(The following article by Matthew L. Wald was posted on the New York Times website on April 20.)
WASHINGTON — Amtrak said Wednesday that brake problems on its Acela Express trains would keep them out of service until sometime in the summer and that in the meantime, it was bringing back the old Metroliners. They will be used to fill nearly all of the Acelas’ departure slots from Washington to New York, and Amtrak is also adding some trains from New York to Boston.
Amtrak abruptly took all 20 of its high-speed Acelas out of service last Thursday after cracks were discovered in brake parts.
For a few hours on Monday, Amtrak thought it had one working Acela Express, after it fitted the train with undamaged parts from other Acelas. But a metallurgist Amtrak hired said he was not confident that the simple visual inspection the company had done revealed all important cracks.
The brakes are unique in the rail industry, and there is no active production. About 70 spares are on hand, but about 300 brakes of the 1,440 in the Acela fleet are cracked. Production will start again, and initially, at least, the new parts will be of the same design as the ones that cracked.
Amtrak has reshuffled trains from as far away as the West Coast to assemble a Metroliner fleet for the Northeast Corridor. Top officials said Metroliner service would be nearly as fast, with a trip from New York to Washington taking only about 12 minutes more. The difference from New York to Boston is slightly greater, about 23 minutes.
“We are going to do all that we can to run a safe, reliable schedule that our passengers can count on,” said William L. Crosbie, senior vice president for operations.
The reason for the cracks is still unknown. Mr. Crosbie said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon at Union Station here that Amtrak was told that morning by Bombardier, one of the train’s builders, that the brake parts had been expected to last a million miles or five years. The oldest Acela is nearly five years old but has only about 600,000 miles on it, he said. Amtrak’s earlier descriptions of the part’s long life span referred only to the spokes, not the brake discs to which they are attached.
David Slack, a spokesman for Bombardier, said the brake part in question would last a million miles “under normal wear and tear.”
“Cracks in the spokes are not a function of normal wear and tear,” he said.
In the 1960’s, Amtrak had a similar problem with the brakes on its new Amfleet cars, said David L. Gunn, the company president. He said Amtrak solved it by replacing the brakes with every second wheel replacement. Wheels on those cars last about 200,000 miles, he said. Amtrak now plans to demand that Bombardier provide a schedule for regular replacement of the brake parts, and then justify the schedule, Mr. Crosbie said.
Amtrak bought the trains with a contract under which the consortium that built them would provide the maintenance for the first few years. The parts are still under warranty, and Mr. Crosbie and Mr. Gunn said they did not know what the replacements would cost. They said they did not know how much business or how many riders Amtrak had lost, nor had they calculated the loss in revenue from riders’ switching to lower-priced, slower trains. Acela Express revenues are about $300 million a year, Mr. Gunn said.