Bad brake valve or handbrake left on. The latter is more common than the former.
I should clarify my previous comment. When I referred to “antique dining cars” I was not attempting to speculate as to the cause of the equipment failure. It was in the context of a general comment on Amtrak’s continued operation of LD passenger trains as “an example of the stupidity at Amtrak.”.
It was not a frozen axle - it was built up tread on a wheel - where the brake shoe material and the tread of the wheel had heated themselves to the point that metal from the brake shoe welded itself to the tread of the wheel, with the tread building itself to where there was minimal flange left to hold the wheel to the rail.
Amtrak mechanical forces tried to ‘chip’ the buildup off the wheel - without success. Ultimately Amtrak made the decision to slide the car on greased rail to the nearest industrial spur at walking speed and set the car off. While the set off was being made, the rear of the train was sitting without HEP until the front portion of the train returned and HEP could be reestablished.
CSX personnel were surprised that Amtrak did not take any actions (such as procuring busses) to speed the passengers to their destinations, or put them on other passing Amtrak trains to get them off the disabled train or to put the passengers on the head portion of the train and move it. All handling of the passengers was done as Amtrak instructed.
BaltACD: Thanks for the update. Sorry if I ruffled any feathers by implying CSX having a direct hand in leaving the passengers stranded. Heat of the moment, I guess.
I was deadheading on Amtrak 90 to Philly one time, about 8 years ago. We were on the corridor, north of Wilmington, when the AEM-7 crapped out. Amtrak opted to transfer passengers to a Septa 2 car MU train on the adjacent track, luggage in hand. This was stepping down to the ballast and back up the steps of the MU cars, in the dark! I believe there were perhaps 70 passengers making this transfer. In this instance, available relief power was at 30th street. To add insult to injury, when the Septa train arrived at the upper level of 30th street, the passengers continuing north were instructed to lug their baggage down to the lower level to reboard the now problem-corrected train 90. There were no complimentary red caps to assist. As I was a deadhead, I didn’t feel I had a beef, but for the paying public, I thought this was pretty shabby! So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when Amtrak makes a non-decision to leave patrons stranded for 14 hours.
That is weird. One guy in a rented minivan could have move the passengers 3 miles in less than 14 hours!
No hot wheel detectors between WAS and RIchmond?
Amtrak is getting New Viewliner Dining Cars this Fall 2013 from they 130 new car order.[tup]
Still don’t know why Amtrak could not have cut the front portion of the train off from the diner, moved it to Richmond, taken one of the engines, gone and gotten the back part of train, cut it from the diner, put the train togethor w/o the diner in Richmond and continued south.
Would there have been an issue w/the uncoupling of the diner given the condition of the wheel w/no flange? Could the uncoupling have caused the diner to derail?
Also, when an Amtak train breaks down on the road w/issues as serious as this, what is the responsibility of the host railroad? I am surprised CSX let the train sit on the mainline for almost 10 hours. I am sure CSX would charge Amtrak for any assistance they would provide, but who makes that call, CSX or Amtrak (CSX…get that train off the mainline…Amtrak…we can’t, can you help us?..CSX…sure but it will cost you…Amtrak…we will try and figure it out ourselves).
Was someone at Sunnyside negligent in sending the car out, or was this a problem that could not have been foreseen?
The good news is that the train did not derail, and it did make it to Miami.
Friction-stir welding. Interesting.
There are 8 detectors between DC and Richmond. Hot box detectors are focused at the journal so as not to give a high reading every time a car goes by with the brakes applied. Sticking brakes take a long time to build up sufficient heat to show up at the journal.
Refer to my comment on the Penn Station thread about those in charge being so afraid of making a wrong decision they won’t make ANY decision at all.
Oh, rfpjohn, not five minutes before I checked out this thread Lady Firestorm and I were discussing this Amtrak incident and she said the SAME thing you did, i.e. why didn’t they move the passengers to the good part of the train and do the three miles to the station? Furious minds think alike, huh?
I’m somewhat surpised they didn’t move the train at the pace of a slow walk just to make those last miles. I mean, one wheel’s nasty but there are at least three others on the truck, aren’t there?
It only takes one wheel with built up tread to derail all the others. When Amtrak mechanical forces were unable to chip off the build up - the brakes were locked down on that axle and it was slid on greased rail to it’s set off location on a industrial spur.
Good explanation Big Jim, I understand. What I DON’T understand is a 14 hour lockdown of the passengers. Amtrak’ll be lucky if they don’t get some lawsuits over this due to unlawful restraint.
From the video posted on an earlier thread, I saw two cars in front of the diner–Viewliner sleepers. It would have been a bit difficult to have put all the passengers into them. Perhaps CSX would have granted permission for Amtrak to make the necessary number of trips to ferry all of the passengers in those two cars.
Which is why there are hot wheel detectors…although I don’t know how prevalent their use is these days.
As an aside, Amfleet cars have onboard HBDs since they have inside journals. Regular HBDs would only see anything at all on the non-Amfleet stuff.
Wanna bet they have the same brake valve as the existing diners?
Probably unforseen. Unlikely it was a handbrake left on. Most likely the brakes didn’t release after an application - bad brake valve - one that probably passed the initial terminal test in Sunnyside and the apply and release at WAS after then engine change.
What I don’t get is how did the car get so bad it couldn’t move before anybody took a look at it. Build up tread doesn’t happen in the span of a couple of minutes.
In reading the above posts, it seems lucky that the car did not derail. Had it derailed, given where it was in the train, it could have been bad, although I do not know how fast the train was going at the time. I do remember the horrific crash of the City of New Orleans back in 1971 when I believe a traction motor froze on one of the lead E-units. Hopefully Amtrak will figure out what did cause this problem and take steps to correct it from happening again.
Built up tread is caused by metalic transfer from stuck tread clasping brake shoes to the tread of the wheel. It is a common, though not frequent happening. It is extremely rare on passenger trains as the cars are subject to more frequent and rigerous inspections than are freight cars as well as the fact that most, if not all, of Amtrak’s non-Heritage fleet use disk brakes as opposed to wheel clasping brake shoes. A seriously stuck disk braked car will normally have the wheel slid flat to a condemable flat spot, another serious mechanical condition.
Completely forgot Heritage cars have tread brakes. Just one more reason to retire Heritage cars ?
Very fortunate the CSX freight crew saw the fire under the diner. Train would probably derailed when entering the Staples mill station tracks ?