Commissioned by Joey the Lion trough the TRSR form.
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All the necessary dependencies are either included in this package or are avaible on the DLS. Soundscript by Rizky_Adiputra.
Dallas’ DART started looking for a potential rolling stock supplier for it’s Light Rail system in the early 1990s, right after ground was broken in October 1990 on it’s first section.
The tender was won in November 1992 by Kinki Sharyo, a Japanese rolling stock manufacturer (and a subsidiary company of Kintetsu Railway), assisted by the US branch of Itochou Corporation – a general trading firm tasked with brokering the deal and managing the contract between the american client and the japanese manufacturer.
Answering to base specifications common to all US Light Rail systems being built at the time, DART’s LRV were to be two-car, high-floor articulated vehicles in the same vein as the German-made Duewag U2s delivered to San Diego’s MTS system in 1980 and Nippon Sharyo’s P865s delivered to Los Angeles’ LACMTA for it’s Blue Line in 1990. Among other things, Kinki Sharyo could, and did, also take some cues from the Type 7 LRVs it had built for Boston’s MBTA between 1986 and 1988 (with the cooperation of the swiss SIG), specifically regarding the bogies and the articulation design. However, DART’s LRVs were to be much more modern than MBTA’s Type 7s, both in term of equipment and fittings, as well as in terms of design – with DART pushing for a “Futuristic” theme; the result being a pleasantly-looking aereodynamic vehicle.
This first tender called for the delivery of fourty LRV, to be used on the “initial” 20-mile long (32 km) section of the Light Rail system, comprising the “downtown common section” between Pearl (today’s Pearl/Arts District), the first section of the southern Blue Line branch to Illinois and the whole southern Red Line branch to Westmoreland, plus subsequent extensions due to open shortly.
As a requirement of the Buy America Act (a law on procurement that stipulates that federal funding may only be granted to transit agencies if the majority of the manufacturing work for the rolling stock, or anything else purchased, is done in the US, or by an US-based manufactured), Kinki Sharyo had to source the needed steel from US suppliers, then only manufactured two “prototype” LRVs at it’s Osaka plant, with the rest of the LRVs being manufactured as bodyshell, then shipped to the US for final assembly.
In terms of equipment, DART’s LRV were to be fitted with brand-new Inverter-controlled three-phase AC traction motors, today’s standard, but at the time relatively new technology, especially in the United States (the distinction of the first inverter-controlled train in the US going to Baltimore’s ABB-made LRVs, delivered in 1991). An American supplier for the electrical equipment was chosen, rather than a Japanese one – Westinghouse, wich had just been bought by the German AEG and thus renamed “AEG-Westinghouse” – the choice being it’s GTO-VVVF inverters, wich it would also later supply to Toronto’s TTC for it’s T1-Series subway cars and Taipei’s TRTC, for it’s C301 Series cars built by Kawasaki. WABCO was instead selected to supply the air-brake equipment.
In terms of interior fittings, and considering the rather long intra-station distances envisioned, DART’s LRVs were fitted with all cross-wise front-facing seating. A great deal of care had also be taken in consideration of Texas’ hot climate, with the LRVs being fitted with powerful, redundant air conditioning equipment.
Finally, the LRVs were fitted in a yellow, white and black livery, based on DART’s existing one for it’s bus fleet.
The first prototype LRV was delivered to DART for testing in 1995, with the whole inital order of 40 LRVs, numbered within the 100-Series range as #101 to #140 (and referred as “Fleet 50” by DART), being delivered to Dallas in May 1996, in time for the opening of the first section of the light rail network on subsequent 14th of June.
Dallas’ Light Rail network was an immediate, resounding success, with DART’s LRV fleet quickly becoming too undersized compared to the booming passenger number. To address this, and to prepare more rolling stock for the upcoming opening of more extensions (namely the northern branches of the Blue and Red Lines), DART made a follow up order for 34 more cars (#141-#174, refered to as “Fleet 51”) in October 1997, with these being delivered in 1998, in time for another additional order of 21 more cars (#175-#195 or “Fleet 52”), wich was placed by DART in April 1998.
A final order for 20 more cars (#196-#215, or “Fleet 53”) was placed by DART in 2003, this time to cover the rolling stock requirements for the completion of the Blue and Red Lines, these being fitted with IGBT-VVVF inverter designed by the japanese Toyo Denki, and manufactured at it’s subsidiary plant in Pennsylvania, instead of the AEG-Westinghouse GTO-VVVF inverters of the rest of the fleet.
Togheter with the additional order for more LRVs, in the early 2000s DART was also looking towards increasing both the capacity and the size of it’s existing fleet, in view of the planned addition of two more lines, the Green and Orange (the latter serving DFW Airport) and to adress one of the “original sins” of it’s design: the high floor, wich made DART’s LRV rather cumbersome to access by wheelchair-bound passengers, as they had to use a dedicated ramp both when entering and exiting.
In collaboration with DART, Kinki Sharyo devised a very “Eastern European” solution to both the capacity and accessibility problems – the extension of the existing LRVs from two articulated cars to three by the addition of a newly-built low-floor center module, a quickly and extremely cost-effective – a practice, for these reasons (but mainly the latter!) that’s commonly employed on many tramway system in central and eastern europe, with countless Tatra KT4s in (the former East) Germany and the Baltic Countries having undergone this treatment, for instance!
Designated as “C-Car” (compared to the “A” and “B” cars of the “normal” LRVs), the central low-floor “module” was first fitted to LRV #170 in 2002, and after some generous four years of testing, the extension program was started in earnest in 2008, with LRV #151 being the first lenghtened vehicle returned to revenue service, christened as “SLRV” (“Super” LRV).
Conversion from LRV to SLRV took five weeks per vehicle, plus a sixth one for testing and approval, at a cost of $190 million for the whole 115-strong LRV fleet (about $1,6 million per vehicle). By March 2010, 84 out of 115 LRVs had been converted into SLRVs, and by August 2014, the conversion of the fleet to “SLRV” was completed, with the addition of 48 newly-built vehicles (#216-#263, or “Fleet 54”) previously ordered by DART in 2008 and built from the get-go by Kinki Sharyo as SLRVs.
Thus, as of today, since the August 2014 opening of the last major extension – the Orange Line to DFW Airport – Dallas’ Light Rail network, now 93 miles (150 km) long, has been served by a nice, homogeneous fleet of 163 three-section “SLRVs”.
The last major modification that has occurred to the SLRV fleet has been the late 2021 start of a replacement program for the destination indicators of the whole fleet – replacing the old rollerblinds (wich, in the last years began to be prone to malfunctions) with multi-color LED displays.
With no other major expansion to the light rail network planned for the immediate future (the “D2 project” having been shelved in favour of expediting construction of the “Silver Line” orbital commuter rail line) no replacement nor expansion of DART’s light rail fleet is planned, thus meaning that Kinki Sharyo’s fleet of 163 dependable, and recently wholly refurbished SLRV will continue running on the sprawling Dallas light rail network for the forseeable future.
Trivia #1
With a lenght of 27,7 meters (about 90ft) and a width of 2,7 meters (8,83 ft), Kinki Sharyo’s LRVs at the time of their introduction were the largest LRVs in the United States.
Trivia #2
It is estimated that DART saved over $50 million with the conversion of it’s existing LRVs into (partly, very partly!) low-floor accessible SLRVs instead of acquiring an entirely new low-floor accessible fleet.
