rough morning for the R7

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.

You're right. That was a good story.

I once saw someone's thrown out cigarette blow between the points of the track switch at Dekalb Street Station's Philly-bound side and set some trash on fire. The person who's cigarette started the fire yelled a mild profanity just as the train arrived and the last car stopped right on top of it. As all the people clustered there (including me) usually get in that car, we all rushed on in hopes it would leave without anyone noticing, or the whole train burning. Sensing something amiss, the conductor got down and looked around, spotted the fire, and just looked up at us through the window and shook his head sadly.

The point of telling my story as well is, why do these stories about odd things happening at SEPTA always end with something catching on fire ?

I had the same experience with a frozen air-compressor on Mon. morning.
I drive an 18-wheeler locally and part-time and Mon. morning was COLD.
Got in my tractor (which barely started) and ran up the air to about 130 PSI. So far, so good. I released the brakes and hooked up to my trailer. Did the air test - again, everything was fine.
About 10 mins. into my trip, the alarm went off notifying me of low air pressure. Oh, oh.
Because of the bad road conditions, there was no shoulder really and I knew I had minutes before all the brakes came on for good. I lost the remaining 40 lbs. of air I had in less than a minute. An all-time record for me.
I had to get out the orange triangles while people on Red Lion Rd. cursed me for blocking the right lane.
What happened to me and this train was simple - the last operator never bled the air resevoir and ice that formed blocked the air compressor.
All that's needed is a shot of alcohol. I find it surprising that this train crew didn't have one of those $2 cans of compressed alcohol with the nipple attachment . I was back on the road in less than 5 mins.
BTW - the air-brake systems on trains and trucks are very similar.
Setting fire to the air-compressor strikes me as a very UN-professional solution.
Just my 2 cents...

jsc wrote:I figure someone on this board is going to enjoy this little story.

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.

Yep, I had this figured out before I got to the middle of the story. Ice in the lines will get you every time. The conductor who tried to heat up the compressor was obviously a veteran, none of the new guys would have enough experience or "rail smarts" to even think of that but the lines were obviously frozen elsewhere. I'm sure the Budd and GE manuals are quite clear on bleeding the air systems, just another typical oversight while the car maintainers are sleeping their shifts away.