(The following article by Mike Musgrove was posted on the Washington Post website on May 12.)
WASHINGTON — The brake problem that sidelined the high-speed Acela Express train line could have caused a catastrophic accident had it gone undiscovered, Amtrak’s inspector general said yesterday.
“We got very lucky that this was found when it was,” said Fred E. Weiderhold Jr. in a hearing before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee. “We were getting dangerously close to a very, very serious problem.”
Amtrak shut down its high-speed service on April 15, after a safety inspector with the Federal Railroad Administration noticed that a brake component appeared to be rusted. A resulting investigation turned up hairline cracks in 300 of 1,440 brake disks in the 20-train Acela fleet.
During the hearing, Weiderhold confirmed that one of the brake spokes, when cut from the brake disk rotor, fell apart in an engineer’s hands.
Robert D. Jamison, acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, agreed that discovery of the cracks “quite possibly averted a serious accident.”
The hearing did not answer the question of what caused the cracks, though it raised the possibility that they had been noticed as far back as three years ago — by employees at ORX Railway Corp., the Pennsylvania company that refurbishes Acela wheel sets under a maintenance subcontract. Weiderhold said it appears that such reports never made it to Amtrak.
Under a contract, maintenance of Acela trains is the responsibility of Bombardier Inc. and Alstom, the consortium that built the train. The consortium employs a separate company, Northeast Corridor Maintenance Services Co., to oversee the maintenance work, though Amtrak workers handle the train parts. Amtrak is scheduled to take over the maintenance of the Acela train in October 2006.
The presidents of Bombardier Transportation-North America and Alstom Transportation Inc. America were at the hearing and pointed to the component itself, not the upkeep of the train, as the problem.
Francis Jelensperger, president of the Alstom unit, said Acela’s brake problem has “nothing to do with maintenance, it’s got to do with the quality of the component.”
William A. Spurr, president of the Bombardier unit, said that his company is the largest maintainer of railroad equipment in Europe and that problems have not been found with corresponding components of European trains. “This component should not be failing,” he said.
Weiderhold testified that Amtrak’s metallurgist had told him that he did not think the brake flaw derived from poor casting of the part.
He said Bombardier and Alstom have cooperated with his investigation, but added that brake component manufacturers SAB Wabco and Knorr Brake Corp. of Westminster, Md., have “lawyered up” and that getting information from them has been more difficult.
Amtrak vice president of operations William L. Crosbie said the Acela line should be running by this summer. Crosbie testified that the railroad is losing $1 million every week the Acela is out of service.
Crosbie said the schedule for returning the trains to service is somewhat unclear because the railroad is overseeing tests of an alternate component, a type of brake disk rotor that became available only after the Acela train was constructed. The new part has not been approved by the FRA.
The two types of brake components have different production rates. The old brake component, built by Wabco, is available at a rate of 18 to 25 a week; the new Knorr brakes would be available at a rate of 50 per week and could be ramped up to 150 per week by August. “You can do the math,” Crosbie said.
JayEtta Z. Hecker, director of physical infrastructure issues at the Government Accountability Office, testified that while Congress had not adequately funded Amtrak, the railroad did not properly manage the resources it had.
In particular, she said, Amtrak officials mismanaged the Acela project and failed to run enough tests on the train. According to Hecker’s testimony, other high-speed trains are tested for 165,000 miles before entering commercial service; the Acela was tested for only 35,000 miles. “Testing was extremely abbreviated,” she said.
She also said Amtrak workers had reported difficulty getting technical maintenance information about the trains.
The Bush administration has proposed forcing Amtrak into bankruptcy to prompt major reforms, and yesterday’s testimony brought sharp remarks from committee members about the history and future of the perpetually cash-strapped railroad.
Subcommittee member John L. Mica (R-Fla.) called Amtrak a “dysfunctional organization” with “farcical management.” Mica said Amtrak has been so costly for the U.S. taxpayer that Congress might as well have bought limousines for commuters traveling between Boston, New York and Washington. “We need to take Amtrak out of the high-speed service,” he said.
In a hearing that was largely focused on where to place blame, Rep. Steven C. LaTourette (R-Ohio) singled out one worker for praise: Rich Thomas, the safety inspector who discovered the problem.
“I don’t know if the FRA gives commendations or medals, but I certainly think Rich deserves one for his eagle eyes,” he said.