Snow storm

No more of the many towers or stations that were once common along the line from which signal maintainers can operate and respond quickly.

No more of the many section shanties that, too, were once common along the line from which section gangs can operate and respond quickly.

No more wedge plows set out at the various outlying terminals as they once were, to get a jump on track clearing after heavy snowfalls.

No more equipment that didn't break down all the time when under stress of the elements.

It's a different railroad now . . .

Does the LIRR keep any "modern" form of snow removal equipment at outlying terminals any longer?

Do they still set fire pots at the switches and interlocking linkage pipes in the ice and snow? Used to be many telephone calls to Jamaica and the local station agents from concerned commuters reporting that the "tracks were on fire!"

Dave

Yes they still set "fire pots". Actually I think nowadays they are natural gas burners.

"If anyone thinks that things will run better for Monday's commute, think again. The snow drifts in some places are so high, there is absolutely no way an MU will run through it without getting stuck"

I guess they proved you right on the PW line. The 5:09AM train(or atleast that's the train I was told it was) is STILL stuck in the Plandome area. The scanner is dead as far as requests to enter PW are. Total line suspension. So that blew away any chance of me going to get some snow photos. I may still try to get to Plandome station to see if the train is actually in the station or what.

Yes, this was quite a storm.

And from my perspective, I saw lots of bad decisions being made; many good ones too. Sitting in a walm office after all the sidewalks are shoveled and all the trains are back running, it's too easy to find fault.

What stopped the MU trains was ice on the third rails. When blowing snow hits the rail of a certain temperature it freezes, the shoes run up on it and nobody's going anywhere. On Sunday, this happened quickly on the west end and in the course of 45 minutes nine trains were stranded.

Just weren't enough scraper trains and not enough MU's running on Sunday to keep the road open. Alcohol trains broke down too.

Something as simple as coupling an engine to an MU train takes hours when fires have to be lit to melt frozen angle cocks and melt ice of gladhands.

Show drifts didn't hurt at all, and yes, hundreds of switch pots are still lit with kerosene. And armies of trackmen work day and night shoveling switches and platforms.

Some locations have third rail heaters. Some were not turned on. One of those things that doesn't get looked at as often as they should. Would they have helped? It only takes a ten car frozen gap to stop a train.

I've never felt this was a forum for airing dirty laundry. At times during the storm, I was ashamed to work for the LIRR; at other times, I was quite proud.

Nobody was injured or killed; thousands of people successfully made their trip with minimal delay. Hundreds of employees worked a 20-hour-day for the passengers, lugging through snow above their knees.

This is railroading, and I'm very proud to have chosen it as my career.

Clemuel

You might be right, maybe some things could have been done better...it's a shame that the news only points out the few trains that get stranded delaying a few hundred people rather than the trains that you mentioned with the few thousand of people who got to their destinations safely. If you listen to the reports of the roads, there are reports of car accidents all over the place. If I had to be anywhere yesterday I would have definitely chosen the railroad as my 1st pick for a mode of transportation.

The other thing that they seem to have failed to get across is that other railroads experienced similar problems. True, maybe Amtrak and NJ Transit were able to run out of Penn Station, but there were many delays in other areas of the NEC. Many cancelled trains too. Back in either 03 or 04 I took Amtrak up to Boston for the day to see a Rangers game...rode the Acela north, and had an Acela ticket for the southbound return trip in the evening, but the snow and ice had gotten bad so they cancelled the rest of the Acela trains for the rest of the night. So, they put me on a regular Amfleet train (refunded the difference in price)....and low and behold, that train ran into lots of problems en route as well. So, we make a regular stop in New London, slightly behind schedule....and then we sit in the station for about 20 minutes or so. Then suddenly the train starts to back up when finally a conductor makes an announcement "Sorry for the delay, the switch ahead of us is frozen and can't be thrown, we will have to back up and take the next switch to cross over"...and so we shoved back, had to be a good 3 miles. Did I get mad? Slightly. But, I understood that it wasn't the railroad's fault....the harsh weather just makes it difficult as all hell to get trains (or anything else for that matter) moving trouble free. Just my personal experience example to show that stuff like this happens everywhere, for a variaty of reasons.

Clem put it perfectly, "This is railroading.."

I wonder if the under running 3rd rail shoes as on the MN are a better bet with this weather. I saw on the news a snowblower being pushed by one of the track maintenance cars- why? What a mess! I guess you can have all the modern equipment in the world, Mother Nature still rules the roost!

Mike

Hopefully the LIRR will do some Monday morning quarterbacking. What went wrong? What went right? How can we do a better job next time?

From my poor perspective, it seems that maybe the LIRR was overconfident in the snow abilities of the M7s. While the M7s do not have the underbelly weaknesses the M1s and M3s have, apparently there was nothing that could be done about the shoes.

Is it advisable in bad storms to have 5 DM trains alternate with MU trains shuttling between Penn and Jamaica? If an MU stalls, a DM train can push MU train to the tunnels or Jamaica. The DM trains would operate in diesel mode except in the tunnels. This would result in 10 trainsets shuttling between Penn and Jamaica. With half hour travel times and 20 minute dwell times, the frequency would be one train every 8 minutes. If no stalls occur, this would be enough to feed each branch at one hour headways. If stalls do occur, at least there is service.

The Port Washington would need two MU trains and a DM train.

In the same vein, east of Jamaica, each of the branches would have enough trainsets for one hour headways: four for Port Jeff; three for Ronkonkoma; 5 for Patchogue, etc.

Things should be much better On tuesday, I would guess some minor delays, but things are falling back into place. When you think about it, a record snowstorm which ended around dusk in queens, later out east, and we lost one rush hour. By the time the evening rush hour came around, things were getting back to normal. All in all not too bad.

I agree about revising the service pattern for days when there is significant snow. Have the diesels operate to Jamaica, and then let the electrics take over from there. For the PW line, IF there are enough, have DM service. If not, then I really don't know.

If I remember correctly, DMs and DEs are not permitted on the PW branch let alone with C3 cars. I believe that there is a clearance issue as well as a weight issue. There really is no solution on the PW branch if the third rail becomes disabled. But true, they could have simply run diesels between Jamaica and Ronkonkoma and Pt. Jeff, leave the electrics running on the Babylon branch, and have limited DM service between Jam and Penn. Service should have been curtailed on the Long Beach, Far Rock, and Hemp/ W. Hemp branches with people being bused to the nearest station with service. That would of allowed clean up crews to clear the lines of snow in time for the morning rush. But the PW branch really doesn't have a remedy.

I don't really think that anyone on the RR thought that the M7s were immune to the snow. They are still prone to getting stuck if the third rail is frozen or covered with snow. They do however perform much better in the snow, possibly as a result from having AC traction motors which hold power longer than DC traction. In the snow, the M-7's have better accelaration than do the M-1/ M-3's, they don't have important components exposed to the elements, and they don't encounter much problems like burned out MA's or traction motors. There is no perfect equipment that will be immune to the snow, even Diesels run into problems.

Alco,

Your observations are quite astute and almost exactly what senior managers were advised to do. They chose not to substitute DM trains for electrics until the road was littered with disbled electrics. Often there are political reasons for the decisions that appear to defy common sense.

Mark,

The DM sets are actually restricted from very few places. In fact, DM's operated in many unusual places Monday morning, including Far Rockaway and Great Neck.

The M-7's operate very well in the snow. Strangely, during this storm, even the M-1's had virtually no mechanical failures. These will probably show in the following days with motor flashovers. The problem was strictly current collection from the third rail, and short of installing more rail heating, there is little that can be done to improve this.

Diesel-hauled M-1 patrols always helped, but the Railroad has far less diesels in oeprating condition than it did in 1996. Then there are those in the Mechanical Department who feel the DM/DE's can only be used to haul C3 cars.

There are many things that could have been planned differently.

Perhaps the biggest flaw is the overall failure to seek and respect advice and expertise of those who have been there and done that and work in the ranks with the physical plant and equipment.

Clem

I'm still wondering how accurate was the information I got at Penn Station Sunday night? The lady at a LIRR information window told me that service had been suspended "a half hour ago." This was at 6:30 PM. But I knew that was wrong because every train due to depart since 4 PM was still listed on the departure board. Later I found out service had been suspended since midday.

I also asked her was there any service at the Flatbush Avenue terminal? She said no they're suspended too. Then I asked her, if I take the subway to Jamaica can I get a train there? She told me that nothing was running out of Jamaica east or west.

What she said she didn't know was, why service was suspended or when it might resume. (She said, "They haven't told us.")

In the past LIRR employees have complained that higher ups often do not communicate much information to those who have to deal with the public. Especially when problems occur at night or on the weekend.

Mark, DMs are allowed on the PW line. It's just a clearance issue at PW with the canopies. Other than that, it's all good.

Tommy,

These people giving information really don't know all the particulars in real time. Even in the Movement Bureau, where the train dispatchers are located, the men receive their information by telephone (and computer screen) from the towers.

Getting news to the lowest rung on the ladder is very difficult. I know it sounds easy, but until you've sat at a dispatcher's desk and seen first hand how it can take ten minutes to find out if a particular train has left its terminal, it's hard to believe too.

The LIRR has made some fantastic strides in improving this passing down of information. I've seen this over the years.

Clem

its easier and less expensive to say "oops... sorry" to Newsday and News12, than to hire track gangs, pay OT, and truly research and address the snow issues, mixing equipment such as MP-15ACs or something on a revenue train as extra power, just to help get through... I don't work on the LIRR, but it seems easier to shrug their shoulders, than to seriously troubleshoot.