Acela & Amtrak NEC (HSR BOS-NYP-WAS and branches only)

Also, on the topic of cars, where is Rachel Maddow on the ~300 people per year killed by cars in New York City alone?

If she showed even half the passion on that...
 
Joseph A Boardman, Amtrak's CEO, has committed to installing PTC on the entire NEC before the end of the year (announced during his first appearance in the presser right now):
https://twitter.com/MedinaMora/status/598887053531717632

Edit: WOAH. Boardman just got really defensive live during the presser about PTC to which Mayor Nutter had to step in and cool things down: "today is not a day to debate PTC."

Boardman: “We had to change a lot of things on the corridor to make it work and we’re very close to being able to cut it in,” Boardman said. “We need some testing done on interference with the 220mhz radios we’re dealing with, but we will complete this by the end of the year. I believe we will probably be the only railroad in the United States [with PTC] … and I think that has not been reported well frankly. We have delivered a leadership role on PTC in the United States.”

Also: Hoping to restore limited service on Monday, full service by Tuesday.

--
Also, here's some interesting data regarding speed at Frankford Jct:
https://www.mapbox.com/blog/amtrak-derailment/
 
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Info has now surfaced, saying that an 8th person has died. And that ALL pax & crew have now been accounted for.

There is also the issues on the books as to why, how & when will ATO be installed & used on the full length of the NEC. There is no ATO installed in the area in which the train had derailed.

As we all know, ATO (Automatic Train Operation) would've promptly & automatically slowed the train down way ahead before entering the sharp curve, and would've prevented the deadly accident from ever happening.
 
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datadyne007 said:
Boardman: "We have been implementing PTC on Amtrak lines since the 90s. We need some testing done on interference in certain areas, but New Haven Boston has PTC. To say Amtrak hasn't adopted PTC is incorrect. We lead the Western Hemisphere in adopting PTC." (that final part is a really bizarre claim)
Click to expand...
His point is that Amtrak is way ahead of the freight railroads and other systems, like Metro North, & NJ Transit (that own their own tracks), all of whom have been mandated to implement PTC, and none of whom got any $ help from the feds to do so (compare the railroad's zero fed help to the BILLIONS that get showered on screwed up Air Traffic Control implementations)

I'm not sure if he's saying on a %-of-system or total blocks implemented, but Joe Boardman is a lifelong railroader and former FRA Administrator (the lead safety-regulator of railroads) and a complete straight-shooter (even if he talks a bit-too-railroad-techy and weeps too easily when he considers the state of his system, both of which I consider virtues).

Amtrak’s CEO Joseph Boardman said in a press conference Thursday that the train service is “very close” to completing the installation of positive train control across the Northeastern corridor and that it will be installed fully by the end of the year.

Boardman defended Amtrak’s PTC record, saying it has been getting ready for the technology for some time and has spent $111 million on it so far.

“We had to change a lot of things on the corridor to make it work and we’re very close to being able to cut it in,” Boardman said. “We need some testing done on interference with the 220mhz radios we’re dealing with, but we will complete this by the end of the year. I believe we will probably be the only railroad in the United States [with PTC] … and I think that has not been reported well frankly. We have delivered a leadership role on PTC in the United States.”

Boardman also told reporters that it is possible Amtrak service will be restored between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia by Monday, though Tuesday is more probable.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/...memory-deadly-crash-117955.html#ixzz3a8QCQNrc
Click to expand...

The dude can tell you exactly the frequency of the radios they're grappling with. He's not sugar coating anything.
 
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I'm beginning to wonder if the driver of the derailed train had INTENTIONALLY made the train go faster in that section to derail & crash it!

But I was right when I said that speed might've been a factor in the tragic accident!

Since it has been reported that he supposedly doesn't remember anything about the accident, who's to say that he was completely sane while behind the controls? Just saying.
 
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Jahvon09 said:
I'm beginning to wonder if the driver of the derailed train had INTENTIONALLY made the train go faster in that section to derail & crash it!

Since it has been reported that he supposedly doesn't remember anything about the accident, who's to say that he was completely sane while behind the controls?
Click to expand...

Plenty of people don't remember their crashes. Plenty of driver lapses end up being strokes or seizures. So are plain old distractions, sleepiness, or mental fatigue. It doesn't do much good to speculate, but I do agree that Copycat suicides, are a real thing too, and after the worst kind (like the intentional plane crash in the Alps) it can "inspire" others to take similar actions. I won't say it is likely, but it can't be ruled out.

From this picture, though, one speculation on RR.net is that the driver was semi-incapacitated by a windshield strike (kids throwing rocks from over passes..source says two other trains were struck *that evening*)http://media.philly.com/images/600*450/20150513_loco_1024.jpg
 
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Arlington said:
Plenty of people don't remember their crashes. Plenty of driver lapses end up being strokes or seizures. So are plain old distractions, sleepiness, or mental fatigue. It doesn't do much good to speculate, but I do agree that Copycat suicides, are a real thing too, and after the worst kind (like the intentional plane crash in the Alps) it can "inspire" others to take similar actions. I won't say it is likely, but it can't be ruled out.
Click to expand...



Much like the Metro Commuter Rail derailment in New York last year near The Bronx. The driver had zoned out and his train entered a similar sharp curve where he was doing 70mph, when he should've been doing 30. Four people died in that one. :eek:
 
Jahvon09 said:
Info has surfaced, saying that an 8th person has died. And that ALL pax & crew have now been accounted for.

There is also the issues on the books as to why, how & when will ATO be installed & used on the full length of the NEC. There is no ATO installed in the area in which the train had derailed.

As we all know, ATO (Automatic Train Operation) would've promptly & automatically slowed the train down way ahead before entering the sharp curve, and would've prevented the deadly accident from ever happening. :eek:
Click to expand...

Some terminology confusion here...

The NEC has had Automatic Train Control (ATC) since the 1920's: that's the cab signals. This area has cab signals, and they enforce obedience of the signal system by applying reactive brake penalties if the engineer doesn't obey a signal indication.

"Automatic Train Operation" is a misnomer. That can either mean something totally, absolutely different like driverless trains (there are none of those on any mainline RR in the world). Or it can be a synonym for ATC (like the Red and Orange line have "ATO", a loose analogy for cab signals on a subway). So, for example...if you've ever been on a Red/Orange train sitting at the ends near the operator cabin. And you're flying along at a good clip and hear a buzzer go off in the cabin, then a couple seconds later feel the jolt of the subway train coming to a screeching halt followed by angry passengers spilling coffee. THAT is the subway equivalent of the operator getting slapped by the signal system for either not obeying either the speed limit or not obeying a change in the speed limit. RR cab signals don't work exactly that way--they're a bit less simplistic than Red/Orange--but that's a rough analogy for how the ATC system works on the NEC and most East Coast commuter rail.


PTC is "Positive Train Control". As I mentioned, that's a proactive system that uses computers to measure the live position of trains, and spacing of them. It closes the last loopholes for over-speeding and train-on-train collision risks because of the live tracking. And provides some performance enhancements by being able to pack trains closer and smooth out flow kinks (if it's configured that way). It differs from cab signals, which enforce the speeds intermittently at repeat intervals due to the way the track circuits work. The PTC system Amtrak--and the T, Metro North/ConnDOT, LIRR, NJ Transit, SEPTA, and MARC--are installing is the Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES). It has been in operation from New Haven to Boston since 2001, and all Providence, Needham, Stoughton, and Franklin trains use it as well for their NEC running miles.

The hardware for ACSES is installed in the NJ and Philly areas. But it's not active because they're still debugging the radio interference issues that make PTC installation so difficult. You can't have technical glitches on a system that's supposed to be fail-safe, so they aren't allowed to turn it on until it's fully-debugged. Nobody's being negligent about that. They're dealing with the FCC (who themselves are badly underfunded by Congress) by-the-book, and it's just going painfully slow everywhere with Congress being total deadbeats about funding their own mandate.


Most PTC systems in the country are being installed on lines that do not have pre-existing cab signals, and the new installations are adding the same features the NEC's ATC/cab signals have had for 90 years. Here, however, the cab signals are staying and the "ACSES" layer just adds features instead of reinventing the whole wheel. It defers to the cab signals everywhere there has to be a reactive restriction, and enforces proactive restrictions itself.

So at a place like Frankford Jct. it's a little from Column A and a little from Column B: this signal that triggered the emergency brakes right by the curve would still be triggering the emergency brakes by the curve same as before. But the loophole between signals where this engineer was allowed to accelerate to such incredible speed would be closed.


^^The bolded part is what I mean when I say the cab signals did their job. They'd be doing the same job even if the PTC system were active. And the loophole could've been closed by having the cab signals spaced to start an earlier enforcement. But the humans--and their human error--who deemed this signal layout OK never anticipated that a train could ever accelerate to 100 MPH in that short a span to elude the previous signals...and so the signal protecting the curve was too little too late.

In short, the signals weren't unsafe...the humans on both the giving and receiving end of the signals were.




You can see how these terms can be all a jumble. I wouldn't expect very many reporters in the media to not mangle it to hell unless they're in the transportation trade media. I think most of them are satisfied if they get it less self-parody wrong than CNN, which sets a pretty low bar for accuracy. So expect a lot of hysteria about PTC and ATC without explanation of what the hell they are and which ones are and aren't in effect on the NEC.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Some terminology confusion here...

The NEC has had Automatic Train Control (ATC) since the 1920's: that's the cab signals. This area has cab signals, and they enforce obedience of the signal system by applying reactive brake penalties if the engineer doesn't obey a signal indication.

"Automatic Train Operation" is a misnomer. That can either mean something totally, absolutely different like driverless trains (there are none of those on any mainline RR in the world). Or it can be a synonym for ATC (like the Red and Orange line have "ATO", a loose analogy for cab signals on a subway). So, for example...if you've ever been on a Red/Orange train sitting at the ends near the operator cabin. And you're flying along at a good clip and hear a buzzer go off in the cabin, then a couple seconds later feel the jolt of the subway train coming to a screeching halt followed by angry passengers spilling coffee. THAT is the subway equivalent of the operator getting slapped by the signal system for either not obeying either the speed limit or not obeying a change in the speed limit. RR cab signals don't work exactly that way--they're a bit less simplistic than Red/Orange--but that's a rough analogy for how the ATC system works on the NEC and most East Coast commuter rail.


PTC is "Positive Train Control". As I mentioned, that's a proactive system that uses computers to measure the live position of trains, and spacing of them. It closes the last loopholes for over-speeding and train-on-train collision risks because of the live tracking. And provides some performance enhancements by being able to pack trains closer and smooth out flow kinks (if it's configured that way). It differs from cab signals, which enforce the speeds intermittently at repeat intervals due to the way the track circuits work. The PTC system Amtrak--and the T, Metro North/ConnDOT, LIRR, NJ Transit, SEPTA, and MARC--are installing is the Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES). It has been in operation from New Haven to Boston since 2001, and all Providence, Needham, Stoughton, and Franklin trains use it as well for their NEC running miles.

The hardware for ACSES is installed in the NJ and Philly areas. But it's not active because they're still debugging the radio interference issues that make PTC installation so difficult. You can't have technical glitches on a system that's supposed to be fail-safe, so they aren't allowed to turn it on until it's fully-debugged. Nobody's being negligent about that. They're dealing with the FCC (who themselves are badly underfunded by Congress) by-the-book, and it's just going painfully slow everywhere with Congress being total deadbeats about funding their own mandate.


Most PTC systems in the country are being installed on lines that do not have pre-existing cab signals, and the new installations are adding the same features the NEC's ATC/cab signals have had for 90 years. Here, however, the cab signals are staying and the "ACSES" layer just adds features instead of reinventing the whole wheel. It defers to the cab signals everywhere there has to be a reactive restriction, and enforces proactive restrictions itself.

So at a place like Frankford Jct. it's a little from Column A and a little from Column B: this signal that triggered the emergency brakes right by the curve would still be triggering the emergency brakes by the curve same as before. But the loophole between signals where this engineer was allowed to accelerate to such incredible speed would be closed.


^^The bolded part is what I mean when I say the cab signals did their job. They'd be doing the same job even if the PTC system were active. And the loophole could've been closed by having the cab signals spaced to start an earlier enforcement. But the humans--and their human error--who deemed this signal layout OK never anticipated that a train could ever accelerate to 100 MPH in that short a span to elude the previous signals...and so the signal protecting the curve was too little too late.

In short, the signals weren't unsafe...the humans on both the giving and receiving end of the signals were.
Click to expand...


A similar operating system is set up in Washington, DC's Metro system, but it failed to work & prevent the deadly accident that had occurred on June 22,'09.

Nine pax died in THAT accident, including the driver of the train that went too fast.

My question is how many more must die neededlessly before the Gov't tries to make things better?! There have been way too many train accidents where scores of people have died needlessly. When will things materialize that will make train travel completely safe & reliable again?! :eek:
 
citylover94 said:
Seat belts on a train seem ridiculous to me. Europe runs more trains than us without needing them for safety we just need to improve our safety standards to be more similar to european railroads.
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There's actually evidence that it hinders evacuation on a train. Evidence is anything but clear-cut, and that's why the NTSB never goes there making a knee-jerk reaction mandating it. Its own data--really, everyone's data worldwide--says it's so situational where it helps and where it hinders on a train that it's almost impossible to craft a mandate. And that they'd almost certainly be dealing with the unintended consequences of such a mandate.

I doubt we're going to see that soon. Congress, if it self-cared enough, could always pass some hysterical nanny-state legislation over the NTSB's "inconclusive evidence!" pounding of the desk at the hearing, but no actual safety authority is going to stake their reputation to signing off on One Single Policy for train seatbelts.
 
Jahvon09 said:
A similar operating system is set up in Washington, DC's Metro system, but it failed to work & prevent the deadly accident that had occurred on June 22,'09.

Nine pax died in THAT accident, including the driver of the train that went too fast.

My question is how many more must die neededlessly before the Gov't tries to make things better?! There have been way too many train accidents where scores of people have died needlessly. When will things materialize that will make train travel completely safe & reliable again?! :eek:
Click to expand...

Calm down with the ":eek:", please.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2009_Washington_Metro_train_collision

The Metro crash happened because a track circuit was incorrectly replaced at the accident site 5 days before leaving that segment of track totally unprotected. The signal system couldn't even see the train because it was effectively removed on that piece of track. The driver fucked up by speeding, WMATA's track dept. fucked up its track work and then failed to test it, and then WMATA management tried to cover it up. WMATA also had a longstanding history of sloppy work, safety violations, and circling their own wagons when they got caught.

Seeing as how there was no signal system malfunction here, IT IS TOTALLY NOT THE SAME THING. So...let's all crap our pants in unison and run around screaming? Would it be safer to ban trains and text-while-driving on our safe-as-houses government funded interstate highways instead?
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/amtrak-derail/

^^This is an incredibly useful pictorial outlining the sequence of events in the accident.
Click to expand...

Every picture I've seen of that first car (business class) just gives me goosebumps. I can't imagine the horror of what it was like in that car while it was snapped clear in half, bent in a U. The second car, the Quiet Car also is badly damaged, but nowhere near as bad.

This NYT feature is good too:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...the-philadelphia-amtrak-train-crash.html?_r=0

Included image:
Edit: Text overlay on image is missing. The red is where PTC is installed.
ptc-720px.png

By The New York Times | Sources: Federal Railroad Administration; National Transportation Safety Board
 
Arlington said:
PTC should have been funded, and if State-of-Good-Repair with just a tiny sprinkling of curve straightening had been funded, I'd have to believe that Frankford Junction would have been a top curve-straightening project, being on the map of the worst curves on the NEC, but tops on that list of the ones worth fixing (improvement/$)

If you look at the map above, the B&P Tunnel (Baltimore), Wlimington, Zoo (in Philly) and Elizabeth (in NJ) are bad curves, but not as big a buzzkill because they are close to the terminals at BAL, WIL PHL and NYP. (The B&P is killer-slow, but is its own problem because, to fix it takes a whole lotta nasty tunnel.

But the curves at Frankford and Metuchen are real downers because they come in the middle of nowhere and break up what otherwise would be a very long, very straight stop-free stretch. Just a couple of takings would address them and be really really helpful both for speed and safety.
Click to expand...

I seriously doubt Frankford can be straightened meaningfully. It's an S-curve with the other half of it on the other side of the river. So it only takes a couple degrees of straightening on the accident side of the river before it starts pinching the curve on the other side. And then there's not enough room between curves to go tangent over the water crossing. Morbid as it sounds, you'd much rather be derailing on dry land rather than be mid-skid at the bridge and plunging into the water. With the residential street grid piled up alongside the ROW on the straightaways there's also not a lot of options to do.


It's always going to be a slow zone. The sheer number of SEPTA and NJ Transit commuter rail lines forking/diverging in that 3-mile stretch ensures it. But we don't have options for non-blended HSR the East Coast megalopolis. The full-build realization is to hit the big-city destinations and commuter rail transfers (none of that bypassing Baltimore or New York crap) and then put all the elbow grease into improving speeds between those destinations. This is inside the City of Philly-proper, sharing tracks with diverging commuter rail lines. So slow's more feature than bug here when destinations are in mind. The trick is getting more of New Jersey up to 160 MPH territory. Build up the head of steam between cities to bank the time savings while going through the unmodifiable density.

That's how it has to be. You can no more bulldoze a bunch of Philly neighborhoods than you can bypass Philly on perfectly straight track that doesn't go where NEC riders need to go.
 
Jahvon09 said:
Can't see how anyone could survive in the 1st car. And it is amazing how the last three cars had remained upright.

I wonder what they'll do with the damaged locomotive. Repair it, perhaps? :confused:
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The loco will be impounded for awhile while the NTSB does its thing. But yes, it's repairable. The Siemens factory is still pumping out the last of the Sprinter order and is repairing another collision-damaged unit that hit a car illegally parked on the tracks. It'll probably be back within the next year.

Car #1 was the one that knocked down the catenary pole. Those 1920's vintage poles extremely sturdy with very deep pilings...because on that part of the NEC they carry the high-tension feeder lines high in the sky above the tracks and need to support incredible amounts of wire tension. They were designed to survive collisions with steam-hauled freight trains. And that Amfleet got thrown sideways into it at 100 MPH. And knocked it the hell down. There is no railcar on the planet that would survive that force of impact.

The fact that most of the occupants of that car DID survive is testament to just how sturdy the Amfleets are. The outer shell got shredded entirely off the car and deposited on the grass, and the frame got bent in half...but the frame kept its integrity well enough that most of the occupants walked away. You can see it on the picture...the passenger compartment is intact on both sides of where it got bent by the impact with that pole. Yeah, they're old and not real comfy cars. And yeah, the windows are too small...the evacuees found that out. But Amfleets have a superlative safety record...and this is why. That tubular design distributes crash energy very well. Even on side impacts not covered by all the FRA front-end buff strength regs. They're outstanding railcars. Maybe the best Made-in-the-U.S.A. design of the last 100 years. There may not have been a more survivable car those occupants could have been riding in for this type of impact.


Cars 2's wrecked beyond repair because that got punctured by the end of the fallen pole. 3 & 4...might be repairable, but repairs intensive enough that they'll either be gone awhile or could be scrap candidates to strip for parts. But the last 3 cars that stayed upright...they'll be back.
 
datadyne007 said:
Every picture I've seen of that first car (business class) just gives me goosebumps. I can't imagine the horror of what it was like in that car while it was snapped clear in half, bent in a U. The second car, the Quiet Car also is badly damaged, but nowhere near as bad.

This NYT feature is good too:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...the-philadelphia-amtrak-train-crash.html?_r=0

Included image:
Edit: Text overlay on image is missing. The red is where PTC is installed.
ptc-720px.png

By The New York Times | Sources: Federal Railroad Administration; National Transportation Safety Board
Click to expand...

Notice on that map where the PTC gaps are: Greater Philly, Greater NYC. The biggest metropolises on the NEC with the maximum amount of radio interference to debug. (Metro North territory is Metro North's installation...design-build contract awarded last year).

Amtrak's not exactly getting a lot of assistance from the FCC for mitigating those spectrum conflicts, and that's why the trackside hardware has been sitting there installed for a year or two but can't be turned on. They've tested it overnight with non-revenue trains. It works. But it's not interference-free and because of the way the mandate is worded they can't turn it on until it's interference-free. Now watch Congress haul Boardman in front of a vanity committee hearing as a sacrificial lamb. It'll be the ultimate "Stop punching yourself!" moment as the keepers of the mandate ask him why he wasn't retroactively breaking the mandate...and breaking it for free. In case you're wondering why he's a little touchy on that subject.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
I seriously doubt Frankford can be straightened meaningfully. It's an S-curve with the other half of it on the other side of the river. So it only takes a couple degrees of straightening on the accident side of the river before it starts pinching the curve on the other side. And then there's not enough room between curves to go tangent over the water crossing. Morbid as it sounds, you'd much rather be derailing on dry land rather than be mid-skid at the bridge and plunging into the water. With the residential street grid piled up alongside the ROW on the straightaways there's also not a lot of options to do.


It's always going to be a slow zone. The sheer number of SEPTA and NJ Transit commuter rail lines forking/diverging in that 3-mile stretch ensures it. But we don't have options for non-blended HSR the East Coast megalopolis. The full-build realization is to hit the big-city destinations and commuter rail transfers (none of that bypassing Baltimore or New York crap) and then put all the elbow grease into improving speeds between those destinations. This is inside the City of Philly-proper, sharing tracks with diverging commuter rail lines. So slow's more feature than bug here when destinations are in mind. The trick is getting more of New Jersey up to 160 MPH territory. Build up the head of steam between cities to bank the time savings while going through the unmodifiable density.

That's how it has to be. You can no more bulldoze a bunch of Philly neighborhoods than you can bypass Philly on perfectly straight track that doesn't go where NEC riders need to go.
Click to expand...

Next Gen NEC Philly Bypass splits at that Location and heads for Center City via a Tunnel...and then the Airport and then Merges after another S-Curve south of Philly... It doesn't require that much land to be taken and not expensive land.
 
Nexis4jersey said:
Next Gen NEC Philly Bypass splits at that Location and heads for Center City via a Tunnel...and then the Airport and then Merges after another S-Curve south of Philly... It doesn't require that much land to be taken and not expensive land.
Click to expand...

I asked this a couple pages back, but it got buried in the derailment coverage....do you have any links to details for the plan to diverge from the current ROW around here?
 
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