actually board the C1s, the Cape Cod Central Rail Road also has some in service and as a added bonus, they are pulled by FL9's as they were in LIRR service.

And, I may even be visting Cape Cod Central Railway this Winter to ride the Polar Express train and experience these cars for myself, something I never got to experience before.

If you’d like to see more photos of this train, there’s a website with them. 

In conclusion, the C1s will always hold a special place in my heart for being the prototype to my favorite railcars. 

'Middleseatphobia'

There it is… the little seat that couldn’t. The dreaded middle seat. Walk down just about every single train, rush hour or not, tons of standees, or no standees, and you’ll see just about every seat but the middle seat filled.

Photo: MTA LIRR

If your most people, like me, you’ll have no problem sitting in the end seat (not that the window seat isn’t much better, but also not that it matters since you can’t see out the window!), but if asked to stand or sit in the middle seat, most people will choose to stand. If you sit in this dreaded seat, your squished in between two other people, have no armrests, and if one of the people next to you is smelly, loud, et cetera, then it could mean a hell of a ride for you.

On the LIRR & MNR, the middle seat is only on the MU equipment (M7s, M8s, M9s), as it’s a 3-2 seating arrangement,  and on the Shoreliners and C3 equipment, the bodies are narrower so they can only fit four seats per row. 

The main reason for these seats is because of ADA requirements. Because of all the ADA required things for accessible riders, which is a very good thing, but also means that they have a significant reduction in seating capacity meaning they had to include the middle seat.

An almost (or more) uncomfortable seat is the facing seats, for the reason of it being impractical to have all seats per car facing the same way as some prefer to sit one way versus the other, and therefore they have to meet somewhere in the middle of the car. However, these seats are annoying because their very cramped and the legroom is abysmal.

Photo: The LIRR Today

What makes this whole “Middle seat” situation even worse is when the LIRR calculates ridership numbers, and more importantly, standee numbers, they calculate loading percentages, assuming that every seat (including the middle seat is filled). So for the vast majority of the LIRR & MNR’s rush hour trains, the standee counts are all screwed up and because of this, the LIRR thinks it’s fine to run less then 12 cars on those trains and everyone will allegedly have a seat.

But the truth is, walk down any rush-hour train, and chances are, only a couple of middle-seats in an entire 12 car consist will actually be filled. I think to help fix this issue, the LIRR should only factor window seats and end seats into their calculations, maybe including one or two middle seats per pair. Because the number of “end seats” and “window seats” tallys up to 144 seats per M7 pair, and that number excludes the 51 middle or facing seats that people will avoid, and the 16 fold-down seats that also are avoided (though not in as high contempt as the middle seats)

As it turns out, ‘Middleseatphobia’ (or whatever you’d prefer to call it) is a real thing among LIRR & MNR commuters, and the fact that people would rather stand then sit their pretty much proves my point. In a perfect world, the LIRR & MNR would try to base their equipment rotations and loading factors better on the seats that are actually used, not just the ones that exist.

Also, before I go, happy last day of work or classes before the holidays!