Bilevel car
|
Double-deck rail car operated by GO Transit, Ontario, Canada |
The
bilevel car or double-decker is a design to solve the problem of increasing passenger capacity on
railcars, without squeezing more (smaller) seats into the same space and/or decreasing the pitch (distance between seats).
If one couldn't add cars or increase the length of the car, the only possible direction for expansion is up. This is usually done by reducing the lower floor height closer to the rails and adding a separate upper level floor.
Because of the standard height of
tunnels and overhead power wires, many double-deck trains set the bottom deck lower down, between the
trucks (bogies in UK and Australasian parlance). Usually the entrance doors are above the bogies, and there is only one deck at the entance area. From there one can go up
stairs or downstairs. For example, for the DD-IRM (see below) it is one step up from the station
platform to the entrance, and from there seven steps up or four steps down. Some double-decker trains have their entrance doors on the lower level and no steps are needed to get to the lower deck.
France runs double-deck cars on heavily loaded
high-speed TGV services and
commuter lines such as the
Paris suburban
RER. The French loading gauge dictates that the double-deck cars have a maximum height of 4200 mm or 13'-9.35".
|
Double-deck rail cars in Germany, used extensively on Regional Express trains |
Other designs, including
rolling stock made by
Colorado Railcar Manufacturing,
Budd,
Pullman-Standard,
Bombardier (
Toronto (
GO Transit)) and others, have the entrance on the lower deck rather than an intermediate level.
Amtrak Superliners are double-decker cars of this variety, with the entrance a step or so up from the lowest
station platform level, or at the level of slightly higher platforms, and allow passage from car to car at upper-deck level.
In countries such as the
United Kingdom, the railway system cannot accommodate double-deck trains. A modest attempt at double decking was made in 1948 on the
Southern Railway with the two trains of the
Bulleid 4DD class. Although innovative, with stepped compartments, where the bottoms of the upper seats are above the heads of the people on the lower level, but the feet of the people above are not, see [
1], the loading gauge severely restricted their use and they were removed from service in 1971. The north eastern US can accommodate split level (double deck) cars only if they are no higher than 14'-6" or 4420 mm. These double deckers run on the
Long Island Rail Road: [
2]: and on
New Jersey Transit: [
3]: (contact
Bombardier Transportation: [
4]) because the
loading gauge is too small (i.e.
bridges,
tunnels, etc. are too low).
Double-deck trains often have curved windows upstairs. In the dark and in
tunnels this causes a distorting
mirror effect.
In
Finland,
VR started operating double-decker
sleeping cars on
February 1,
2006. The two-bed cabins on the upper deck have toilets and showers while cabins on the lower deck use shared ones. VR also operates double-decker Inter City trains with at-seat
power supplies for
laptops.
Indian Railways operates intercity trains between
Mumbai and
Surat, and
Mumbai and
Pune .
In the
Netherlands, there are two types of double-deck trains, the DDM and the DD-IRM, also called Regiorunner: see
Trains in the Netherlands.
In
Spain several lines of
Cercanías (
Renfe's commuter rail service) use double-deck trains.
All electric commuter trains in
Sydney are double deck. They all have two doors per side per carriage, with a vestibule at each end at platform height. Well-known examples of these trains are the
Tangara and
Millennium trains. The Sydney double deck commuter trains are 14'-4.5" or 4380 mm high.
In
intermodal freight transport, many modern types of
container well cars cars are designed to accommodate "double-stacking."
However, there is a problem of operation: that problem is the physical limitation on the conductor to verify, collect payment and sell tickets to such a large concentration of passengers in one car, especially in suburban passenger service, owing to the short distance between stops.
The ingenious solution came in the form of the design of the "gallery" car, which featured upper levels, which were really mezzanines running along both sides of the car, with an open area between the mezzanines, hence the term "gallery". This enabled the conductor(s) walking along on the lower level to easily reach up and punch/validate tickets of the passengers seated on the mezzanine level.
Passengers would simply place their tickets in clips along a lengthwise panel, located slightly above the conductor's head and within easy reach. The conductor would then quickly check tickets and move to the next car.
An example is the cars provided and leased in the U.S. by
Midwest Transportation & Development Corporation of Chicago. They are of a design proven in service and steadily refined since their introduction in the 1950s. These cars, known as "bilevel gallery cars", are among the most successful designs developed, and are currently in daily use in Chicago, San Francisco, and
Montreal (
Agence métropolitaine de transport). They provide high capacity (155 to 169 passengers each) and use standard, off-the-shelf components, without relying on proprietary, expensive and hard-to-get replacement parts. Chicago's commuter rail system
Metra is currently receiving new versions of these cars and
Caltrain, the
San Francisco area
commuter rail authority, has recently overhauled its fleet.
Another advantage of bilevel gallery cars is the relatively low first step of the vestibule entrance to the car, which is 14 5/8" (371 mm) above the head of the rail. The advantage of this is that commuter rail operators do not have to spend scarce funds on building high-level platforms; a low-level platform is all that is necessary, at a far lower cost.
*
Bombardier BiLevel Coach*
Superliner (railcar)*
A photo of gallery car
