Service suspended between STM and GCT

MNCRR9000 wrote:How many substations do they have besides Mount Vernon to power the New Haven Line? Seems like you would want to have backups along the line just in case something like this happens if both feeders go out.

There are traction power stations in Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Cos Cob, Stamford, Norwalk, East Norwalk, Devon, and New Haven. The tricky part about Mount Vernon is that there is no further substation to the west of it. If Cos Cob's went out, for instance, the two surrounding ones might be able to bridge the gap, however if New Rochelle's has to cover all of its plus Mount Vernon's territory, then things go south.

beanbag wrote:To add to your second point, this is more a reflection on MN, first the rail joint pops and now the feeder wire goes. No other commuter railroad seems to be having this many disastrous infrastructure failures in such a short time frame.

Feeder cables are typically maintained by the utility company as far as the substation. While scheduled work by MN has reduced redundancy an unfortunate amount in this case, if ConEdison's cable didn't blow, we wouldn't be in this mess. It's beyond Metro North's control.

beanbag wrote:Well the platform announcements were probably nonexistent because as someone had said earlier there was very likely a minefield of disabled trains in the affected area, so instead of having the usual straight shot to expected platforms its very likely the trains that could indeed run were navigating around those that could not. Wont do you much good if you say a train is going to come in on X-track and then "oh no were sorry, there is a disabled Acela blocking that track. Everyone go all the way across to Y-track."

Darien Red Sox wrote:There was a lack of platform announcements east of Stamford too. Just "delays" posted on the board. This is the first time since that winter 2 or 3 years ago that I have been really disappointed with Metro North. Yes there were service disruptions since but they were all communicated and handled well. I won't go into my long ordeal with customer service but will say the 2nd lady whom I spoke to was very helpful and nice. On board personnel as always handled the disruption very well. I hope that Metro North is able to handle things well tomorrow.

The trouble that arises with Metro-North here is that there is a very high element of unknown. The entire railroad is run from a windowless room in Grand Central. When the plug got pulled at 5:22am yes there were a couple of marooned trains (not that many though, at that point in the day). The operators of the railroad from their windowless room probably had a tough time figuring out what was where and what was working and what was not. For all they knew, switch and signal power could have been out too. On other railroads, like the LIRR, it's different. There are actually tower operators with human eyes on what's going.

And for situations like these, e-mail/text alerts and Twitter updates are your best friend. If you commute daily and you haven't signed up for these already you're out of your mind. Metro-North's Twitter feed had all of the relevant information updated frequently. While MN's station communication infrastructure might be lacking, you could very easily have all of this information on your phone the second things went south.

This is a bit confusing. The news stories are saying Mount Vernon, which is in third rail territory. But the overhead is obviously affected, including New Rochelle. Is it just overhead, or is it both overhead and third rail?

They probably had their hands kind of tied with most of the P32 gear nowhere near the problem, and a bunch of dead electric sets clogging everything up, although it sounds like they botched the announcements to tell people what was going on. Hopefully they will cancel all through Danbury, Upper Harlem, and Upper Hudson service and have all the P32's at STM ASAP, so that they can support somewhere around 12tph tomorrow with 25+ P32's. That looks to be about 50% service during rush hour, although it's probably less since an 8-10 car M-8 is going to hold more people than a 7- or 8-car maxi-bomb. Then they are going to be running short on coaches, as they will have to have bigger Mini bombs for the upper Harlem and Hudson. Hopefully they borrow some SLE sets for Waterbury (and can they run on Danbury or the upper Harlem/Hudson???) to at least free a few more cars up for the mainline. Then, STM is going to turn into a complete traffic jam trying to turn around a train every couple of minutes one direction or the other. What a mess.

What happened to their power system as a whole? Can't they buy power at any one of three points along the system and power the entire thing from NHV to Pelham using that one source?

There should be some interesting YouTube videos coming out of this, between Amtrak and MN...

EDIT: Just realized the SLE sets might not be able to get to the Upper Harlem/Hudson, but they could still cover Waterbury/Danbury...

It should be noted that the New Rochelle substation feeds the Hellgate route wire to the phase break near CP Gate,
when Mt Vernon dropped out,was there a partial "trip out"(shut down) at New Rochelle as well?

The ConEd Feeder that got hit is a 137Kv oil filled cable, one of two cables feeding the New York portion of New Haven line.
other cable is down for upgrades by ConEd
The damaged cable needs oil drained and partly frozen to do repairs, time estimate is 2 to 3 weeks.

TacSupport1 wrote:This would be a good reason to acquire some more diesel locomotives and coaches, even if they are used, just to keep "in reserve".

It's a tough question, since they need such specialized equipment. Any place outside of NYC, and you could substitute diesel gear in for any run without the need for dual-mode stuff. Or maybe some better ventilation at GCT so that they could run low-emission diesels in without third-rail capability? MBTA has done it with Back Bay, although that's on a much smaller scale than what GCT would need...

NHAirLine wrote:This is a bit confusing. The news stories are saying Mount Vernon, which is in third rail territory. But the overhead is obviously affected, including New Rochelle. Is it just overhead, or is it both overhead and third rail?

The Mount Vernon substation is situated at the west end of the changeover zone. The substation feeds everything from the changeover east to the next substation.

NHAirLine wrote:They probably had their hands kind of tied with most of the P32 gear nowhere near the problem, and a bunch of dead electric sets clogging everything up, although it sounds like they botched the announcements to tell people what was going on. Hopefully they will cancel all through Danbury, Upper Harlem, and Upper Hudson service and have all the P32's at STM ASAP, so that they can support somewhere around 12tph tomorrow with 25+ P32's. That looks to be about 50% service during rush hour, although it's probably less since an 8-10 car M-8 is going to hold more people than a 7- or 8-car maxi-bomb. Then they are going to be running short on coaches, as they will have to have bigger Mini bombs for the upper Harlem and Hudson. Hopefully they borrow some SLE sets for Waterbury (and can they run on Danbury or the upper Harlem/Hudson???) to at least free a few more cars up for the mainline. Then, STM is going to turn into a complete traffic jam trying to turn around a train every couple of minutes one direction or the other. What a mess.

Siphoning off maxi-bombs from the H&H probably won't end all that well. MN is just going to have to make do with what you have. SLE sets have to hold their ground east of NHV, so they can't be cannibalized either. Furthermore, the SLE coaches are restricted in third rail territory and are forbidden in the Park Avenue tunnels.

NHAirLine wrote:What happened to their power system as a whole? Can't they buy power at any one of three points along the system and power the entire thing from NHV to Pelham using that one source?

This isn't your toy train set. Increasing demand on one substation will negatively affect the whole line as a whole, and cause more outages and the like. It just doesn't work like that, unfortunately.

NHAirLine wrote:It's a tough question, since they need such specialized equipment. Any place outside of NYC, and you could substitute diesel gear in for any run without the need for dual-mode stuff. Or maybe some better ventilation at GCT so that they could run low-emission diesels in without third-rail capability? MBTA has done it with Back Bay, although that's on a much smaller scale than what GCT would need...

If I'm not mistaken, the Park Avenue Tunnels are ventilated, as are the spots where engines on Maxi-bombs platform at GCT. I think dual modes going into GCT leave the engines on until the cab car hits the platform. So in theory they could run BL20's and the like into GCT, but then MN starts running out of Shoreliners to put behind those engines.

There is an interesting map on MN's website showing all the service levels at various stages along the branch: http://web.mta.info/mnr/NewHaven/new-haven-line-fix.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You won't see and BL20's on passenger revenue trains into GCT. They can't pull more than 3 cars anyway. I've used BL20s to pull 6 M8s plus another BL20 on the other side. It's a haul! And that's with no HEP.

Consider too that the P32's run on diesel and will need to be fueled. I doubt the New Haven line yards could handle fueling the entire diesel fleet as some have suggested. MNR has all of these things factored into the regular schedule and equipment turns, so to undo all of this would be a large undertaking in such a short time. So it's not this "let's just send more trains" mentality that some expect to happen.

While MNR will have limited service for tomorrow I doubt many will appreciate the work MNR is doing behind the scenes just to get this far. Though some may say MNR has had plenty of practice with unscheduled outages this year already.

Interesting. The map really does help explain the service patterns. So to sum it up:
-Mt. Vernon East and Pelham customers will have no train service only busses to Mt. Vernon West.
-New Rochelle-Harrison customers will have diesel service into GCT every 25 minutes.
-Rye-Old Greenwich customers won't have service into GCT but will instead be bussed to White Plains at Rye.
-There will be electric service east of Stamford every 25 minutes and diesel service every 25 minutes, but only the diesel sets will go to GCT.
-Limited service on the New Canaan and Danbury branches.
-Bus service replacing Waterbury Branch trains.
-If you need to travel in between any of these separate zones (for example Larchmont and Riverside) you're out of luck?
-The Harlem Line is going to be a zoo!

lirr42 wrote:The Mount Vernon substation is situated at the west end of the changeover zone. The substation feeds everything from the changeover east to the next substation.

Siphoning off maxi-bombs from the H&H probably won't end all that well. MN is just going to have to make do with what you have. SLE sets have to hold their ground east of NHV, so they can't be cannibalized either. Furthermore, the SLE coaches are restricted in third rail territory and are forbidden in the Park Avenue tunnels.

NHAirLine wrote:What happened to their power system as a whole? Can't they buy power at any one of three points along the system and power the entire thing from NHV to Pelham using that one source?

This isn't your toy train set. Increasing demand on one substation will negatively affect the whole line as a whole, and cause more outages and the like. It just doesn't work like that, unfortunately.

Don't they have their own distribution system to feed the substations? The 138kV lines that were originally used to get power from Cos Cob out to substations? I thought they could get all the power for the NHL from either Con Ed or CL&P (UI???)?

Yeah, I remembered that the SLE sets can't get to the Harlem or Hudson lines because of the third rail issue. They really should cancel the upper Hudson/Harlem Maxi's and move the gear down to the mainline. It would save them a ton of coaches if they didn't have caches running on the Lower Harlem and Hudson lines with some modified service on the upper lines...

lirr42 wrote:If I'm not mistaken, the Park Avenue Tunnels are ventilated, as are the spots where engines on Maxi-bombs platform at GCT. I think dual modes going into GCT leave the engines on until the cab car hits the platform. So in theory they could run BL20's and the like into GCT, but then MN starts running out of Shoreliners to put behind those engines.

That's true. They are already going to be stretched thin with Maxi's.

lirr42 wrote:There is an interesting map on MN's website showing all the service levels at various stages along the branch: http://web.mta.info/mnr/NewHaven/new-haven-line-fix.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's a really cool map. But what they are doing is downright pathetic. Waterbury bussing? They already run SLE sets on Waterbury, so that should be an easy fix. SLE has 11 trainsets worth of equipment (even assume 2 are in the shop, that's 9) and they only run 4-6. They could cut the 4-car sets down to three tonight to support Waterbury and Danbury. Plus, they will probably have to cancel the through run anyways to avoid making STM more of a traffic jam than it already will be turning EMUs and Maxi-bombs there.

If they put 25-30 P32's on the NHL, they could support 12 tph... Put half shuttling GCT-STM and half running local and you've got something like half of the normal service level...

Gee, to think what I'm missing!! I'm happy to be over 200 miles away just reading about this horror story rather than being stuck in it.

There's absolutely no way that every single P32 or anything close to that number will be used for New Haven service. That means pretty much no service north of Croton Harmon. No way the RR would cripple 2 lines like that needlessly.