(The following article by Keith Reed was posted on the Boston Globe website on May 6.)
BOSTON — The maker of Amtrak’s Acela Express trains is considering a new type of brake disc to replace the ones that cracked last month, forcing all 20 trains out of service.
Bombardier Inc. is examining whether a new disc design could be produced, tested, and approved by regulators more quickly than waiting for replacements for the old ones, said Helene Gagnon, a spokeswoman for the company. Her comments revealed new details about the process Amtrak and Acela’s manufacturers are undertaking as they scramble to figure out what went wrong with the flagship train’s brakes, how to fix them, and the quickest way to restore the only high-speed rail service in the United States.
That process includes several companies and government agencies on two continents. Montreal-based Bombardier is coordinating efforts to determine what caused the brakes to crack and to find the best solution. Among the possibilities is waiting for replacement discs identical to the cracked ones, or even ordering new ones of a different design Gagnon said.
”We’re not just waiting for the root cause analysis,” she said. ”To put the trains back in service, we’re looking for alternatives.”
Amtrak and Bombardier have said they want to have Acela running again by summer, when Bombardier is expected to get a shipment of replacement brakes for the trains. About 300 of the 1,440 brake discs on Acela trains were found to have cracks in their spokes after inspections last month.
A shipment is expected in June, Gagnon said, though she did not know whether it will include enough discs to replace all the cracked ones.
Bombardier also could get a shipment of the newer discs it is considering by then, provided it can reach agreement with both Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration on technical specifications and a testing regimen, Gagnon said.
Amtrak is evaluating several options for putting Acela back into service, including additional disc designs, said Marc Magliari, a spokesman.
In the meantime, the investigation into what caused the cracks is continuing.
Knorr Brake Corp., a subcontractor that supplied Bombardier with Acela’s brake systems, is conducting tests in Germany on the cracked discs so its engineers can draft their own theories about why the millimeter-sized cracks developed, Gagnon said.
The engineers are focusing their attention on the design and manufacturing process used to produce the brakes and whether anything in those two processes may have caused the cracks.
A spokeswoman in Knorr’s Westminster, Md., office declined comment. Officials in the Munich headquarters of Knorr-Bremse AG, Knorr’s parent company, could not be reached.
Whatever caused the brake problem, it could foreshadow more financial difficulties for cash-strapped Amtrak.
Standard & Poor’s, the New York bond rating agency, downgraded Amtrak to a ”BBB” rating, a designation given to companies facing financial or other troubles that might prevent them from paying back debt obligations.
A lower rating from S&P could hamper Amtrak’s ability to borrow funds.
A House subcommittee approved a three-year, $6 billion funding proposal for Amtrak last month, but that bill still faces approval by the full House and in the Senate.