Amtrak Guest Rewards - BOS-NYP 10/5 - 4 Hour Delays...

Left Boston on 2159 at 9:15 am - due in to Penn Station at 12:45. Just passed Co-op City in the Bronx, and now due in at 5pm. One of those days.

I guess an earlier train took down the overhead wires. Lenny and Squiggy couldn't fix it, even with Pee Wee Herman's help. It took the Stooges, Laurel and Hardy and the Village People to get it done.

I do feel lucky that in 43,000 rail miles so far in 2009 this is my first serious delay.

I just got on the 400 train from nyp to was and it is madness. Apparently the 2 trains prior to this one were canceled as a result of this. Apparently, They put all those passengers on this train. The problem with that is that the actual ticketed passengers on this train have no seats due to the non ticketed passengers taking those seats. Very unorganized process. Ended up sitting on the floor in between cars until philly and luckily got a seat. There are literally like 60 people standing in aisles, sitting between cars and in the cafe car. Never seen anything like this on the acela. I hope this never happens again.

Today was just a bad day overall on the NEC. In addition to the wire problem up north (which pulled down the wires on both tracks in an area that was hard to reach), they had a tresspaser killed by an Acela near Philly and a fire in an engine on train #172 in NY.

Today was just a bad day overall on the NEC. In addition to the wire problem up north (which pulled down the wires on both tracks in an area that was hard to reach), they had a tresspaser killed by an Acela near Philly and a fire in an engine on train #172 in NY.

wow yesterday was pretty bad. i guess i should be thankful my ride wasn't a lot worse!

actually, in addition to the person stuck by the acela near philly, a few hours before THAT, a woman was hit by a freight train--not exactly in the same area or time, BUT close enough (outside of Philly and outside of Wilmington IIRC)...........

not a good train day at all............

Bad day Monday indeed. I was on the 8am NY-->Boston just for an afternoon meeting (1-4 pm). I got to the meeting at 3:45, basically a waste of a trip. Had dinner and headed back. About 11.5 hrs on a train just to miss a meeting!!! :(

BTW - the conductor wisely never came to collect tickets - at least in the First Class car. The attendants handed back the tickets on my seat and suggested I try to get a refund - I went in the vestibule and called reservations to rebook for the following week...

Why doesn't Amtrak have a few backup diesel locomotives for days like this- or borrow one from a local commuter railroad?

Amtrak does have backup diesel powered locomotives around. But it's not nearly as simple as it sounds, especially with the recent incident. The wires came down around Kingston, RI. It takes a Northeast Regional train an hour to get to Kingston from Boston, the nearest place with a spare diesel. NE Regional trains can do 125 MPH for much of that run. A diesel's top speed is 110 MPH, so it's going to take longer.

Additionally, thanks to FRA rules, you have to attach at least one or two cars to that engine, that aren’t needed. If you don't, then you are "running light" as it’s called, which IIRC limits you to a speed of 40 MPH.

Next, you need to find both an engineer and conductor who are qualified on those tracks to run the engine. And you need to find a crew that isn't already scheduled to take out a regularly scheduled train and won't go over their hours of service.

So with all that done, and maybe with a bit of luck, the first diesel would reach Kingston in about two hours. Now you may or may not still be waiting for the line crews to clear the tangled mess of wires and broken pantographs, before you can even start to consider moving the diesel into place and coupling it up to the stranded train.

One then moves that stranded train perhaps 1 or 2 miles, perhaps as far as 20 or 30. The distance is determined by both where does the damaged power circuit end and where after that point is a switch, so that the diesel can uncouple and return to tow the next train through the damaged area. Complicating all of this, is the fact that other trains have stopped short of the affected area, and they may or may not be in the way of both moving the train originally stranded, as well as the ability of the diesel to escape from towing that Acela or to even reach that Acela in the first place. You only have two tracks in this area, and the wires are down on both tracks.

In the meantime of course the crews have now set out to repair the wires, so that normal service can be restored. They'll work on one track first, leaving the other track for the diesel to haul other trains through the affected area with no power. This makes for a very interesting dance, and one that needs to be well choreographed. And of course in addition to the fact that the diesel still remains with a top speed of 110 in an area where trains typically are running 125 and higher; plus the fact that it takes time to couple the diesel on to a train, test the brakes, haul it through the affected area, uncouple the diesel and escape, makes for a very interesting dance.

And just to complicate things, the Acela's cannot be towed at speeds over 30 MPH IIRC, might even be 20 MPH.

So as you can see, it's all well and fine to have spare power sitting around, it's an entirely different matter to actually put it into play and starting trying to get things moving.

AlanB, you definitely know your stuff. Thanks for the explanation.

On another note- why does Amtrak use overhead wires in the Northeast Corridor rather than the third rail that some commuter railroads use? Is it because the trains can run faster with the overhead wires, mainly?

I'd love to be able to tell you that Amtrak uses overhead wires for wonderful scientific reasons, but the simple reality is that Amtrak uses overhead because that's what they inherited from the Pennsylvania RR who built the Northeast Corridor from NY Penn station to DC.

From New Haven down almost all the way to NY, that was built by the New Haven RR and they too opted for overhead wires many years ago. Although they interestingly choose a different voltage than did the Pennsy.

So when the time came for Amtrak to add electrical power between Boston and New Haven, the logical choice was of course, overhead power.

All that said, if Amtrak were ever to be charged with building a new high speed RR, they would indeed opt for overhead power as it does tend to be better for higher speeds. It's also better at transmitting the power without as much loss of power, by comparison to third rail. Third rail in fact requires many more local power supply points, which can get expensive to build, because of power loss.

I think the 3rd rail approach also gets fouled up by snow and ice in the winter. There are a lot of times after a storm when NJ Transit and Metro North are operating mostly on-time, while the LIRR is still digging out for the next half-day or so.

Catenary can have icing problems too, and in the bitter cold the wires can turn brittal and snap. Catenary does tend to have less problems with snow, but then snow so deep that it starts fouling the third rail usually causes switching problems too.

And for the record Nerd, all three of Metro North's lines use third rail. The New Haven division uses catenary for the bulk of its run, but basically from just shy of the Bronx border to GCT it uses third rail. The other two lines are third rail or diesel only.

Third rail is always low voltage (600 to 1000V) and cannot support the power demands of high-speed trains. The overhead catenary voltage (11,000 to 25,000 and even 50,000 V) that lowers current demand to something manageable would be pretty exciting at ground level. I would be real careful stepping over a 25kV third rail.

And, I have to note, the catenary pulled down this week was the new, highly praised "constant tension" catenary that is often thought to be the of all and end all of electric traction supply. Even the new and glittery stuff fails once in a while.