Be Train Safe

Several suicides and at least one car strike in the last few weeks in the LOSSAN corridor remind us that trains are big, fast, and dangerous.  Be Train Safe.

 

The Surfliner is not the Coaster: #noNCTD

With the new Amtrak schedules, we regular Surfliner commuters were shocked to learn that there's a plan to have some Pacific Surfliner trains make Coaster stops, particularly the heavily used, commuter-popular 784 (the 5.10pm departure from LA south), and the later trains.

The Surfliner is an inter-city service that carries many long-distance commuters in the San Diego-Los Angeles corridor (known as LOSSAN).  The Coaster is a local commuter train that effectively stops at every lamp post, like a dog.  As we sang to the children when they were young, "one of these things is not like the other...."

If you are going all the way to downtown, you will be arriving at least 15 minutes later.Normally, it takes 13min to go from OSD to SOL on the Surfliner.  Now, it will be more than 20.  I can drive between those stations in less than that time.

The RailPac blog has a letter to Caltrans about this.  Among the points they make:

Eliminating the opportunity to regain lost time by adding 4 stops on certain trains can only result in reduced reliability and worsening of the consequences of an incident on the line.

There is also lost revenue--from the cost of stopping and starting a train,and  mis-estimates of passenger usage:  that is, will there be enough Coaster butts on seats to cover the costs and inconvenience?  And this:

Study after study both within the USA and overseas has demonstrated the correlation between improved speed and patronage. This proposal reduces speed and decreases reliability and punctuality, and will drive away the business and end point to end point passenger.

That would be me, and a lot of my fellow commuters.  If we can drive up to OSD in less time than the Amtrak will cover the distance, well....let's be honest, Metrolink passes are cheaper.

And as a CA taxpayer, should you be funding local service?

The rolling stock and locomotives for the Surfliner were purchased with funds both from the federal government and voter approved bonds for intercity service. This is also true of the cars ordered under proposition 1B to be delivered in the next few years. This new rolling stock is specified to operate at up to 125mph, with business and café cars. Both the existing and new build cars are neither designed nor appropriate for multiple stop commuter service. It could be argued that this proposal represents a misuse and possible illegal diversion of funds from state intercity service to a local commuter agency.

Here's how they finish their letter, and I think they are right.

What the Surfliner service needs is a long period of punctual, reliable service, together with low cost route and station specific advertising to maximize high fare patronage. This needs to be followed by continued incremental improvements that reduce journey times. One of the biggest complaints I hear from people who have tried the Surfliner once but don’t want to go again is the number of stops and the overall journey time. We must hold the line and not permit any further deterioration in the competitiveness of the product.

When they open up the Surfliner in Pendleton and it cruises by the traffic on I-5 faster than any driver--well, that's what will bring people to the train.  But you can't move at speed if you keep stopping (a lesson for the HSR folks, but that's for another blog).

People also critique the plan at this discussion board.

If you have an opinion on this, let CalTrans know.  Really, it's worth printing out a letter and faxing it or mailing it!  Here's the address:

Mr. William D. Bronte,
Chief, Division of Rail
Department of Transportation
1120 N Street MS 74
Sacramento, CA 95814

The Mules of Panama: how rail built, and runs, the Canal.

Recently I was on a cruise through the Panama Canal.  I accompanied it by reading David McCullough's excellent history, The Path Between the Seas, from which I learned that the Canal was started by the French, before being sold to the Americans.  In an era of "anti-government", it is nice to read an example of what American government can really do--it couldn't have been done without marshalling the resources and know-how of a nation.

The tracks along the Miraflores lock

The first problem in building the Canal was logistical, and the utilization of the small Panama railway that crossed the isthmus became essential.  It was rail that allowed them to move in the big steam shovels to cut through the Continental Divide in the infamous Culebra Cut.  It was rail that allowed them to move men and machines from Atlantic to Pacific.  Only after they managed the rail, were they able to build the canal.

And it is rail that works now!  Unlike many river locks, when big ships enter the canal, they don't tie up to the side.  They are attached to funny little locomotives, called mules, which run along a track at each side of the lock.  You can see the tracks them in the image at right--and note how they run up an incline as they go to the higher locks.  (This is Miraflores, on the Pacific side, which has two locks.)

Each mule has two lines to the ship, which are brought out by rowboat (!) and thrown to a crew of Canal linesmen who are on the ship.  Our ship had three mules on each side. We picked up the mules on one side first, and then on the other.

You can see the two pulleys on the side of the mule in the picture at left, although it's not under tension yet.

Once the mules are attached, they maintain the position of the ship within the lock.  The ships go through under their own power--the mules do not pull them. The mules adjust its lateral position.  The lights on the top of the cab, along with bells, allow the mules to communicate with the Canal pilot who is in charge of the ship in the locks.  So the pulleys are constantly adjusting tension so that the ship is positioned accurately.

The ship we were on was well under the maximum size (Panamax) so there was plenty of space between the ship and the walls of the locks.

Incidentally, the locks function by gravity feed, with the water from the lake in the middle running down into the locks on the Atlantic or Pacific. The water feeds through concrete channels into the bottom of the locks.  They still work elegantly, 100 years after they were built.  New locks that will admit bigger ships are being constructed.  They will save some of the water, but as a result, they will need power to run them.

The mules are made by Mitsubishi, in Japan.

Hope you enjoy!

New schedule: Good bye Express, Hello Coaster?

April 1st (no foolin') brought a new Surfliner schedule.  Fortunately, someone on Twitter linked to it on Sunday night, which led me to discover that the 599 express is no more, replaced by the 565.  Seems ridership is down and people were frustrated at missing stops.  Well, thanks for warning me, Amtrak. At least I found out in time to to catch the 763 on Monday morning, leaving 1 hour earlier than i wanted.

 I remember the bad old days before the express, when the scheduled 9.50 arrival of the 565 was usually closer to 10.15. This generally meant I missed my shuttle, and had to resort to Metro to get to work--much longer.  The express, with its 9.35 arrival, was workable for me 2 days a week.  Now, I have to catch the 763 instead, which means getting up at 5.40 every morning.  So, I'm not happy about this.

The other big change is that the evening trains (from the 784 on) are scheduled to make Coaster stops--that would be the San Diego County commuter service, hitting stations like Carlsbad, Poinsettia, and Encinitas.  However, according to my Twitter pals, that did not happen last night, and rumor is that the contract hasn't been worked out.  I'll be on the 784 on Weds so I'll see what happens.

coming up soon:  a photo esssay on the locomotives of the Panama canal!

BNSF to the rescue!

i snuck (sneaked?) out of work early today to catch the 3pm Surfliner from LAUS and got there just in time to see Train 03 (Southwest Chief, Chicago to LA) pulling  into the station. Normally train 3 gets in around 8am, so it was over 6 hours late.

Up in front was a big BNSF locomotive, followed by two Gennies and then the rest of the consist. It looked like one of the Gennies wasn't running (I didn't see exhaust coming out of the top), so i assume that there was a rescue involved.

We don't often see these big freight locomotives in the station, though we often see them racked together in the big freight yard just south of LA.  Wikipedia tells me that BNSF 4590 is a GE_Dash_9-44CW, with 4400 HP.  Not surprisingly, given the obsessiveness of railfans, its picture decorates the internet.

You can see it hooked up to the Gennie at platform 6, at the left.

I would guess that train engineers are like airplane pilots and are qualified on specific equipment. So does that mean a BNSF engineer has to drive the big orange locomotive?  And how does Amtrak call for help? Presumably on a long route like the Southwest Chief, there can be quite a delay if the power goes out in one of the regular locomotives.  I imagine the rescue locomotive chugging along for hours to stage the rescue, but that may simply be imagination run amok.

Incidentally, you can see in the picture below how close the trains are on tracks 12 and 13.  You can also see that the Pacific Surfliner is just as tall as the long distance cars.  Interestingly, however, the Gennies are shorter.  One of the conductors told me that east of Chicago, the tunnels are lower (hence the single level cars, like the Amfleet/Horizon trainset that we suffer on one consist on the Surfliner).  The Gennie can fit into them but the F59s and double decker cars cannot.

Is the departure board on time?

Interesting article about the departure board at Grand Central Station in New York:  the times are all wrong.

Grand Central, for years now, has relied on a system meant to mitigate, if not prevent, all the crazy. It is this: The times displayed on Grand Central's departure boards are wrong -- by a full minute. This is permanent. It is also purposeful. 

The idea is that passengers rushing to catch trains they're about to miss can actually be dangerous -- to themselves, and to each other. So conductors will pull out of the station exactly one minute after their trains' posted departure times. That minute of extra time won't be enough to disconcert passengers too much when they compare it to their own watches or smartphones ... but it is enough, the thinking goes, to buy late-running train-catchers just that liiiiiitle bit of extra time that will make them calm down a bit. Fast clocks make for slower passengers. "Instead of yelling for customers to hurry up," the Epoch Times notes, "the conductors instead tell everyone to slow down."

You might call this time-hacking; you might call it behavioral engineering; you might call it comical. Regardless, it seems to be working. Grand Central boasts the fewest slips, trips, and falls of any station in the country -- quite a feat given how many of its floors are made of marble. And given how many of the passengers treading those floors are, despite their grace period, cutting it thisthisclose to missing their trains.

You mean, Amtrak is DELIBERATELY late? ;-)

The Fed at Union Station (updated)

Two funky train cars from the Federal Railroad Administration showed up on track 15  at Union Station (LA) the other day.  Actually, this one looks as though it is powered, with the windshield wipers and lights.

However, when I saw them this morning in the yard outside of Oceanside, they had an Amtrak locomotive hooked up at either end.  (The second one is a baggage car of some sort).

Do FRA employees criss cross the country doing inspections? What do they inspect?

The windows were pulled so I couldn't see anything inside.

Update from Anonymous in the comments:

[T]hey visit on average twice a year or so. I've worked the trains twice, it's actually very boring once you get past all the interesting gizmos in the car. The car is equipped with scanners which check the cross section of the track, x-ray it for fractures, and generally make sure it's balanced and everything is within tolerance. Usually the railroads have a gang ready, and as the car buzzes over the railroad they'll spot defects which are quickly reported to management and addressed.

This year they came down the Coast from the Bay area via San Luis Obispo, then went to San Diego, spent a night inspecting the San Diego Trolley lines (I believe under their own power, as a matter of fact, since there are different operating rules in place), they then went up to Oceanside where they made a round trip to Escondido on the Sprinter Line, then went back to LA where they traveled around the LA Basin before heading East.

The current generation of cars are capable of being self-powered, and initially were when they first came out, however for several reasons they stopped doing this (The week before the first time I worked one of these it had struck a pickup truck in the Bay area, The second time it had blown the transmission two months earlier and their schedule didn't allow time for repair. They also have problems defining whether the cars qualify as a train, or "On-Track-Equipment" when they operate on their own power, so there have been arguments over who is supposed to operate the controls, and how the dispatcher is supposed to dispatch it, so it's become operationally easier just to attach a locomotive and call it a train.)

A heritage-livery engine comes to LA

Lately, Pacific Surfliners trains have frequently had non-Pacific Surfliners locomotive up front, usually the "Genesis" engines that pull the long distance trains.  I can tell when we do, as I walk up the ramp at Union Station, because the "Gennies" have a much louder rumble as they idle at the platform, with an occasional "whoosh!"  so they just sound different from the tall F59s.  We've talked more about the different locomotives here.

Today we had a famous one, #184, which is painted in an historical or "heritage" color scheme to commemorate Amtrak's 40th birthday in 2011.  It's much nicer looking than the boring grey that the Gennies usually sport.  #184 looks like it's new in the area because it has a very new looking "shoe" for the ATS system.

I like the look of the paint, and I bet it looks very smooth when it's pulling the superliner cars (which are painted similarly, with red stripes).  The engine's paint is in great shape, and it looked positively sparkly in the late afternoon sunlight.

Almost ready! The new platform at LA Union Station

Yesterday, they opened up the connection to the tunnel (although still not using the platform). It looks very light and fresh. The only thing missing is the sign over the opening with the Track numbers. 

More pictures below.

 When's the grand opening?

Remote Control

With the new track construction at union station, and with the help of the railroaders and hard core railfans who write Wikipedia articles, it has been possible to identify components of the remote systems that regulate passenger trains. I'm sure that  our Anonymous Amtrak reader,  or others more knowledgeable, will correct my mistakes.

As trains leave  LA Union Station, they pass a box with a  light that says "CTC begins".  I believe CTC stands for Centralized Traffic Control, which essentially means there is  a dispatcher who functions like an air traffic controller to regulate signals and switches remotely.  This  ensures the smooth running of trains particularly through regions of single track, without relying on the train crews or local towers to keep track of the traffic individually  to manage the switches.

I assume that the blue structures bolted onto the new tracks at LAUS are magnets associated with the CTC, since they are right next to the light box.

Or are they part of the Automatic Train Stop system?  That is required on passenger trains in certain regions to allow them to go as fast as 90miles an hour. It works via a magnetic shoe on the front right of the locomotive (or cab car) to pick up a remote signal.   This conveys a  signal d to the engineer who has 8 seconds to acknowledge that he got it, before the brakes automatically deploy. 

You can see the shoe in the picture to the right--it is the lowest structure you see, hanging off the truck to run at the outside of the track.

Apparently this is found in only parts of Amtrak's service area, including the Pacific Surfliners.  So, any locomotives from elsewhere in the system that "sub in" for the PacSurfliner engines, have to be fitted with this shoe. The long distance locomotives from the Southwest Chief also have ATS shoes, so that's probably where our "Gennies" come from.

This is what comes of walking up and down the platform while waiting to board the train, and noticing odd things on tracks and engines.

Update:  our friend Anonymous in the comments says that the blue bits are

 insulated joints. The signal system functions via low-voltage electrical currents which run through the rails, each "block" of track is independent, so at each signal the tracks need to be segregated electrically to differentiate the blocks in the computer.

Otherwise, he says this is pretty accurate.  Praise from the Pro is praise indeed!  :-)

More woodpile haiku

The train sits and waits

While the sun sinks down

Shadows drift o’er the woodpile

Previous entries in the waiting-at-the-woodpile series here.

Progress on new platform at Union Station (updated)

I've told you before about the renovation of Union Station is underway to facilitate its conversion from a "stub" station to one with "run through" tracks for more efficient travel. Right now, all trains, whether coming in or leaving, must pass through a narrow "throat" and if headed south, navigate a 180° turn.  This is part of the reason why the Amtrak operates in a push-pull configuration, where essentially it reverses into the station from San Diego or Goleta, with the engine pushing rather than pulling.  (The other reason is that there is no wye in Goleta or San Diego to turn the train around, so it's not clear that this will eliminate push-pull trains, which are not popular.)

The raised structure on the left is the old cap over the ramp

 The first step is the rebuilding of platform 7 and reactivation of tracks 13-15.  This has been fun to watch as they have done a brilliant job of recreating the look of the other platforms with their "butterfly" canopies.  You can see more pictures on my previous post.

 The original ramp and stairways were "capped off" when the platform was inactivated, so they've also had to re-open the connections to the tunnel below.  I wonder how many people noticed that there were archways over the walls at the east end of the tunnel, indicating that there used to be more platform?  Based on the arches, it also looks like there was an 8th platform with connections below.  (Update: Mark, posting in the comments to this post, says that was indeed the case.)


Along with building the platform, they also had to lay the track, and that was fascinating to watch.  But yesterday, I noticed that all the big track machines are gone, so the tracks must be ready.  There's still some painting going on but the benches are in place and it looks close to finished.  The attention to detail is nice;  for example, the light fixtures on poles at the east end of the platform have the same elegant design with spiky finials as the ones on the street below.

The picture below was taken yesterday from track 12, and shows the new platform looking clean and fresh next to the old one.  Of course, once this activates, there will be more construction as they begin the biggest part of the project, building run-through tracks over the 101 freeway.

The new platform as seen from Track 12.

Station update: cool machines

They are finishing up the new tracks at Union Station.  Laying track is interesting--first a deep trench, then rock ballast;  the ties (sleepers in the UK) are adjusted first by hand with long poles and a tape measure,  and then the long rails are welded together to create continuous rail.  Finally,  these wild machines run along and dig in and push rock around.  Maybe a railfan will tell us what they are doing.

Locomotion (updated)

Normally the Surfliner is pulled by the matching Surfliner locomotive,which according to Wikipedia is a General Motors EMD F59PHI. Sure it is. ;-) Anyway, it's tall and sleek and makes for a very smooth looking consist.

Conversely, when they hook it up to the sad old Amfleet set, this locomotive looks too tall and as though its a thoroughbred pulling a wagon. Which in some respects it is.  Metrolink runs some of these too.

Recently, some of the trains have been pulled by the long distance Amtrak locomotives, which Wikipedia tells me are of the GE Genesis class.  Big trains like the Pacific Coast Starlight  or Southwest Chief will be pulled by a couple of these.

These are noticeably lower than the regular Surfliner engines, so that the surfliner cars stick up above the top of the locomotive.  When I walk through the tunnel in Union Station below the platforms, I can sometimes tell if there's one of these on the track above because it makes spitting noises and its idle is a much louder roar than the regular ones.  I think they are kind of ugly with the flat grey nose and plain sides.  And of course they look squat next to the surfliner consist.

Our helpful Anon from Amtrak (in the comments) tells us that the Surfliner locomotives are designed for commuting stop-and-start, with about 3000 HP while the "Gennies" are tuned to cruise long distances, with about 4200HP.  He says they are a "blast" and I'm sure they are.

This one is a GE Dash 8-32BWH .  I  don't know what it was doing at Union Station that day because I usually see it in the yard (though it does pop up now and again pulling a consist).  There's also a little yard switcher you see sometimes (not in the station), which someone told me is called a "hog" but our friendly Anon in the comments tells me is actually called a "goat".  A "hog" or "hoghead" is the nickname for an engineer.

And sometimes, mysteriously, there is a big Union Pacific freight engine sitting on one of the middle tracks at Union Station. (Wikipedia informs me that this is a GE AC4400CW with 4400 HP). Anon tells us that those are generally borrowed when there's a need (it seems there's a real community amongst railroaders) and they hang out till their UP crew comes to get them. They are very noticeably bigger and really loud with spitting noises when they are sitting idle.

And what's with leaving those engines in the middle tracks anyway?  Here you can see the Surfliner engine just sitting on the central spur, not adjacent to a platform.  Is that to have a spare around when they break down?  (You can also see it's taller than the long distance engine.)  Yes, or else it DID break down.

Amfleet Cabbage: we may be safe yet!

A helpful Anonymous commenting in an earlier thread fills us in on the Amfleets:

Additionally, there are 9 trainsets; 7 Bilevel (Surfliner) sets and 2 single-level (Amfleet) sets. The Amfleet sets work opposite each other on a two-day cycle which does trains (1)761-(1)790-599(565 on weekends)-572-583. Unless things get haywire they shouldn't be on 763, 784, 580, or 582 at all this year.

Yay!  That means as long as I stay off the "express" (599), I should be able to avoid the Amfleet trainset.  Speaking on behalf of my fellow commuters, thanks for this news, Anon!