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

Jahvon09 said:
The '90 Back Bay derailment was supposedly caused by a rookie who didn't know what he was doing behind the controls.

Miraculously, no one was killed in the accident! But the speeding Amtrak train had knocked out one of the station's main support columns that had to be replaced. The MBTA'S Orange Line was not affected by the accident.
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Jahvon -- if I remember correctly -- the train locomotive nearly penetrated through Dartmouth Street from below -- one humongous pothole -- speed was comparable
 
whighlander said:
Jahvon -- if I remember correctly -- the train locomotive nearly penetrated through Dartmouth Street from below -- one humongous pothole -- speed was comparable
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I thought that it was the SUPPORT COLUMN itself that had penetrated into Dartmouth Street.
 
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Jahvon09 said:
I thought that it was the SUPPORT COLUMN itself that had penetrated Dartmouth Street.
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No. The support columns suffered structural damage, but the jacknifed trains punctured the roof and buckled the pavement on Dartmouth St.


Zero fatalities. It was a head-on locomotive-on-locomotive hit. The Amtrak had 2 F40PH diesels at the front and an unoccupied mail car and unoccupied baggage car as the first 2 cars, so all passengers were 4 cars back of the impact site. It's a mystery how everyone on the Stoughton train survived; that was just a regular push-pull set with an F40PH-2C running in push mode with a mix of Pullman, Bombardier, and MBB cars...same exact mixture of single-level makes and (now) middle-aged locos that still run on Providence/Stoughton today. Hitting the locomotive instead of the cab car undoubtedly minimized the casualty potential, but the first passenger car was peeled back like a banana and yet miraculously everyone survived.

800px-Rar-92-01_crash_diagram.png


Amtrak loco:
400px-NTSB_RAR-92-01_figure_5.jpg


Amtrak mail car (thankfully unoccupied):
640px-Rar-92-01_amtrak_wreck_coaches.png


T loco and shredded coach:
NTSB_RAR-92-01_figure_4.jpg


Crumpled Amfleet being pushed to Southampton Yard (with crewmember sticking head out of window):
backbayamfleetwreck.jpg


^^ Told 'ya those fuckers had strong, strong frames.
 
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That was one hell of a mess that they had to clean up in the station & in the tunnel!

Meanwhile, it is reported that the mangled mess was cleaned up, the damaged section of track, the support poles the & overhead catenary wire in the derailment area, have all been repaired & the NEC has been reopened for business.

They suspect that kids with nothing else better to do with their lives & time, were bored and possibly threw rocks at the train, one of them hitting the Sprinter's left windshield. and making a impact about the size of a grapefruit.

The investigation still continues, as the NTSB and the FBI are still assessing their findings as to what really caused the catastrophic & deadly accident.

Automatic brake control is now installed in that section of the track, as a safety measure. :cool:
 
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Jahvon09 said:
The mangled mess has been cleaned up, the damaged section of track, the support poles the & overhead catenary wire in the derailment area, have all been repaired & the NEC has been reopened for business.
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Jahvon -- at this point the FBI say's definitively no shots --
it is still not clear if a rock or something grapefruit-ish in size was tossed by someone -

or if the window damage just happened as the derailment occurred not before
 
Two weeks ago I rode the Lake Shore Limited from Chicago to Boston and there were some teenage boys throwing rocks at the train in the Mohawk Valley. The sound was of the rocks hitting the side of the train was quite frightening.
 
whighlander said:
Jahvon -- at this point the FBI say's definitively no shots --
it is still not clear if a rock or something grapefruit-ish in size was tossed by someone -

or if the window damage just happened as the derailment occurred not before
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Yeah, gunshots were ruled out.

Why do kids with all that friggen time on their hands would want to throw rocks at a passing train? It is beyond me! :eek:
 
Amtrak is now contemplating putting video cams inside the cabs of its locomotives.
To hopefully keep track of the drivers' actions in hopes of pinpointing mishaps or crashes. :cool:
 
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Jahvon09 said:
Amtrak is contemplating putting video cams inside the cabs of its locomotives.
To hopefully keep track of the drivers' actions in hopes of pinpointing mishaps or crashes. :cool:
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The Sprinters already do have hazard cams mounted on the dashboard looking out the engineer's window.

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See the little white thing just to the right of the center divider on the window glass, framed by the windshield wipers. That provides constant live-downloadable video feed of the engineer's forward field of vision.


This I guess is just spying on the actual engineer with an extra cam on the rear wall of the cab. Engineers union is going to fight that one reaaaaaaallly hard. If they want to prevent them from texting while driving they tighten the regs for turning in all electronic devices before leaving crew quarters. I'm not sure this is going to do anything but make them really uncomfortable, distracted that the boss is looking over their shoulder, afraid to scratch certain bodily places that may get itchy sitting down for hours at a time, etc. There aren't many workplaces where that kind of scrutiny improves morale, productivity, or concentration.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The Sprinters already do have hazard cams mounted on the dashboard looking out the engineer's window.

maxresdefault.jpg


See the little white thing just to the right of the center divider on the window glass, framed by the windshield wipers. That provides constant live-downloadable video feed of the engineer's forward field of vision.


This I guess is just spying on the actual engineer with an extra cam on the rear wall of the cab. Engineers union is going to fight that one reaaaaaaallly hard. If they want to prevent them from texting while driving they tighten the regs for turning in all electronic devices before leaving crew quarters. I'm not sure this is going to do anything but make them really uncomfortable, distracted that the boss is looking over their shoulder, afraid to scratch certain bodily places that may get itchy sitting down for hours at a time, etc. There aren't many workplaces where that kind of scrutiny improves morale, productivity, or concentration.
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Yup, I see it.

But then again, why are they so seemingly mystified as to why the train had derailed & crashed along with or other than the speed factor? As we all know, it WAS a Sprinter that was being used to lead the train on its ill-fated run to Penn Station in NY.

You'd have thought that they might've had some kind of clue as to why the train was sped up and was only slowed down slightly. :confused:
 
Has anyone else ridden the acella lately? I haven't in about a year and holy shit are they falling apart. Dirt, grime, and worn surfaces everywhere. The ride's still pretty nice, but I feel like I'm in someone's 90s beater pickup truck.
 
davem said:
Has anyone else ridden the acella lately? I haven't in about a year and holy shit are they falling apart. Dirt, grime, and worn surfaces everywhere. The ride's still pretty nice, but I feel like I'm in someone's 90s beater pickup truck.
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I've been on it a few times in the past year, and from my experience it's been relatively consistent. It's never been super clean but not dirty either. It was a bit of a jarring transition after riding the Shinkansen in Japan though...
 
I've taken it several times, including about 6 weeks ago. It was nothing like what you describe. Maybe you got a particularly rough car or a bad crew or something.
 
Good to hear this is probably a one-off. Right after I typed that I went into the bathroom and a compartment behind the toilet swung open while I was using it. Twilight zone.
 
I prefer the Regionals and their 1970s level of rattiness.
 
davem said:
Good to hear this is probably a one-off. Right after I typed that I went into the bathroom and a compartment behind the toilet swung open while I was using it. Twilight zone.
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Just notify the crew if you see that. Or make a note of the car number when you get off and fill out a customer service comment on the website. They don't mess around when it comes to customer service on their premier profit center. There's only 20 Acela trainsets more or less permanently grouped together, unlike the several hundred Regionals cars that get broken up and recombined every day. Those trainsets get a lot more maintenance attention because of their complexity. ID a problem for them and it'll usually get fixed fast. And keep in mind that things like a loose piece of plastic are going to elude detection until the trainset gets cycled offline for one of its thorough inspections a few times a year; they won't catch most of those rattling pieces on a day-to-day sweep. So the "see something, say something" really does get their immediate attention.
 
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