I was looking at this month's report and again the R142A has the distinct honor of being the only non-CBTC NTT train to experience a MDBF of five figures rather than six. In fact, this year's numbers are worse than those of than R46 (93,634), which is about three decades older. So I went digging for some of the recent numbers on the equipment's performance, and the numbers are not great. Here's what it shows over the past ten years.
Yearly Data:
2004: 193,413
2005: 247,983
2006: 202,358
2007: 159,139
2008: 132,910
2009: 146,526
2010: 117,881
2011: 134,503
Past Years, In-Depth:
1/12: 124,518
4/12: 113,338
9/12: 110,680
11/12: 109,396
12/12: 108,671
1/13: 110,401
3/13: 119,541
4/13: 122,572
9/13: 110,262
11/13: 110,091
12/13: 108,548
1/14: 104,956
3/14: 93,279
4/14: 87,203
Now, anybody who's talked with a Lex TSS knows what a toll that line takes on equipment and employees alike. The Jerome is no walk in the park either. But these numbers are not good for cars that are, at their oldest, 15 years old. And the trend is getting worse. The solution is probably, as often is the case, to pour more money into maintenance and rehabilitation, but that's easier said than acquired and done. It's an interesting problem.