(The following story by Michael Dresser appeared on the Baltimore Sun website on July 12.)
BALTIMORE — There are good days and bad days for MARC commuters. Yesterday was just plain awful on the Penn Line as an escalating series of problems combined to delay several trains for hours and to force the cancellation of others.
The miserable morning, triggered by a train breakdown, came as MARC was coping with overheated tracks, brush fires, mechanical problems and all the other things that can go wrong when you’re running a railroad.
Some Washington-bound commuters arrived at Union Station as much as two hours late as a result of multiple system failures. About 1,500 MARC and Amtrak passengers were affected, said Maryland Transit Administration spokeswoman Cheron V. Wicker.
Commuter Anne Howard’s train was one of those stuck behind an earlier MARC train that broke down. It was, she said, “incredibly frustrating.” And, according to MARC rider Deborah Funk, “not uncommon” on the Penn Line, which runs from Perryville to Washington via Baltimore on Amtrak-owned tracks.
“This happened in May. It happened in June,” Funk said. “I don’t understand why they can’t keep their motors running.”
MARC officials said that while such breakdowns are not routine, they also are not unprecedented.
“There’s a domino effect,” said Frank Fulton, the MTA’s deputy director for MARC.
Yesterday’s domino game started about 8:42 a.m. near BWI Airport – MARC officials said north of the airport, but Funk, who boards the southbound Penn Line at the BWI station, insists it was south. MARC train No. 417, which normally departs Baltimore at 8:10 a.m. but was running about 20 minutes late, ground to a halt on the tracks because of a malfunction in the “overspeed penalty,” said Dave Ricker, MARC’s acting chief transportation officer.
The overspeed penalty, he explained, is a protective system designed to shut down the engine if the train is going too fast – for instance if the engineer became incapacitated.
In this case, the overspeed penalty acted like a burglar alarm set off by a gust of wind – and stopped the train.
It was, said Ricker, “a less than satisfactory result.”
Roughly 45 minutes later, MARC train No. 419, which departs Penn Station at 9:05 a.m., came up behind the stalled train. According to Ricker, MARC workers tried to couple the two trains so No. 419 could push the stalled No. 417 into Union Station.
Only it didn’t work. The couplings proved incompatible.
Then salvation appeared on a parallel track in the form of Amtrak train No. 183. As many MARC passengers as would fit were transferred onto the Washington-bound train, which also stalled.
Ricker said the Amtrak engine apparently had some sort of overspeed penalty problem, too. So when Amtrak train No. 51 and MARC train No. 521 came up behind the woebegone No. 183, they too were stuck.
Aboard train 419, frustration was building, said Funk, who works in government relations for a health care company.
“You could hear passengers calling in on their phones and saying, ‘I can’t make this meeting,'” she said. The South Baltimore resident said she managed to get some work done on her Blackberry.
It wasn’t until 10:40 a.m. – nearly an hour later – that Amtrak officials got No. 183 moving, freeing Amtrak No. 51 and MARC No. 521 to ferry the remaining MARC riders to their destination. The unfortunate souls that had been on the first MARC train, due in Union Station at 9:10 a.m., arrived more than two hours late.
Meanwhile, MARC had to cancel northbound train No. 416 and delay No. 418 because their crews were stuck on the stalled southbound trains.
There was a bright spot, according to MARC. The air conditioning on the stranded trains continued to function.
As the problems snowballed, MARC sent out emails to riders alerting them to the delays.
Not that it did them much good.
“The electronic notifications I have received have been few and far between and they arrive hours late,” Funk said.
Fulton said MARC’s e-mail system “has not been dependable” and would be replaced by the end of August.
“We’ve gone through three software programs and they’ve all been insufficient,” he said.
But an occasional bad day or balky e-mail system is unlikely to cost MARC much of its steadily growing ridership.
“It’s still better than driving,” said Funk. “What does that say about our roads?”