TTC: Flexity Streetcars Testing & Delivery (Bombardier)

[Maltesefalcon]

Of the four transporter cars in the Thunder Bay-TTC service, three are presently sitting empty in Thunder Bay. Don't know where the fourth is. So no flood of deliveries imminent for a few days anyways.

- Paul

Thank you for the update. I know this subject has been brought up but I want to ask again. How long does it take for the transporter cars to make the round trip TB-Tor-TB? I thought it was about a week for each leg, not including offload time.
If that is approximately correct, we could expect each transporter to do no more than two trips per month. That means with the present setup, BBD could only deliver 8/month no matter what was built.
If that is true, it also means they never had any intention of actually delivering 10 cars Dec/17,; no matter what they had promised.
In fairness, I could be wrong on those times, however. (I got the one week impression from some posts page 744 of this thread.)Anyone in the know with data on this? Thanks in advance.

 

[jordanmkasla2009]

Thank you for the update. I know this subject has been brought up but I want to ask again. How long does it take for the transporter cars to make the round trip TB-Tor-TB? I thought it was about a week for each leg, not including offload time.
If that is approximately correct, we could expect each transporter to do no more than two trips per month. That means with the present setup, BBD could only deliver 8/month no matter what was built.
If that is true, it also means they never had any intention of actually delivering 10 cars Dec/17,; no matter what they had promised.
In fairness, I could be wrong on those times, however. (I got the one week impression from some posts page 744 of this thread.)Anyone in the know with data on this? Thanks in advance.

They have more that 4 transporter cars. They just don't keep them all at the Thunder Bay plant.

 

[smallspy]

Thank you for the update. I know this subject has been brought up but I want to ask again. How long does it take for the transporter cars to make the round trip TB-Tor-TB? I thought it was about a week for each leg, not including offload time.

They could do it in 3 days, but 4 days per direction seems to be the most common trip time, from pick-up in Thunder Bay to the dock at Hillcrest.

If that is approximately correct, we could expect each transporter to do no more than two trips per month. That means with the present setup, BBD could only deliver 8/month no matter what was built.

Each car could do 4 trips/month if need be - and provided that CP was able to get all of their trains running in such a way to do so.

As well, it only takes CN or CP 4 or 5 hours to configure another car for transport if need be.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[Maltesefalcon]

That makes sense. Thanks.

 

[Maltesefalcon]

Lets assume 4460 and 4461 are December builds, January deliveries. Not sure about 4462. It makes me wonder how long it takes to actually build one car from start to finish. Shipping one every 4 days does not mean it takes only 4 days...I get that.
I'm saying if it takes 28 days and you are shipping one every four days like they will have to in Feb, they would need to have seven in-house; in various stages of completion and repeat every month after that.
Reason I am asking is we are 19 days into January and afaik no new builds yet.
Yes they have officially hit their incremental quota for this month, but they are still six behind the cumulative schedule, in an easy month. BBD can't simply push the reset button at the end of the year and write off the missed shipments. They need to make a determined effort to catch up. They should be at 4468 by 1/31 and 4475 by 2/28.
Feb/March will be the acid text to see if they can do it.

 

[DSC]

Lets assume 4460 and 4461 are December builds, January deliveries. Not sure about 4462. It makes me wonder how long it takes to actually build one car from start to finish. Shipping one every 4 days does not mean it takes only 4 days...I get that.
I'm saying if it takes 28 days and you are shipping one every four days like they will have to in Feb, they would need to have seven in-house; in various stages of completion and repeat every month after that.
Reason I am asking is we are 19 days into January and afaik no new builds yet.
Yes they have officially hit their incremental quota for this month, but they are still six behind the cumulative schedule, in an easy month. BBD can't simply push the reset button at the end of the year and write off the missed shipments. They need to make a determined effort to catch up. They should be at 4468 by 1/31 and 4475 by 2/28.
Feb/March will be the acid text to see if they can do it.

The BBD schedule is NOT of "builds" it is a of DELIVERIES to the TTC. Of course, they cannot deliver what they have not yet built but I strongly doubt they are trying to attract (yet more) bad publicity in one month by stockpiling completed cars at Thunder Bay just so that they can try to cancel it out by increasing deliveries to TTC the next month. Of course, they will have, or should have, many cars on their assembly line, in many stages of completion.)

 

[jordanmkasla2009]

The BBD schedule is NOT of "builds" it is a of DELIVERIES to the TTC. Of course, they cannot deliver what they have not yet built but I strongly doubt they are trying to attract (yet more) bad publicity in one month by stockpiling completed cars at Thunder Bay just so that they can try to cancel it out by increasing deliveries to TTC the next month. Of course, they will have, or should have, many cars on their assembly line, in many stages of completion.)

The unfortunate reality is they have a stockpile of cars in Thunder Bay... but they are just missing a few parts that are needed before they can be shipped.

 

[Maltesefalcon]

Agreed but I am not trying to say they are stockpiling completed cars. I am saying they need to to ship more now. In other words, seven in Feb, seven in March, but also six more in January. In order to do that, they need to have a constant stream of cars moving through the plant, taking into account how long it takes to make one from start to finish.

If it takes ten days to build one, for instance and four days to ship, there is a fourteen day lag. Using these (speculative) figures, any car started today would not arrive in January.

On the other hand, if it only takes four days to build and four to ship, there is a chance we may get more in January. (Provided of course all required the sub-components are now in-house.)

But if it takes 21 days and four to ship, they better have most of the Feb cars started or tbey likely won't meet their target of seven.

That is why I asked for the transit time above and if anyone has hard data on the actual build time. That should give a better picture on expectations Q1 2018.

 

[cplchanb]

The unfortunate reality is they have a stockpile of cars in Thunder Bay... but they are just missing a few parts that are needed before they can be shipped.

cant bombardier acquire more flat cars to get this backlog shipped out? surely they should have the money to lease out a few more cars.

 

[jordanmkasla2009]

cant bombardier acquire more flat cars to get this backlog shipped out? surely they should have the money to lease out a few more cars.

They'd be shipping incomplete cars then. Most of the cars that are stockpiled up there are missing a few parts from one or more third party suppliers.

 

[cplchanb]

They'd be shipping incomplete cars then. Most of the cars that are stockpiled up there are missing a few parts from one or more third party suppliers.

true, but the expectation is that the few remaining parts are a common part that can be filled in 1 shipment from the supplier. Once the last touches are done there will then be a stockpile of completed vehicles

 

[robmausser]

true, but the expectation is that the few remaining parts are a common part that can be filled in 1 shipment from the supplier. Once the last touches are done there will then be a stockpile of completed vehicles

Right, if its just a few parts, one would imagine they would all get completed at the same time very quickly.

The bottleneck would then be getting them here.

 

[DSC]

The unfortunate reality is they have a stockpile of cars in Thunder Bay... but they are just missing a few parts that are needed before they can be shipped.

Exactly, these cars are NOT finished nor delivered so do not count towards their "x cars delivered to TTC' commitments.

 

[Maltesefalcon]

The unfortunate reality is they have a stockpile of cars in Thunder Bay... but they are just missing a few parts that are needed before they can be shipped.

Curiosity piqued even further now. One wonders what those mystery parts are and who the supplier is?
The failure to provide has (allegedly) led to a shipment of only 59 vs 70 cars. So a reduction of what...$50 million in revenue for FY 2017. Like to be a fly on the wall during that conversation.

That being said, this still shows very poor production planning on the part of BBD, who insisted till very late in tbe year they would still ship out 63 cars by 12/31. Not supplying the parts is a fault of the supplier. Not realizing they are not on hand when they are making bold commitments is the fault of BBD.

If your supplier lets you down on a regular basis you fire the supplier. If it happens again, you fire the purchasing agent. Just sayin...

But there has to be more than supplier issues here. When BBD realized they couldn't hit their target for 2017, they reduced it by five. If it was only a minor logistical issue, easy to clear up, those five cars would have been simply been pushed into early 2018. But they were not. Instead, four were punted into October 2019 with another tacked into the added month of November 2019.

 

[Allandale25]

^ I have the same question as the above. Is there any indication of which specific parts are proving to be problematic? I can't remember if this was covered in the big Star article. I do recall reading that there were challenges from Mexico with the car bodies.