On 18/11/17 20:23,prescottt@... [TramsDownUnder] wrote:

> No, the Sydney trams are independent double-ended cars that can run autonomously or in MU coupled to another car.

>

>


Remains to be seen if they ever actually make use of this. Sydney Trains
runs 8 car trains on late night services now as they no longer uncouple
train sets. This practice as made it into train specifications with the
Waratah trains being indivisible 8 car units. If they want less cars for
'security' reasons, the guard locks out a number of cars, which then
haul around air.
Apparently coupling faults were leading to unacceptable delays, so they
ceased to divide and amalgamate sets. (Exception - they still divide and
join OSCAR sets.)

One of the other Citadis systems that used single-ended bidirectional
cars in pairs (Rabbat, Morocco) bought a number of double-enders,
intending to uncouple them and run singles at night. Turns out Alstom
made some sort of 'bo-bo' with the MU system - I noted cars in the two
Moroccan cities with big thick earthing straps across the standard
Alstom coupler, meaning a fitter armed with a spanner was needed to
uncouple the cars (instead of unplugging the MU cable, pulling two pins
and driving one car away from the other)
As a result , Rabat runs the double-enders as single cars during the
day. The only saving grace is the their platform indicators show if the
next service is made of a double-set or not, so you know where to stand.
But you may not fit on the single-car service!

If Sydney is always going to run in pairs, the centre cabs have just
bumped up the price of the trams for equipment that will rarely get used
and removed 16 seats (and probably similar standing room) per set. Of
course with double-enders in pairs, they don't have to worry about which
way the cars are around and having half facing one way and the other
half facing the other. :-)

One thing I did note sitting in the 'blind' end of a double-citadis set
in Tunis (Tunisia) is that the passengers get to experience how the
drivers get thrown around when the car goes into a curve too fast....