Sudden rise of equipment breakdown of DE/DM C3

Been lots of equipment breakdown and trains cancel on the DE/DM C3 recently.Whats going on are all the mechanics retired or are there any new mechanics quailified to fixed the trains. Just to many breakdowns are happening on a daily basics.

did you notice the thermometer ???

Dutch its been going on long before the weather change.

The reliability of the LIRR's diesel fleet has been increasing ever so slightly since October 2008, but overall, it's still fairly poor comparatively. (Doing the MDBF calculations takes the LIRR a month and a half for some reason, so the figures end at December 2014).

The number of trains that have "equipment problems" cited as their reason for delay is significantly more than the number of trains that are actually reported as having failures that result in a delay when the reports come out each month. So either the LIRR is really over-inflating their MDBF's, or the LIRR lies to passengers a whole lot in delay alerts.

DutchRailnut wrote:did you notice the thermometer ???

You would think that in an area where it's cold for one fourth of the year that that would be taken into account in the design process...

At any rate, the statistics don't bear that out. Over the past six years the averages show that there's no correlation between temperature (either hot or cold) and higher or lower MDBF, especially for the diesel fleet (the lines clustered at the bottom). Instead, it's fairly consistent (consistently poor) year round.

On the graph, what's the meaning of DE versus diesel?

Diesel is for the freight locomotives.

No, "Diesel" is the diesel fleet average (DE's, DM's, and C3's). 21DM's + 24 DE's + 134 C3's = 179 "Diesel"

I don't believe the LIRR has 179 freight locomotives.

dedm30junk wrote:Been lots of equipment breakdown and trains cancel on the DE/DM C3 recently.Whats going on are all the mechanics retired or are there any new mechanics quailified to fixed the trains. Just to many breakdowns are happening on a daily basics.

For diesel reliability during December, the DM's and C3's performed slightly above "average" (if "average" could be considered acceptable...) and the DE's had a MDBF well below average. There were 14 primary failures, half of those were DE failures.

The specific numbers/averages can be seen about three-quarters of the way down this spreadsheet.

How do you determine a "breakdown"?

The LIRR defines a primary failure as an equipment problem that causes a delay.

Because of the nature of this definition, trains that might experience equipment trouble in the yard, but receive a substitute set of equipment in time and the train still arrives at its final destination on-time, are not counted as a primary failure and therefore do not negatively affect MDBF. Similarly, the MDBF numbers do not reflect the severity of the equipment failure that caused the delay--a burnt out headlight that causes an 8 minute delay to one train or a total engine failure that causes an hour delay to one train and residual/congestion related delays for dozens of others are counted the same way.

And as I mentioned above, the number of trains that have "equipment problems" cited as their reason for delay is significantly more than the number of trains that are actually reported as having failures that result in a delay when the reports come out each month. So either the LIRR is really over-inflating their MDBF's, or the LIRR lies to passengers a whole lot in delay alerts.