The Comet V railcar is the fifth generation of the Comet railcar series. Produced by the manufacturer Alstom

Alstom

Alstom is a large multinational conglomerate which holds interests in the power generation and transport markets. According to the company website, in the years 2010-2011 Alstom had annual sales of over €20.9 billion, and employed more than 85,000 people in 70 countries. Alstom's headquarters are...

, the Comet V is a much different type of car compared to previous versions of the series. The Comet V began servicing New York metropolitan area commuter rail operators New Jersey Transit

New Jersey Transit

The New Jersey Transit Corporation is a statewide public transportation system serving the United States state of New Jersey, and New York, Orange, and Rockland counties in New York State...

 and Metro-North in April 2002.

Layout and design

The main design of the Comet V is similar to its predecessors starting with the Comet III. Each trailer car has six doors for entering and exiting (like the Comet IV, the cab cars have five doors); the doors at the ends of the car are single-leaf with trap doors for low-level boarding while those in the middle are double-leaf but lack steps and trapdoors, only opening at high platform stations. The length of the cars at 85 feet (25.9 m) over the couplers remains unchanged from previous models and their width adheres to the standard loading gauge of 10.5 feet (3.2 m).

The one unique feature of Comet V cab cars, compared to earlier Comets and especially the Comet IV, is the lack of steps and a trapdoor at the door in the vestibule opposite the engineer's operating position. Like the Comet IV, the engineer's side of the cab vestibule has no door.

The interiors of the trains have significant differences from previous Comet railcars. Along with redesigned seats (a maroon color), the windows in each car are almost double the size of the Comet III/IV and other railcars in the New Jersey Transit fleet, save the MultiLevel

Bombardier MultiLevel Coach

The Bombardier MultiLevel Coach is a bi-level passenger rail car manufactured by Bombardier for use on commuter rail lines. It started service in 2006 and is still being produced as of 2010.-Overview:...

s. There are also new LED

LEd

LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....

digital information displays along with slightly more seating.

Door problems

One prominent problem of the Comet V is failures in its door-opening mechanism. On the Comet V, Alstom added a new button to open vestibule doors that lead to the end doors labeled with "push to open." This led to confusion among passengers about how to open the doors; eventually many resorted to opening them manually. The Comet V's software glitches came to light as doors failed to open or malfunctioned.