Did you know that Boeing made a train?

Title says it all, The Boeing Corporation made a train (or three!). Been a while since I made a video but finally managed to get something out. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to reply, there's a high chance I reply back if you're nice!
Below is a non-exhaustive list of my video sources. I will do my best to make it more exhaustive as the week goes on. I'll slowly get better at sourcing my videos, I am very much a non-commercial amateur so be lenient on me as I try to improve.
jdgato95 Boeing Vertol video: Part 1 • Vintage Boeing LRV Fil... and Part 2 • Vintage Boeing LRV Fil...
Crail87 "Farewell Boeing" • Farewell Boeing
RenegadeChauffeur "CTA 2400 Series Farewell Tour" • CTA 2400 Series Farewe...
Chicago "L" .org, www.chicago-l.... incredible resource.

[@Sacto1654]

Fortunately, Sacramento Regional Transit came to their senses and ended up buying Siemens Mobility light rail cars instead (Siemens built a factory in southern Sacramento County, California to assemble these trains).

[@offbrandurbanism]

Yup! Wish I spent more time on it and their facility but yeah most cities avoided this like the plague.

[@stickynorth]

Ditto for Edmonton and Calgary.. I just saw the ETS LRT car #1001 yesterday. Still in service 46 years later...

[@Cupertinorail]

I was lucky enough to ride the last of the Boeing Vertol tram cars in 1998. I was 6 years old and went to SF for the first time in my life. From what I can remember the trams were very noisy rocked around like crazy and outdated. The adjustable stairs made a strange hydraulic hissing noise. They were no better than the PCCs. Before I was born a lot of native SF people from my church had no issues riding it in like the 1970s but as the 1980-90s came around the tram's problems became imminent.

[@offbrandurbanism]

Yeah from the literature I've read it makes it seem like the adjustable stairs were one of the bigger SF specific issues. I rode one like once at the end of their life eons ago.

[@Cupertinorail]

@@offbrandurbanism nice!

[@emjayay]

I lived on one of the streetcar lines in San Francisco that converged on the Twin Peaks tunnel on the way to downtown. A brilliant idea with the Boeing Vertols was that unlike PCCs they could link up at the West Portal stop before going into the tunnel, raising the tunnel capacity. They linked electronically through some connections that happened when the cars linked together. They couldn't move until the electronics were linked. A lot of times it didn't work, and they would back up and ram the second car into the first one harder once or twice to get them to connect. The thing about rail is that if one stops it's a problem all down the line. Reliability is way more important than innovation.

[@offbrandurbanism]

1000% agree with your last line. Don't fix what isn't broken. I'll someday do another Muni Metro line review and talk about this, there's *a lot* of discourse around the death of the Twin Peaks tunnel coupling I'd love to dig deeper on. Appreciate the comment have a great weekend!

[@lars7935]

Isn't that just pretty standard multiple running? I know a lot of lines that do exactly that without issue at all

[@TevinH]

Great video! Glad to see you back :) For the next one, might be interesting to tackle the history of Caltrain now that they've gotten it all electrified. Also future plans for HSR, the Transbay Terminal, and grade separations along the route. Could also look at the San Jose to Santa Cruz train or the Key System. Lots of cool history on those. I look forward to the next upload!

[@offbrandurbanism]

Hey thanks appreciate the comment, glad to be back! All are definitely on the table. Grade separation I'd love to know more about, haven't read much into it. The Santa Cruz and Monterey stuff I am kind of obsessed with and would love to do a video.

[@erik_griswold]

Siemens was not making trains at the same time, that was DüWAG (Düsseldorf Wagen AG) which used Siemens components but the company was still not owned by Siemens until much later.

[@offbrandurbanism]

Hey first double commenter love it. I'll add it to the sin bucket, if I ever get enough traction I'll do a video where I'll note my corrections

[@arielioffe1810]

The replacement for the LRV’s replacement-the « type 8 » trains made by AnsaldoBreda- have similar problems to the LRV’s; and are known for unreliability and poor performance.

[@offbrandurbanism]

Yes, the Breda's are really heavy. I know in SF they had to do a settlement cause it was so bad. The flip side is Siemens is replacing those in the next few years, and they did last longer than the Boeings for what that's worth.

[@todgod]

Yooo!! New Off Brand Urbanism video!! 👀👀

[@josephpadula2283]

My high school crush’s father worked for Boeing in Philly . He told me stories of how they were brilliant but had zero experience with trains or trolleys. So 100 years of design knowledge was not passed along to them . He said most train cars were designed to handle big passenger loads by having Camber in the floor but Vertol did not kind that do loaded up the floor sagged and pushed on the side walls of the train and the doors did not operate properly . I was a hs senior going into engineering but I did not understand all he told me .

[@offbrandurbanism]

Oh wow, super interesting story! The doors not working are a common theme in Boeing LRV stories so checks out.

[@Cupertinorail]

Yes I also fell for it and thought the Buffalo tram looked the same as the Boeing trams

[@offbrandurbanism]

We all fell for it. Buffalo just laughs at us.

[@Cupertinorail]

@@offbrandurbanism Aw that's lame, man!

[@StLouis-yu9iz]

Thanks for sharing 😊

[@offbrandurbanism]

Thanks for watching!

[@Tadfafty]

I've been in the Boeing LRV in the Oregon Electric Railway Museum a number of times. It is one of only two left.

[@offbrandurbanism]

Would love to see it someday myself!

[@RobertH-qb5it]

I remember the Boeing build streetcars on the MUNI system. Uninspiring would be the word to use and I read later they were a maintenance headache.

[@offbrandurbanism]

Great summary!

[@stickynorth]

Even the UTDC created by various Canadian government agencies which later became Bombardier did better at creating basic streetcar/LRT cars for North America and those first ones were apparently just as problematic as what you describe here. I have no frame of reference personally because Edmonton selected Siemens-Duewag U2 cars for our network and they are still in service to this day even from 1978... In fact I saw the OG car 1001 just yesterday... And it's been in service for 46 years!

[@packr72]

Boeing made the CTA 2400s cars and they were pretty good.

[@offbrandurbanism]

Yes! I talk about them a bit in the last third of the video.

[@diego001]

Oh my gosh. When I moved to Boston in the early 2000s, it was the end of the service life of the Boeing LRVs there. Those things genuinely were death traps and the only way they functioned correctly was when they were hitched to an MBTA Kinki Sharyo Type 7. Which is what the MBTA did on the Green Line "B" branch back then.

[@offbrandurbanism]

I rode one once I think when visiting a cousin and a couple times in SF when I was young. Yeah they looked terrible. Really interesting story about the hitching part!

[@erik_griswold]

Breda / AnsaldoBreda did not make good trains which is why they now have been taken over by Hitachi

[@trainships1795]

Great 👍 Now do one on the failed FORD ACT in Dearborn Michigan at Fairlane Town Center.

[@offbrandurbanism]

*googles frantically* Okay this is super interesting and I'll keep a note on it but definitely would need to do a lot of research to get enough footage to be able to do a video.

[@sanaecoachiya200]

Sort of reminds me of the Toei 7000 series

[@offbrandurbanism]

Yeah the bodies were from Japan but those two had different manufacturers. Probably some overlap in designers and contractors though.

[@Cupertinorail]

It actually does.

[@avolenter]

English is confusing. Train - tram - streetcar - lightrail. And all i see is tram.

[@offbrandurbanism]

Wait until you hear about trackless trolleys...

[@celebrityrog]

Boeing didn’t make a train, they made a light rail vehicle. Not the same as a train. And the cars were terrible. In fact SF never has had great transit buses or light rail cars that fit the city and the infrastructure that existed at the time. Point blank SF loves bad ideas and expensive crap projects.