WASHINGTON, D.C. — Amtrak yesterday abruptly removed all of its high-speed Acela trains from service after discovering cracks and breaks in a bracket on the wheel sets of at least eight of the 18 trains. Officials feared the heavy metal pieces could break loose and either fall under the train and cause a derailment or hit other trains and objects along the right of way, the Washington Post reports.
Most of the Acelas will be out of service at least through the rest of the week, and possibly longer, officials said. This is a $1 million-a-day blow to Amtrak just as the passenger train corporation began converting large numbers of airline passengers into train passengers between Washington, New York and Boston.
Bombardier Transportation of North America, which makes the Acela, told Amtrak officials yesterday that a permanent fix will not be ready before the end of August, but it is flying a newly milled temporary part from Montreal today for testing by Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).
Amtrak officials said the results of those tests will determine when the trains can return to the rails.
Amtrak canceled the Acela runs this morning, causing confusion and crowding aboard trains along the East Coast, where the Acela usually runs 16 round trips a day between Washington and New York. Amtrak transferred Acela passengers to its slower regular trains, setting up hourly service that takes about 30 minutes more to travel between Washington and New York, and an extra 45 minutes between New York and Boston.
There were initial reports of crowding on many trains. One train was reported to have more than 200 people standing as they left Philadelphia for New York.
As of late yesterday afternoon, officials said two Acela train sets were found without bracket damage and would be ready for operation today. One will make a Boston-Washington round trip, leaving Boston at 6:15 a.m. and returning from Washington at 4 p.m. The other will do a New York-Washington round trip, leaving New York at 8 a.m. and returning from Washington at 6 p.m. They will not be placed under any special speed restrictions. The trains will also undergo thorough safety inspections after each run.
Amtrak President David L. Gunn met with William Spurr, president of Bombardier of North America, yesterday afternoon to discuss a redesign of the bracket, which attaches a large shock absorber called a “yaw damper” to the locomotive body.
“From an engineering point of view, this is very complicated,” Gunn said.
Amtrak Chief Operating Officer Stan Bagley said that under the best of circumstances the train could be running next week, but he said there were no guarantees. He said the temporary replacement part being sent from Montreal is basically the same stainless steel bracket as before, just one-tenth of an inch thicker.
“Possibly, with good karma, we could be back to full service by Monday,” he said.
But Bagley said he expects the FRA to require more extensive testing, which would take longer, a plan he said he would consider “really reasonable” as a safety precaution. Even if the temporary part is approved, he said, every train would receive a thorough “teardown inspection” after each run.
Bombardier spokeswoman Carol Sharpe said the company is “sparing no effort to cooperate with Amtrak” to get the trains back into service. She said a “dedicated team of experts” is working with Amtrak to find the root cause of the problem and to fix it as quickly as possible.
The damaged brackets are just the latest in a series of long-standing problems with the popular trains, which are capable of running at 150 mph but are held to 135 mph over most of the Washington-Boston route because of an antiquated electric traction system or other physical characteristics. All 18 train sets accepted so far by Amtrak already are scheduled for up to 200 upgrades, including fixes to the braking system and to restroom doors that stick.
The new defect is far more serious because, unlike the other problems, the cracking bracket takes the trains out of service just as their popularity is gaining ground against that of air service. Until yesterday, Amtrak carried more passengers between Washington and New York than all airlines, including the two air shuttles.
Bagley said the corporation is considering its options on keeping some form of higher-speed service running, using the Acela train sets that are found to have no damage and the remaining Metroliner train sets. Bagley estimated that four to six Acela train sets might be found to be acceptable for service although the bracket mechanism would require a complete “teardown inspection” after every trip.
The yaw dampers, or shock absorbers, are intended to prevent the train from rocking horizontally at high speeds. The train can run without a yaw damper, but the main worry is that the more than 200 pounds of steel involved would crack off.
“There’s a lot of steel there,” Gunn said. “It would not be good. It could cause a derailment, but it could also hit something else.”
The defect was discovered on one of the train sets during a routine inspection at the Boston maintenance facility Monday afternoon. Officials ordered all 18 train sets inspected as soon as possible. During the afternoon, as a precaution, Amtrak slowed all Acela trains to 80 mph, from their normal speeds of up to 150 mph.
Bagley said that of the first 10 train sets inspected, only two were found to have no bracket damage. Five were found to have cracking around bolt holes, an indication that failure could come at any time. Three train sets were found to have brackets cracked along a weld line that was hidden from view up under the locomotive body.
There are two stainless steel brackets at each yaw damper, fitted to the locomotive body much like a sandwich. In each case where a bracket had failed, the mating bracket was still in place.
At 11:40 p.m. Monday night, Bagley said he decided to withdraw all Acelas from service at least for Tuesday.
Bagley said that all Acelas found with damage will remain out of service rather than be repaired immediately using the current brackets. For those train sets, “that’s it until Bombardier submits a new design” or an acceptable replacement part is approved.
Metroliner cars can fill in for some of the 16 daily Acela runs between New York and Washington, but not all. Bagley said that prior to Acela’s arrival, Amtrak required 10 Metroliner train sets to operate hourly New York-Washington service, but three of those train sets have been sent to Maine to run the Boston-Portland Downeaster service, which has proved so popular it needs new equipment, and one is used on the New York-Montreal Adirondack.
In addition, the Metroliner did not run north of New York to Boston, where there are now nine Acela Express round trips.