They were concerned that since the train only had power for a few minutes at a time, restrooms and HVAC were not functioning consistently on a 90 degree day to wait for the tow back to NYP.
Lake Shore Limited (lost 4 hours 5/26 why?)
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west point
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A comparison between Amtrak locos and fright RR engines of the same vintage is needed. Best I can think of is mean time between failure ( MTBF).
jis
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Railways generally us the metric of Mean Distance Between Failure, though they use many different names to refer to it.
To draw a more accurate view, you would have to factor out HEP issues, those would not be present in freight. And no DM will never equal its straight diesel/electric equivalent.
I know there's a New York law that prohibits, or severely limits operations of diesels in Penn Station and the tunnels, but would a Tier IV locomotive have sufficiently low emissions that perhaps the policy could be re-evaluated? That way they could do away with DM operations for the Empire service, at least. Of course, for the long term, if they're really interested in curbing GHG emissions, they should just electrify the whole line up to Albany, at least.
jis
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There is no such New York Law that applies to Penn Station today, except in the vivid imagination of railfans.
It is an Amtrak and before that Conrail/Penn Central/Pennsy rule book thing only and can be exceptioned by the local dispatching manager.
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Not exactly. Actually the first law was written for Grand Central, Park Ave is very different than the approaches to NYP. But an exception for emergencies has always been there in any case. If a decision was made to routinely run diesels into Penn, there would be a modern law very quickly. Even NYC subways use diesel work trains. Lots of reasons for power to be off when trying to get work done...
Steam Railroad Laws in New York City (columbia.edu)
Steam Railroad Laws in New York City (columbia.edu)
jis
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Since in the FL-9 days as they routinely failed to transition, it was not unusual at all for them to come into Penn Station and Grand Central in Diesel mode. The reason that notification is required is so that the exhaust fans can be turned on to full blast. I don't think there is any chance of any law being enacted for a single diesel engine passing through. Now if all the electric engines were replaced by diesel engines, that would be a different matter.
Incidentally, on many occasions Amtrak has run at least the Lake Shore into Penn Station using a vanilla P42 due to loco shortage in Albany.
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Since the laws were intended to make exceptions for emergencies anyway, there was never a real issue. Penn Central was taken to task and conceded they violated the spirit of the law pretty regularly into GCT with the FL-9 but claimed the emergency provision should cover. That's about when MTA started funding the NH routes and I wouldn't be surprised if they shelled out money for some fixes that Penn Central wouldn't spend on. It was a no win situation, you can't us e a threat of financial penalties against someone going broke anyway, and even though bad design and maintenance is not a valid excuse for constant emergencies, there was no way anyone would force them to stop running them, there was no replacement.
