Winter 2017 / 2018; MBTA.

Jahvon09

Jahvon09

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The MBTA Is again having trouble & delays. Winter has just started and there are problems already.

This past week saw delays on a few lines, mainly the Red Line. The 2 recent snowstorms & bitter cold have caused commuters to stand on platforms in artic air, making things very difficult for them.

Commuter rail has also had some issues. The Red Line's third rail has been getting iced up. Again! The T says that it is trying to head off problems at the pass, but we'll see if this winter's problems are going to be the same as the ones that took place during the 2014 / 2015 season.
 
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3 inches of snow a week ago that hasn't melted. The horror. No wonder why the mbta is having issues.
 
Jahvon09 said:
The MBTA Is again having trouble & delays. Winter has ujust started and there are problems already.
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The first deep freeze of any winter is going to crack rails.

tysmith95 said:
3 inches of snow a week ago that hasn't melted. The horror. No wonder why the mbta is having issues.
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This is far more about the cold, and problems that the first deep cold of any winter can cause, such as cracking the running rails as they shrink to their winter minimum. Basically a record cold December means that we've pulled January's problems ahead by month. I don't know if there's a good non-destructive testing system that can predict which rails will crack in the cold (is there?)

The availability of snow moisture is also going to make rail/third rail icing a potential problem if there are patches where the heat is busted. This is something that pops up on the first cold snap.
 
How on earth can steel rails crack?

They are supposed to be made to last for a very long time before they have to be replaced. Unless cheap materials are being used to make them.

Boy!! Buy quality once, or buy junk forever!! :eek:
 
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^ all materials expand and contract because of the temperature. Wear from this happens, no matter how "quality" the rails are. It is just physics.
 
Something should be done to make them more strengthened against this type of thing.

After all, you don't hear about the steel used to build skyscrapers doing that!
 
As a metal worker, I can tell you even the carbon steel alloys that can reliably handle an extreme amount of expansion and contraction are cost prohibitive for use in something like laying track. So yes it exists, but there isn't enough money out there to use it for something like that. ( I'm talking about $500 for 3 ft of the raw, round barstock.)
 
Jahvon09 said:
Something should be done to make them more strengthened against this type of thing.

After all, you don't hear about the steel used to build skyscrapers doing that!
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That's because skyscraper steel is on the inside, typically temperature controlled, often coated with insulation, and because even when the steel is on the outside, with the steel almost always under compression (not tension) skyscrapers are only anchored at one end (the ground) and are permitted to shrink,grow as opposed to modern CWR which is anchored all along and not permitted to shrink lengthwise in the cold, nor expand in the heat. Having the rails be the same size all year creates tremendous stresses that are carefully managed but still sometimes result in summer buckling an winter cracking.

Old fashioned stick rail (that went clickity-clack) and steel bridges have/had regular expansion joints all along and was therefore a noisy / bumpy ride, higher friction and let things beat against each other too much.
 
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I just looked up the properties of rail steel, it seems the standard for heavy rail already is exactly what I had in mind. Also helps me understand how rail projects see such cost over runs- I didn't even realize how high grade the steel has to be, I bet the majority of the population would far underestimate the costs of rail as well.
 
DominusNovus said:
Care to elaborate? That piece was a bit too polemical to actual get anything coherent from.
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I would also be a bit wary of bias from a source called the 'World Socialist Web Site'.
 
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I'd say WSWS made a complete catalog of all indignities suffered by the rail riding masses-- promises broken and services suspended, but was useless when it came to root causes (didn't report that a worker texting cause the Mattapan rear-end) and by only saying when the Red-Orange order would be complete (2022) did not give the state credit for Orange deliveries scheduled for 2019.
 
I have to say that was a horrible read. It not totally without truth, but it is so slanted that I personally cannot discern which was which.

For example, one of his first examples was the Mattapan Trolley Crash. Other news articles are only reporting one operated fired with citing he was on his cell phone (which is banned), was deleting some post from Reddit, and was carrying a gun (which is I guess technically didn't matter to the crash but not a good reflection). Meanwhile, this article cited "The next day the MBTA issued a statement blaming the driver who had stopped to help; nothing further has been reported." I have read no corroborating articles and the fact other news articles talks about 2nd trolley driver means "nothing further has been report" is totally false.

Meanwhile the same article decided it is important to mentioned Wynn's association with the RNC and one unflattering quote from him.

Also make a emotional type argument about an Dec 29th Orange Line failure where it was really importation to mention how Malden has so many immigrants and how is it so cold then tact one line about the $100 million winter readiness investment. A number that other articles have painted as a lot rather than a little. And instinctually, it doesn't feel small versus if he said something like $10 million over 3 years. In short, no context has been given, just framed.

The article is just loopsided. I can tell that "in-general" there's some truth based from some other corroborating information and experiences. But too much is also slanted that I can't take from it anything new.
 
Delays, delays, delays!!

The MBTA is facing, yet again, more delays between last week's nor'easter & the one for this coming Wednesday.

The commuter rail is having the delays.
 
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