Now that it appears no C cars are seen in service on a daily basis, I think it’s fitting to take a look at one of those final C cars I rode earlier in the month, and saw on the way to the scrapper this morning – car 432. The C cars were the closest match to the sounds of early BART into the 2020s.
 
The 432 was just one of 150 Alsthom-built C cars ordered to supplement the existing Rohr-built A/B cars. The C cars were designed to be used as mid cars (like a B car) or as lead or trail cars (like an A car), providing greater operational flexibility. Additionally, the C cars included some technical changes designed to increase reliability compared to the troubles experienced with the A/B cars in the 1970s.
 
Numbered well into the production run (#301-450), this C car entered service in 1989. With the introduction of the C2s in the late 1990s, the original 150 C cars were also known as C1 cars.
 
By 2023, the 432 had been in service for 34 years and rolled over 3 million miles. Something unique about this car in particular was a bit of a dent or two near the tail light on the Y end, alongside the various scrapes of the white cab paint, revealing the aluminum carbody below.
 
The C1 cars were a bit of a reminder of BART’s past. Never rehabilitated (like the A2/B2 cars), the C cars retained the original faux-wood arm rests and DC propulsion like the original A/B cars. It was hard to mistake a C car in a consist, buzzing and humming the same notes, while the variable pitch A2/B2 cars would whine chromatically.
 

BART’s car retirement plans outlined the C2s to be scrapped first, followed by the C1 cars, and finally the A2 and B2 cars (to note, some A2/B2 have been scrapped between C2s and C1s, for various reasons and considerations). Like over 100 other C1 cars, the 432 exited revenue service, was stripped of useful parts, and trucked away to the scrapper. I last rode it on May 5th (and even rode it on May 4th – and turned in a lost phone, to beat), and today (May 22nd), saw it while driving down 880 on the way to the scrapper. With that unique dent, it wasn’t hard to identify even with the number plates removed.
 
The car has almost certainly been chopped to pieces now. With modern metal recycling technology, it will be recycled and the various metals may find new useful roles. Perhaps one day, you might find what was once 432 in another role – maybe as an aluminum drink can, or some of its steel might be part of a beam in a new building.
 
The 432 will also live on in N scale, being one of the cars I constructed a few weeks ago. My N scale BART fleet has carefully chosen cars to represent various eras of BART history, and the 432 represents one of the last C1 cars in service.
 
Farewell 432.

BART has started selling number plates for retired B cars (on Railgoods.com and sometimes in person at the Lake Merritt Customer service center).

As the owner of the BARTchives, a recorded rider of 660/669 legacy fleet cars, and a person who has also taken a photo of almost every car, I'm happy to share my pictures and any neat details about your car. All I ask is that you send me a photo of your number plate, and if you share the car picture(s), that I be credited as the person that took the picture(s).

As a disclaimer, I am providing this for free, subject to my time availability. There is a rare chance that I do not have any pictures of your car, and higher chance that I may not have a perfect photo of it. This isn't some professional outfit - it's a hobby.

Contact me on the "About" page or by emailing atptransitATgmail.com (replace AT with @). I am happy to see interest in my photo collection and have so far provided pictures to owners of 5 different car number plates.

-ATP Transit

Final resting place of part of 1902 - cherished part of the ATP Transit BART collection.

Snow up on Mission Peak/Mount Allison/Monument Peak today, 2/24/23

Old article from Pacific Bus Museum Archives. BART and Key System

Fifty years ago today (1/29/1973), the R line (MacArthur to Richmond) opened for revenue service. Here are some pictures of the line around the time it opened, and some pictures of the station plaques and art.

This was the second segment of the BART system to open, after the A and K lines (MacArthur to Fremont) on September 11, 1972.

Photo gallery: click on the thumbnails to view the full size images.

AN: Harre Demoro (1939-1993) was the Tribune’s reporter on BART construction for a decade and a half, from groundbreaking to the 1970s. His work is imbedded throughout this site. It appears the years of BART delays and unreliability worn into him through the end of the 1970s and 1980s. As much as he was a supporter in the 1960s, he was a critic in the early 1980s. Many times, his criticism was valid as much as it was then as it is today. If he was alive today, he would likely be aghast at the crime, dirtiness, and other “quality-of-life” conditions (alongside reliability and BART still being unable to “run the system like they promised”), but perhaps most supportive of the Legacy Fleet reaching 50 years of service.

The following essay was published in the February 1980 issue of Pacific News, under the Column “Out West.” Demoro writes:

It is common for electric rail rapid transit cars to outlive their usefulness, to continue to run long after they have become obsolete. The East Boston subway cars built in 1923-24 by Pullman, are just now being phased out. Most Philadelphia Broad Street cars are past forty years of age. New York, the toughest subway town in the world, obtains thirty to forty years of life from its cars. The situation is different in the San Francisco area, where planners for B A RT - the Bay Area Rapid Transit system - are busily drafting plans and specifications for at least two hundred proposed new rapid transit cars that will cost $ 1 million each and, with luck, would go into service in 1985 [A/N: The C1 cars, as they are known now, entered service on 3/28/1988].

We might recall that B A RT did not open its first line until 1 972, and that except for a few cars rebuilt from the prototypes delivered in 1 970, there is not a BART car in 1980 that is even ten years old. The 450 cars built by Rohr Industries were expected to last at least thirty years, but it now seems clear a significant number of them will be gone before they are fifteen years old. Some have already been scrapped due to wrecks and fires.

Having covered B A RT as a newspaperman from 1962- 1 977, watching the engineers and bureaucrats plan, design, build and operate the system, I might be expected to be surprised at the short lifespan of the rail cars. But when I look back, I realize I should not be. The car reflects almost none of the experience gathered by the electric railway industry during seventy years prior to the BART design effort. Too much attention was paid to innovation.

Some history: The last major electric railway design effort was the Electric Railway President's Conference Committee, which produced PCC streetcars, such as those in San Francisco (PACIFIC NEWS, November, 1979), and the PCC rapid transit car, still in use in Boston, Cleveland and Chicago. That program died in 1952 for streetcars, and about a decade later for rapid transit, with Chicago and Boston carrying on the final research. By the time BART was in detailed design, the platoons of experts who knew something about subway car design were either retired, deceased or happily employed on the other rail systems. There was an undisguised snobbery among BART engineers who held that the past was not worth considering, and that modern methods, such as computers and aerospace technology, would be sufficient. It is true that many of the innovations BART attempted had merit. The 1000-volt DC power system was modern and on paper was the electrical network needed to propel the high-performance trains. The solid-state chopper system that feeds electricity to the traction motors was a necessary improvement, both for the high performance required and for its ability to react instantly to the automated control system. But as we now know, the chopper control and motors are erratic, the 1000-volt power system had to be extensively modified - and the cars are getting shabbier and, to this rider, noisier and looser, by the minute. If the cars had been reliable, the awkward arrangement of having end cab (or A) cars with controls, and mid train (or B cars) without controls, would have proven successful.

On a system as unreliable as BART, one component failure takes the entire train to the yard. On a real subway, with all cars alike, the defective car can be switched out of a train at a siding called a pocket track, and the remaining cars continue in service. BART, unfortunately, only has three pocket tracks. The new cars, I am told, will have flat ends with doors. One may assume that with a flat end the car with controls can be put in the middle of the train in an emergency. At long last a design that is aimed at getting passengers home, rather than one pleasing engineers who like to tinker, may be assured for BART.

The new cars are to have control cabs at one end and will replace most or all of the slant-end cab cars now in use. The present cab cars that appear to have a few miles left on their aluminum shells are to be rebuilt as midtrain, or B cars. BART already is cutting the noses off of some of the worn-out cab cars and making them B cars. Ultimately, the present cars will be more fire-resistant. Perhaps by 1985, thirteen years after the system opened to the public, BART may begin to operate like other rail systems. The fact that these others, including new subways in Washington, D. C. and Atlanta, have a car design that is practical, should be a lesson to the BART designers.

Last night - Christmas eve, around 11 PM:

Earlier, BART posted its "top 22 accomplishments" for 2022. Now in the field:

There were almost two dozen unstaffed stations (station agent shortage) last night, and the entire blue line was cancelled (no dublin service - "seek alternative transportation" due to operator shortage). So, only the yellow and orange lines were running, like it was 1992.

Hopefully this is a Christmas eve left for memories only. Hoping for a better 2023!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Once again, BART can't run in any weather. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Wet weather conditions aka rain (e.g. 12/22). Starts with 10 minute delays in the morning, 20 minutes in the PM
  
• Icy weather (12/14/22) - today
• Hot weather (6/22/22) - train derailed on the C line due to rail kink.

Waiting for BART delays due to "dark conditions" AKA night and later, "sunny conditions."


And don't get me started on "oh, your car drives slower in the rain." Yeah, and rapid transit systems in the east coast (Miami, NYC, PATCO) battle far worse weather than the Bay Area, without 20 minute delays everywhere. BART is incompetent.


Happy 50th. End rant/