C3 Outlets

The outlets worked fine on a 5 car single DE engine montauk train today.

It's not a matter if the outlets work fine or not. To a lay person if you plug in a phone and it charges, it "works fine". On the other hand, if you plug in your phone and fry it, it's too late to know it doesn't.

As has been stated, these outlets are designed for workers maintaining the train, not for sensitive electronics. I've seen people fry their phones plugging them in on the train. The train gaps, power surges and poof!

Even if the phone doesn't fry, you're still damaging it, the battery may not hold a charge as well, or you might damage the electronic components inside and it will start crashing or working in unintended ways. The power surges aren't always bad enough to fry the phone and render it useless, but enough to damage it in ways you won't notice in the near term, but over the long term you'll start noticing it behaving differently if you keep doing it on a regular basis. I suppose the way some people go through phones as often as they change their underwear, it might not really matter to them that much.

The C-3's were built long before smartphones were in the design stage!!
There seems to be "standby" type batteries that can keep a smart phone "working" that charge off
a USB port on a computer,that will be safer than onboard HEP that not stable.

Every electronic device charger is galvanically isolated with a transformer and optoisolator inside and a voltage regulatpr. Every charger is rated 110v to 250v on the label and 50 to 60 hz. "dirty power" is never a concern for chargers, cheap chargers cause "dirty power". The only way you will fry your device is if you force the connector into your phone upside down. It usually is the passenger's device that will do more harm to the train than the train harming the passenger's device. I bought a no-name generic laptop on ebay from china, it works fine on a mains outlet, but it trips the convenience outlet breaker on MN M8 cars every time I plugged it in. It doesn't leave my house any more for that reason. Convenience outlets on railcars are always on a circuit by themselves. All safety critical stuff is on the DC bus, not HEP. Since power does go out during trips, especially on EMUs, any entertainment device that isn't battery powered will be difficult to use. Since the outlets arent required for operations, they are the last thing to be fixed on the cars. Walk to the next car if the outlet doesnt work. In general, if the outlets work, good for you, if they don't tough luck, it isn't guaranteed by the contract of carriage. NJT MLV cars have the most difficult to reach outlets of all 3 tristate railroads.

If you try using an electric BBQ Grill inside, to tailgate to the game on the train, you deserve to get tasered by the police, so only use battery powered devices.