With the recent post of signals being dropped, I got to thinking about a power outage. Quite often with lightning, the power will go out for awhile, I was wondering if this situation happens on the mainlines? I did a search on the forums to see if the question was asked before and came up with nothing on the situation. Does the mainline lose it’s power on signals, possibly from floods, severe weather, or lightning? If so how do the engineers deal with it? Do they just get on the radio and get talked through the blocks from dispatchers? Or are they relegated to wait on a repair? Seems like a dispatcher would fast become overwhelmed with traffic on a busy main.
Thanks
SQ
I’ve riden as a passenger on the South Shore Line (in Indiana) for a number of years now, and the signals do get messed up on occasion after a major storm. The signals will either be in a Red Position (Stop or Stop and Proceed) or completely off-line (which if I’m not mistaken, a failed signal is treated as if it is in the Stop or Stop and Proceed position). As long as there are not a ton of “Absolute” signals on the line, the trains will keep moving, albeit VERY SLOWLY.
I don’t know much on the actual maintenance of signals, but I’d imagine it’s faster to reset signals on a CTC system than on a ABS system, but I’ll defer the answer to that to some of our signal experts out there.
When the power goes, everything usually goes.
Some places have batteries to power the signals, but the batteries aren’t enough to power the switches. If you can hand throw the switches, you set them to hand, and break out the Form Ds. If not, well, you’re up the creek till the signal maintainers set up the generators or the power comes back.
Nick