by jsc
I figure someone on this board is going to enjoy this little story.
SEPTAs been having a lot of problems getting the trains over the road this week, at least from my limited observations commuting in and out on the R7 CHE. Yesterday they pulled into Suburban on track 1 instead of 2 which freaked out a lot of passengers who get into a routine and don't like it broken. This morning our train was on the right track but only had 2 cars and so was extremely crowded which tired out the conductor. The train pulled in and the compressor was hammering away and the engineer was talking to someone on the platform about not having enough air on this train.
So we get underway and after Temple, the engineer opens up the door to the cab because there's no heat in his cab. "can't even feel my hands," said he. We're motoring up the CHE branch and somewhere around Washington Lane, the tran seems to be decellerating slower. I hear the engineer making some precision adjustments with his boot up in the cab and can actually feel the compressor banging through the floor. Then the compressor goes off at Sedgewick.
At Mt. Airy we stop. For good. The conductor comes up to consult with the engineer and then runs back and opens up a couple hatches and flips some switches "try it now. how 'bout now?" no good.
This is when it got interesting. The conductor gathers up all the Metros on the train and climbs off. Most of us passengers are peering out the windows and we see him stuffing the newspapers into the cage that holds the compressor and he lights them on fire to try and unfreeze the compressor. People on the inbound platform are watching all this with a look of shock. Probably never see anyone try and set his train on fire before!
Well, the cold won out and they had to send up another train to rescue us. They did and managed to get the train the rest of the way into Chestnut Hill but obviously he has had this experience before and had successfully used combustables to unfreeze a compressor.
I went away wondering if someone just failed to open up the cock to drain the water out of the thing. How hard is that to do on a train compressor? Seems like it would be pretty easy and would be routine maintanance but maybe not. Heck, since they are running so much, one might even think that they would be self-draining as compressing air is going to force the humidity in the air to condense and in weather like this, it's gonna freeze.
Poor SEPTA. You get guys that try so hard but the cards are all stacked against them.
SEPTAs been having a lot of problems getting the trains over the road this week, at least from my limited observations commuting in and out on the R7 CHE. Yesterday they pulled into Suburban on track 1 instead of 2 which freaked out a lot of passengers who get into a routine and don't like it broken. This morning our train was on the right track but only had 2 cars and so was extremely crowded which tired out the conductor. The train pulled in and the compressor was hammering away and the engineer was talking to someone on the platform about not having enough air on this train.
So we get underway and after Temple, the engineer opens up the door to the cab because there's no heat in his cab. "can't even feel my hands," said he. We're motoring up the CHE branch and somewhere around Washington Lane, the tran seems to be decellerating slower. I hear the engineer making some precision adjustments with his boot up in the cab and can actually feel the compressor banging through the floor. Then the compressor goes off at Sedgewick.
At Mt. Airy we stop. For good. The conductor comes up to consult with the engineer and then runs back and opens up a couple hatches and flips some switches "try it now. how 'bout now?" no good.
This is when it got interesting. The conductor gathers up all the Metros on the train and climbs off. Most of us passengers are peering out the windows and we see him stuffing the newspapers into the cage that holds the compressor and he lights them on fire to try and unfreeze the compressor. People on the inbound platform are watching all this with a look of shock. Probably never see anyone try and set his train on fire before!
Well, the cold won out and they had to send up another train to rescue us. They did and managed to get the train the rest of the way into Chestnut Hill but obviously he has had this experience before and had successfully used combustables to unfreeze a compressor.
I went away wondering if someone just failed to open up the cock to drain the water out of the thing. How hard is that to do on a train compressor? Seems like it would be pretty easy and would be routine maintanance but maybe not. Heck, since they are running so much, one might even think that they would be self-draining as compressing air is going to force the humidity in the air to condense and in weather like this, it's gonna freeze.
Poor SEPTA. You get guys that try so hard but the cards are all stacked against them.