(The following story by Caren Halbfinger appeared on The Journal News website on October 12.)
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Metro-North Railroad geared up for battle with the dreaded leaf season yesterday by demonstrating the equipment it will use to try to keep its trains on time and on track despite the slippery problems railroads face when pectin from ground-up leaves sticks to the rails.
On Tuesday night, the railroad rolled out its primary preventive weapon, Water World. Unlike the film dud that shares this name, this diesel locomotive packs a powerful punch. It pulls two 10,000-gallon tanks of water mixed with alkaline soap that it blasts through narrow jets onto the rails at 10,000 pounds per square inch. That’s forceful enough to cut off a person’s hand, said the machinists at the North White Plains maintenance-of-way repair yard.
But the only mayhem intended is doing away with the slimy leaf jam left behind after commuter trains grind up wet leaves on the tracks. From 8 p.m. until 5 a.m., this hulking bright blue freight train rides the three rail lines, noisily blasting away gunk.
The railroad hopes to avoid a sequel to last year’s leaf season fiasco, when 200 M7 rail cars were taken out of service and rush-hour riders were crammed into too few rail cars in late November and most of December. That happened because the trains automatically applied their emergency brakes in response to slip-slide caused by leaf residue, and their steel wheels got flat spots.
The remedy – rounding, or trueing, each wheel – takes trains out of service while each of eight wheels per car is removed and placed on a trueing machine for up to 90 minutes. Last year, the railroad had to lease an extra trueing machine to handle the heavy workload.
The changes were music to the ears of riders who remember standing in vestibules late last fall because there was nowhere to sit or riding on trains that made them late to work.
“If it stops people from getting stuck on the cars, that sounds good,” said Waynett Howe, 22, a telemarketer from White Plains, who was waiting to board a Manhattan-bound train yesterday morning at the city train station. “I hope it works.”
For problem areas, mostly valleys where leaves collect, the railroad will dispatch a truck-mounted rail scrubber. The truck, designed and built by a team of machinists at the North White Plains maintenance-of-way repair yard, sports an extra set of wheels that allow it to ride the rails, as well as a rear-mounted scrubbing assembly. At the flip of a switch, two round steel brushes lower onto a set of parallel rails. Each scrubber is run by a gas-powered engine, about the size of a lawnmower’s.
Last year, the railroad moved the assembly from a train to a truck, making it more nimble because it can be driven on local roads to get from one trouble spot to the next.
Dave Braham, a machinist from Yonkers who helped develop the scrubber, said his co-worker, machinist Ken Perrotti of Poughquag, N.Y., had originated the concept about a dozen years ago and was busy yesterday building a second rail scrubber that would be put into use within about a week.
Like Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North is testing a set of high-pressure sanders, which are attached to the undercarriage of a pair of M7 trains and spray a microjet stream of sand to increase friction and prevent slip-slide. Long Island Rail Road has most of the sanders. Depending on how well they work, the railroads might consider installing them on the rest of the M7 fleet, which could cost Metro-North at least $5.6 million.
But the biggest changes are the ones that can’t be seen. After months of meetings, engineers modified the M7’s software to relax the default safety mode so the brakes won’t automatically be applied under slip-side conditions. That is intended to keep a lot of wheels from flattening and to keep the fleet out of the repair shops.
Metro-North also is enhancing its train tracking computer system to allow for automatic and accurate reporting of slip-side incidents and conditions along the tracks so the railroad can correct it faster, spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said.
Speed restrictions will be imposed on rainy autumn days so that less braking is needed and engineers can apply brakes and avoid wheel lock, which leads to flattening. That means trains will travel 50 mph instead of 75 or 80 mph on some track sections. Despite the speed reduction, there should be fewer and shorter delays, said Dave Schanoes, deputy chief of operations.
“I hope it works,” said Tim McLaughlin, 41, a reporter for Reuters who was also waiting to board a train there. “Generally, they try to do a good job. The trains are very reliable. With the leaves, if you have to pay more to have on-time service, I’m all for it.”