(The following article by Rudy Larini was posted on the Newark Star-Ledger website on June 9.)
NEWARK, N.J. — Amtrak has placed emergency equipment and a rescue crew at train tunnels and taken other steps to avoid stranding commuters for hours following the massive outage that shut down traffic along the Northeast Corridor line last month.
The head of the national rail road agency also said it “took much too long” to remove two trains from a tunnel under the Hudson River during the May 25 outage.
David J. Hughes, Amtrak’s act ing president and chief operating officer, said in a letter to NJ Transit that the extensive outage was un related to two lesser power failures that caused delays on consecutive days a week later.
“While the exact cause of each interruption has yet to be determined, we know that each was different in origin,” Hughes said in his letter sent Wednesday to George Warrington, NJ Transit’s executive director.
Amtrak spokesman William Schultz said a final report on the power failures could be ready in about three weeks.
“We’ve been very careful to say that the exact causes have yet to be determined,” he said. “But there was no connection between the three incidents.”
Lynn Bowersox, an NJ Transit assistant executive director, said the agency was satisfied with Am trak’s findings and efforts to prevent a recurrence of the May 25 incident.
“It’s clear that Amtrak is taking this incident very seriously and is determined to get to the bottom of the cause of the outage,” she said.
The massive May 25 outage stopped trains along the Northeast Corridor, stranding thousands of commuters.
Three NJ Transit trains were stalled in the tunnel under the Hudson River. The evacuation of one train “went smoothly,” Hughes said in the letter, but there were problems trying to rescue the other two.
“Although passengers were in no immediate danger, we have all since agreed that the removal of the other two NJT trains took much too long,” Hughes said, citing “incompatible coupling knuckles” that connect trains to rescue loco motives.
He said Amtrak has now placed the proper knuckles at the entrance to the tunnel, while a dual- mode locomotive with crew has been stationed at Penn Station to be able to go into the tunnel under third-rail power to couple up and tow out a stranded train. He said Amtrak also has adjusted its operating procedure to prohibit trains from entering the tunnels if a low voltage condition is occurring.
Hughes blamed the May 25 outage, which Amtrak initially described as an “unprecedented,” cascading loss of power, on “a load- sharing failure” of power stations and substations between Chester, Pa., and Philadelphia.
He said Amtrak is continuing to review data from its electric utility suppliers and also is awaiting a report on the outage from the North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry-sponsored power watchdog based in Princeton.
In the meantime, Hughes said the Philadelphia power station where the succession of failures began is being staffed 24 hours a day “to ensure the reliability of that facility.”
“While we all regret the disrup tion caused by the May 25 event,” Hughes wrote, “I do want to make sure you know how hard our engineering and transportation person nel worked to get power restarted and to provide regular updates to passengers. A total system shutdown is a rare event (the last time this occurred was 23 years ago) and bringing a system of our size and complexity back on line within three hours is remarkable. Much will be learned from this occur rence, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the professionalism and expertise of our electrical engineering staff prevented this from becoming a much larger problem and ordeal for our passengers.”
Hughes said delays a week later, on June 2, occurred when an afternoon thunderstorm tripped equip ment at the Philadelphia station that converts the current to drive the trains.
“We are further analyzing data to determine why the disturbance caused the frequency converters to trip,” he said in the letter.
Another power outage a day later was caused when a power transmission line was damaged by a falling tree during a storm. Hughes said Amtrak continues to analyze computer data “to determine what went wrong and what adjustments need to be made.”