(The following article by Joe Malinconico was circulated by Newhouse News Service on June 29.)
NEWARK, N.J. — NJ Transit has put hundreds of its rail cars through special precautionary inspections during the past week after a wheel fell off a Main Line passenger train that had just finished its final trip of the night.
Train No. 1119 was going less than 10 mph through NJ Transit’s rail yard in Suffern, N.Y., when a wheel came off one of the passenger cars at about 7:30 p.m. June 17, transit officials said.
The train, which remained upright after losing the wheel, had just dropped off its last passengers at nearby Suffern station and no one was injured, officials said. Train No. 1119, which travels from Hoboken through Passaic and Bergen counties, usually carries 400 to 500 passengers, but officials said they were not sure how many people rode it that night.
“They were very fortunate,” said Robert Vallochi, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. “Prior to that, that train was going 70 mph.”
The incident marked the second time in the past year that an overheated wheel came off an NJ Transit train.
The most recent incident involved a different type of rail car and different cause from the one that happened last July, when a Northeast Corridor train en route to Manhattan lost a wheel while carrying 1,200 people. Officials said the last time they could recall a wheel falling off a train had been about 15 years ago.
NJ Transit spokeswoman Lynn Bowersox said the preliminary investigation of the incident indicates it was a “highly unusual occurrence” involving one particular car and did not involve a flaw in the design of the rail equipment that would affect other trains.
Bowersox said investigators believe some undetermined “lateral stress,” or impact on the train, broke the seal on the wheel’s bearings, allowing lubricant to seep out and causing the steel wheel to become so hot that it broke from the axle.
Officials are not yet sure what caused the impact, which may have occurred hours or days before the overheating. For example, the damage could have been done during a “hard coupling” when the car was connected to another car on the train.
Last year, officials determined an electrical surge had caused the wheel on the Northeast Corridor train to overheat. The railroad subsequently changed the way it cleans and checks the machinery designed to prevent such power surges.
After the June 17 incident, NJ Transit had its crews take a closer look at the wheels on 550 passenger cars during their routine overnight visual inspections, Bowersox said.
Then, starting June 19, the railroad added a new level of inspections for the wheels on its passenger cars. Crews used special infrared devices to measure the temperatures of the wheels on the cars immediately after they had been in service to get a more reliable test for overheating problems. So far, the wheels on 450 of the cars have undergone the infrared checks, which will be repeated monthly, Bowersox said.
“Obviously, given the history, we take these kinds of mechanical matters very seriously,” Bowersox said. “This is not a safety issue with our fleet, and we’ve taken every precaution possible to make sure that this was an isolated incident.”
NJ Transit is designing heat detectors that would be installed on the tracks to prevent trains with overheated wheels from continuing on their routes.
“I feel pretty confident that they’re doing an adequate job finding the problems and fixing it,” said Vallochi, the head of the engineers union.