(The following article by Matthew L. Wald was posted on the New York Times website on April 17.)
WASHINGTON — At least one Acela Express train will be ready to run by Monday morning, an Amtrak spokesman said on Sunday, after mechanics took axles with good brakes from 18 Acela trains and were installing them on two other trains. A brake problem has forced Amtrak to halt all its Acela Express trains since Friday morning.
The railroad was also planning to use conventional, lower-speed equipment to make some of the trips normally made by Acela Express trains, said the spokesman, Clifford Black. To make that possible, Amtrak has canceled some regular midday trains, called Acela Regionals.
“We are filling in a whole lot more than we did on Friday or over the weekend,” Mr. Black said. “At least we are beginning to fill up those hourly slots,” he said, referring to the Acela Express departures.
He advised passengers to look at www.amtrak.com or call (800) USA-RAIL to find out what trains would be running.
On Thursday night, an inspection of one train found cracks in the spokes that connect the disc brakes to the axles; in all, about 300 brakes among the 1,440 in the fleet of 20 trains turned out to have cracks. Amtrak immediately took the trains out of service, creating major disruptions for travelers on Friday. The Acela Express trains make up about 20 percent of the railroad’s seats in the Northeast Corridor, from Washington to Boston, and Amtrak still expects to have limited capacity on Monday.
The railroad has not said exactly what will be required to fix the trains, which are three to five years old. The part that developed cracks was supposed to last for decades.
As of Sunday evening, Amtrak was planning to run one Acela Express train from New York to Washington, leaving at 8 a.m. on Monday. It would then run from Washington to Boston, leaving at 2 p.m. If work on the second train is completed in time, Mr. Black said, it will leave Washington at 7 a.m. and run to Boston, then head south again at 4:20 p.m.
The cracks were discovered before any of the parts broke. If one brake were to fail in service, the train’s stopping distance would not be affected much, rail experts said, because each train has 72 brakes. But any metal pieces that fell on the rails would be a hazard to trains.