(The following article by Keith Reed was posted on the Boston Globe website on April 28.)
BOSTON — Amtrak’s president and chief executive said yesterday that the makers of the sidelined Acela Express misjudged the life expectancy of the high-speed trains’ brakes.
Amtrak discovered cracks in about 300 of 1,440 brakes in its fleet of 20 Acela trains two weeks ago, forcing the national rail carrier to pull the trains out of service until the summer. Since then, Amtrak chief David Gunn has divided his time between an investigation of what caused those cracks and a fight on Capitol Hill over the embattled rail company’s federal funding.
After a House Appropriations hearing on the Amtrak funding yesterday, a spokesman for Bombardier Inc., one of the companies that built the Acela trains, said that the brakes should have lasted about 1 million miles.
According to the Associated Press, Gunn said the trains have logged about half that since they were put into service in December 2000.
The life expectancy of the rotors ”was less than they had planned and they were caught without a supply,” Gunn told the AP.
An Amtrak spokeswoman yesterday declined to elaborate and said Gunn was traveling and could not be reached for comment.
Amtrak has said that the cracked brakes are covered by a warranty and that it expects them to be replaced without any additional cost. The Acela trains were built by Bombardier of Quebec and Alstom SA, a French company. The brake discs were made by two subcontractors: Knorr Brake Corp. of Westminster, Md., and Wabco Transit of Spartanburg, S.C.
David Slack, a spokesman for Bombardier, said his company’s top priority is getting the Acela trains running.
He said that the face of Acela’s brakes experience the most wear, are routinely serviced at about 500,000 miles, and then replaced after 1 million miles.
Wear and maintenance on that part of the brake was routine, he said, but the cracks occurred in spokes on the brakes, which should never make contact with any other part of the brake and thus should never have cracked or need to be replaced, he said.
”While we do have an issue with the component, it’s perhaps a bit unfair that we should have been able to predict this,” Slack said.
The Acela, Amtrak’s flagship service, is being sidelined for months, partly because Bombardier does not have enough brakes in stock. The company said it keeps about 70 replacement brakes on hand — just enough for routine maintenance.
The House subcommittee yesterday approved a bill that would provide $6 billion for the struggling railroad over the next three years.
The bill would still need to be passed by the full House, and would face scrutiny from the Bush administration, whose budget called for no federal funding for Amtrak in an effort to force privatization of the railroad.