NEC Amtrak Power Outage -

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Just watching on ABC 7 here in NYC that there is a power outage on the NEC from D.C. into Penn Station…not sure of the exact details, but there’s footage and more info here:

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=traffic&id=4204108

(Elizabeth, NJ-WABC, May 25, 2006) - Amtrak’s power is out on the Northeast Corridor between New York City and Washington DC.

Newscopter Seven is over the Northeast Corridor tracks in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Amtrak tells Eyewitness News that just after 8:00 a.m., a major power outage hit Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line affecting trains running from Washington, D.C. through New York Penn Station and all he way to Queens. New Jersey Transit, SEPTA and Maryland’s MART trains are all affected.

As a result of the power outage many of the trains came to a stop. The trains, several dozen, are just stopped on the track all along the line, several of them between Linden, New Jersey and New York City.

Amtrak is not sure where the power outage started. It is possible a substation lost power, that tripped other substations. Amtrak says it believes the outage could last for hours.

The outage is affecting all NJ Transit trains running on the Northeast Corridor and all Amtrak service on the Northeast Corridor between New York City and Washington DC is disrupted. Metro Traffic’s Joe Nolan say these are the busiest lines in New Jersey and tens of thousands of people could be affected.

Amtrak said there were five trains stuck in tunnels (three NJ transit trains and one amtrak train under the hudson river and one in Baltimore.) One of the NJ Transit trains and the Baltimore train are already out of the tunnel.

Metro North tells Eyewitness News that Amtrak trains southbound from Boston and other New England points along the Northeast Corridor are discharging their passengers at New Haven, Stamford and New Rochelle. Those passengers with Amtrak tickets can use those tickets to transfer

2

Quote by Nate (Redrabbit):

Maybe the rats will be nice and pu***he train into the station.

CC

3

Heres another link: Not much to add at this point…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060525/ap_on_re_us/train_outage

We know Mineta wants to pull the plug on Amtrak, but sheesh!

4

LOL…that’s exactly what I was thinking! [:D]

5

Power is restored in New Jersey, and they are currently clearing the tracks. The failure appears to be in Maryland, from what I heard, possibly in Perryville.

6

OK- Who didn’t pay the electric bill on time?[B)]

7

Exactly what I was thinking too.[;)]

8

The local news stations are interviewing people as they come off of stranded trains. The mentality is really quite amazing. There was a guy just complaining that NJ transit police wouldn’t let passengers jump off the the trains which were stopped on the tracks…

9

The Trains staff-I think Jason Gallinger does the News Wire- got the story from Amtrak and you will find an explaination of the probable cause on the Trains.Com newswire for today. (Thursday, May, 25, 2006)

10

Time to fire up the P32AC-DMs!

11

The AP story that appeared in my morning paper cast Amtrak in as bad a light as possible, including in the article mention of “the perpetually money-losing railroad,” “the nation’s federally subsidized passenger railroad,” and calls for “changes in the management of Amtrak”. Chuck Schumer blamed the outage on Amtrak being “terribly mismanaged with unqualified people at the helm…”

While there is no question Amtrak could be better, the bias of the article was obvious at the outset.

I haven’t figured out how management had any effect on “wild swings in feed power.”

12

I Googled Amtrak and found what appears to be the AP article mentioned above by Larry. The one I read has the quote by Senator Schumer. Schumer was a strong supporter of Dave Gunn and you can be sure that he is directing his ire at those who got Gunn pushed out.

Those who pay close attention will know that in the first year he held the job, Gunn laid out a highly detailed 5 year plan to bring the NEC to a state of good repair. Needless to say that funding fell short of the amount necessary to complete much of the work that needed to be done and the NEC is still at risk of a failure that will make yesterday’s problem look like a coffee break.

Ironicly, yesterday the House Appropriations Committee voted out a bill with only $900 million for Amtrak FY 2007. Anybody that cares has noted that number is a shutdown.

13

The Times in its usual thoroughness, did an excellent graphic on where the trains were stranded:

Where trains were stranded

14

Any news on what caused the outage? None of the stories I have read covered the cause.

15

While we generally know that, all John Q got out of the article is that Amtrak has inept managers (who were ‘obviously’ directly responsible for the outage). Now, when The Congressman from Wherever asks his constitutents about Amtrak, they’ll know that Amtrak has lousy management…[:(!] David Gunn? Who’s he?

16

Try the Trains.com News Wire for yesterday-Link at the top of this page.

17

I agree with your point.

Here is something interested. One of the comments Gunn made earlier this month at the Northwestern University Transportation Center was critical of the press coverage of anything related to U.S. Transportation. His example:
In the press conference he held in Alaska last year, DOT Secretary Mineta said Amtrak should be run like the Alaska Rail Road. No one in the press reported that Mineta was standing in front of a $23 million train station built with Federal funds.

Jay

18

From what I read there may have been a problem in one of the substations, and the problem triggered outages in other substations along the line. I was listening to the news on one of our local radio stations in my car, and as of 11:15 AM yesterday (May 25) power had been restored, and one of the reporters was talking to Clifford Black, Amtrak’s spokesman by phone, and he told them Amtrak was looking into the reason why the initial substation tripped off the line.

19

According to the NYT map the substation where it all started was indeed in Maryland, but not Perryville (where the NEC crosses the Susquehanna River), but in Bowie (Prince Georges County).

motor

20

Well, I guess this is one of the only times David Gunn is happy that he isn’t in charge any more. He would of had more than enough on his hands.

I’m surprised, people didn’t start making up stories in relation to this power outage and terrorisim.

I do wonder what Amtrak, NJT, Metro North, and MARC to get their trains off the tracks, or to stations. The reason why I didn’t include SEPTA in that sentence is because I know exactly what SEPTA did. They ran their yard switchers to haul the atranded trains to the nearest station. They also most likely continued to run trains allong their other reginal rail lines but, didn’t offer service on the NEC; instead they provided extra buses.