NEC Power Outage

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The Metropolitan

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Apparently, according to the Baltimore MTA site, there is a problem disrupting all NEC travel between Washington and New York. Sadly, this looks to be shaping up to be like the meltdown of a few years ago.

Those travelling the corridor should be warned.
 
The Metropolitan said:
Apparently, according to the Baltimore MTA site, there is a problem disrupting all NEC travel between Washington and New York. Sadly, this looks to be shaping up to be like the meltdown of a few years ago.
Those travelling the corridor should be warned.
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Are you sure that is a current news story? SEPTA and Maryland/MTA aren't showing any service disruptions and Amtrak.com shows on-time arrivals from WAS->NYP.
 
October 19, 2009, 11:52AM

NEWARK, N.J. — Thousands of train passengers were stranded between New York and Washington because of Amtrak power problems along the busy Northeast Corridor Monday.

Amtrak spokeswoman Karina Romero says a substation in north Philadelphia lost power around 7:41 a.m. It’s not known what caused problem and the railroad is investigating. N.J. Transit spokesman Dan Stessel says its commuter trains were held at stations because there wasn’t enough electricity to move them.
 
The problem developed about 8am and lasted for about an hour. It seems to have affected the entire south of NY system. During that period, service ran about an hour or so late (probably a train-stop order to protect system voltage). I have no idea what caused it, but a system-wide issue has to be related to power supply, either with one of the converters (60hz to 25hz) or with transmission lines.
 
MrEd said:
October 19, 2009, 11:52AMNEWARK, N.J. — Thousands of train passengers were stranded between New York and Washington because of Amtrak power problems along the busy Northeast Corridor Monday.

Amtrak spokeswoman Karina Romero says a substation in north Philadelphia lost power around 7:41 a.m. It’s not known what caused problem and the railroad is investigating. N.J. Transit spokesman Dan Stessel says its commuter trains were held at stations because there wasn’t enough electricity to move them.
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North Philadelphia. Ah, that probably means the Richmond SSSFC misbehaved again. I don't know that for sure, but nothing else I can think of in North Philadelphia could have a system-wide impact.
 
MrEd said:
October 19, 2009, 11:52AMNEWARK, N.J. — Thousands of train passengers were stranded between New York and Washington because of Amtrak power problems along the busy Northeast Corridor Monday.

Amtrak spokeswoman Karina Romero says a substation in north Philadelphia lost power around 7:41 a.m. It’s not known what caused problem and the railroad is investigating. N.J. Transit spokesman Dan Stessel says its commuter trains were held at stations because there wasn’t enough electricity to move them.
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Thanks for the update. I guess it cleared up "pretty" quickly compared to other NEC electrical outages. Of course, the stranded passengers are sure to disagree.
 
acelafan said:
Thanks for the update. I guess it cleared up "pretty" quickly compared to other NEC electrical outages. Of course, the stranded passengers are sure to disagree.
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The good news is that it never actually became an outage. It was a loss of supply that required trains to be stopped to prevent the voltage from dropping which would cause an actual outage. If the system is controlled, as it was today, then once supply is restored, the trains can restart. But, if the system trips off completely like it did in 2006 (breakers open, supply stations shut down), then restart is a complicated process that takes several hours.

Whatever happened, it sounds like the Amtrak power dispatchers did a great job holding the system on-line.
 
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PRR 60 said:
acelafan said:
Thanks for the update. I guess it cleared up "pretty" quickly compared to other NEC electrical outages. Of course, the stranded passengers are sure to disagree.
Click to expand...
The good news is that it never actually became an outage. It was a loss of supply that required trains to be stopped to prevent the voltage from dropping which would cause an actual outage. If the system is controlled, as it was today, then once supply is restored, the trains can restart. But, if the system trips off completely like it did in 2006 (breakers open, supply stations shut down), then restart is a complicated process that takes several hours.

Whatever happened, it sounds like the Amtrak power dispatchers did a great job holding the system on-line.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, every passenger who was delayed by this will grumble to their friends (and anyone who interviews them) about how Amtrak loused up their commute, not having a clue that Amtrak's dispatchers actually did something really well here given circumstances that were not their fault.

On the other hand, if the problem with Richmond turns out to be Amtrak's responsibility (maintenance issues, etc), those passengers are still right about it being Amtrak's fault.

But I imagine this could also be the fault of the power company which supplies Richmond (PECO/Exelon, I suppose?) and that would make it not Amtrak's fault at all (and then we should hope Amtrak gets a lot of credit for how they handled it, as you say)--we'll have to wait for further reports on what actually happened in North Philadelphia before assigning fault.
 
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