(Newsday posted the following article by Joie Tyrrell on its website on January 22.)
NEW YORK — In the battle against the cold, the Long Island Rail Road has armed its arsenal.
Flaming switch heaters were ignited beneath the tracks to keep them from freezing. LIRR patrols were on the rails at the coldest points of the night looking for breaks. LIRR technicians who temporarily served as “door kickers” knocked ice off the frames around the doors with their feet.
But this battle has been a tough one and the LIRR has had to cancel and combine trains and deal with more than 200 pieces of equipment out because of bad weather over the past week. There have been delays and at least 10 rail breaks. In some cases, train doors became stuck.
“Usually you get these problems in snowstorms with ice and gunk under the cars, but this was just cold weather,” said Gerry Bringmann, vice chair of the LIRR Commuter’s Council, a transit advocacy group. “The last couple of days, there was nothing outstanding that should have caused these problems. I am at a total loss.”
LIRR President James Dermody said the combination of the extreme cold and fine powdery snow “did a job on us.” The railroad had to cancel or combine seven trains as recently as Tuesday evening. However, he said yesterday the railroad’s inventory was at its normal level and trains were running on schedule for the evening rush. Still, over the six-day period starting last Thursday, 244 trains were out of service due to weather-related issues.
And railroad officials said at a meeting earlier this week that 160 of the new electric M-7 cars, the first group delivered over the past year, have to be retrofitted with new trucks because the cars sway in extreme cold. They will be retrofitted with the new trucks, completely under warranty, when they come in for scheduled maintenance. They will remain in service until then. “It will be transparent to the commuter,” he said.
But what hasn’t been are the recent delays. Bringmann said on Monday, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, he was aboard a packed morning rush hour train from Jamaica to Penn Station that was 20 minutes late and that shouldn’t have been that crowded, especially on a holiday when ridership is typically down. He said a number of trains had been canceled or delayed.
“There was standing room only on a day when everyone should have gotten a seat with no problems,” he said.
Dermody said the railroad’s older fleet of electric cars, which have most of their equipment on the outside and under the cars, didn’t fare well. Blowing snow seeped into the motors and door tracks. On the train tracks, rails contracted in the severe cold and, in some cases, cracked.
Despite a high today that could reach into the upper 30s, forecasters are calling for temperatures mostly in the 20s at least until Sunday. Warmer weather could bring a separate set of problems for the railroad.
“When the thaw comes the snow that is encased underneath these trains will melt,” said LIRR spokesman Brian Dolan. “And that thaw could create new problems.”