(erielack) Old EL-NJDot cars in Utah

["Wahlstrom, Allen R CIV NAS Corpus Christi, N92" <allen.wahlstrom_@_navy.mil>]

Old Jersey Comets
UTAH buys East Coast rail cars
The '70s-era single-level cars will supplement those on Frontrunner
By Brandon Loomis 
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/01/2008 12:47:15 AM MDT


    Many will climb aboard a classic utilitarian rail car of a bygone
era, one that plied the New Jersey shore and New York suburbs. They're
basic, with limited leg room and no electrical outlets, but the Utah
Transit Authority believes the Jersey Comets are a quick fix for about
6,000 commuters crowding its new FrontRunner rail cars every weekday. 
    UTA bought 25 of the single-level aluminum cars from New Jersey and
is wrapping them in red-white-and-blue vinyl to match FrontRunner's new
double-deckers. Four are almost ready for the rails, but they won't
likely roll out until the University of Utah begins its fall semester. 
    "The interiors are a little more mass transit-esque, where our
FrontRunner cars are a little more open," said Todd Provost, a project
manager with UTA. 
    They're also a lot more 1970s. The color scheme, unchanged on the
inside, is brown and light brown, with some wood-panel wallpaper. There
are aluminum-barred bag racks overhead. The seats are benches with short
upright backs: room for three on one side of the aisle and two on the
other. "Classic Naugahyde," Provost said. 
    The cars harken to the time when private railroads served commuters.
Pullman-Standard designed them in the late-1960s for the Erie-Lackawanna
Railroad, where they ran until the public New Jersey Transit took over.
UTA coach technician Mike Meisner, who wore a "Salt Lake Trackers Model
Railroad Club" cap to work on Monday, said he went and found a model
Comet when the used cars came to Utah. 
    "They were a common car back East," he said. 
    The Comets will offer wireless Internet, but computers will have to
run on batteries. 
    It's a product of the East Coast mentality of no-nonsense function. 
    "You pack a lot of people in," Provost said - about 135 per car.
Workers are ripping out some seats to accommodate FrontRunner's
unforeseen demand for bicycle space. 
    Fifteen of the Comets will augment the fleet of 20 Bombardier
double-deckers currently working the Ogden-Salt Lake FrontRunner line. 
    The other 10 will head south when UTA finishes the Provo-Salt Lake
branch, joining 18 new Bombardiers now on order. 
    The used cars cost $35,000 apiece, and Bombardier is fixing them up
for less than $400,000 each at UTA's rail center off Beck Street. That
compares with about $2.2 million for every new FrontRunner car. 

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