2/8 - 2/9 Nor'easter

UPDATE: Amtrak to Restore Limited New York - Boston Service on Sunday, Feb. 10
Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013 11:15 a.m. ET
On Sunday, Feb. 10, Amtrak will restore limited service between New York and Boston. In addition, Empire Service (New York - Albany) will operate a normal Sunday schedule.
The Downeaster service (Brunswick, Maine - Boston) has resumed service with some modifications.
All Springfield Shuttle service (New Haven, Conn. - Springfield, Mass.) remains canceled.
Amtrak crews continue to clear track of deep snow, remove downed trees and make necessary repairs to restore full train service in the Northeast following the severe winter storm.

This seems to be the 1st train out of Boston, it is not yet reported at Bridgeport, Conn.:

135 Northeast Regional
From New Haven, CT (NHV) 4:11 pm Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:00 pm Departed: 49 minutes late.

Here is modern transit agency thinking, especially the last paragraph, as reported on http://alert.mta.info/status/3:

Service remains suspended between Stamford and New Haven as well as on the Branch Lines. Since many roads remain closed in the New Haven area, many train crews are having difficulty reporting to New Haven yard in order to operate train service. With parts of the line still buried under four feet of snow, there is also limited track and yard availability.
Metro-North employees continue to conduct aggressive snow clearing operations with the goal of resuming train service as soon as possible. Crews continue working to remove deep snow from yards in New Haven and Bridgeport and to clear the track switches that allow trains to change from one track to another. At this moment, about 45 Maintenance of Way workers from NYC Transit are on board a diesel train to Bridgeport and New Haven Yards to assist in the clean up effort.
There are two jet engine snow blowers at work and CDOT has sent two front end loaders and several triple axle trucks to remove snow from the yards. In addition, deep snow has to be removed manually from the roof of each train car so that the pantographs can go up and down. The pantographs are the mechanical arms that capture electricity from the overhead wires.
People may notice that Metro-North Railroad will be running empty trains up and down the line this afternoon and evening to loosen the wires and pantographs and test the switches. These trains cannot carry passengers because of the uncertainty of conditions along the right of way and we do not want to strand any customers. These test trains will help the railroad assess the conditions and better plan tomorrow's service.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:I'm of course aware, having grown up in the region, of the New Haven's advertisements proclaiming "Center to Center All-Weather Service" and the Lackawanna's "Your trip is Weatherproof....". But referring to the linked video, that was a day of when it was "the railroad did their best to keep us safe"; late-night TV and billboard lawyers sinply "weren't".

I can't speak to AMTRAK's policies, but I distinctly recall the day when Metro-North changed their policy (though I don't recall the year.)

When I first moved to MNCR territory, Metro-North, with a can-do attitude commensurate with its status as the best commuter railroad in the USA, had a policy of continuing its service, come rain, snow, flood, whatever: as long as it was possible to actually run trains, they did.

Then there was what ended up being a >10" snowfall of very fine snow. Metro-North soldiered on and kept running its trains. Well, a number of them got stuck for several hours, lots of trains got cancelled, people were stranded in various places due to lack of trains, and people were up in arms. For the next few months, the MNCR management got hell from the press and from the New York State politicians (who, keep in mind, are MNCR's bosses), and they ended up having to give free tickets to a whole class of commuters (mail-and-ride, I think -- unfortunately, I wasn't one of those.)

Also, the very find snow got into the electrical equipment on the EMUs and shorted them out, and it took several months -- and a lot of money -- before they all got repaired.

A few months later, MNCR issued its present bad weather policy.

(I always thought it was kind of unfair. LIRR shut down almost from the beginning of the storm and got no flak at all. I wasn't able to figure out whether it was because no one was stranded, or because people's expectations of LIRR were already so low.)

IMHO, the moral of the story is that people will be less upset at a shutdown or cancellation of service, if given with reasonable notice, than with suddenly finding themselves stranded somewhere, either on a train or in a station. Especially when the railroad has been given plenty of notice of severe weather.

I was originally booked on the 9:08 northbound (#132) out of New Haven tonight. I called Amtrak at noon and they switched me onto the 6:38 (#194). Amazingly, I was not charged more despite the listed price being $98 versus the $43 I'd originally spent.

#194 operated with a single toaster and 9 cars. There was a set at South Station - probably one of the earlier trains - with 2 toasters and about as many cars.

We were within 5 minutes of on time the whole trip, which was impressive.

amm in ny wrote:(I always thought it was kind of unfair. LIRR shut down almost from the beginning of the storm and got no flak at all. I wasn't able to figure out whether it was because no one was stranded, or because people's expectations of LIRR were already so low.)

I'm not sure if your talking about this storm or not, but this time around the LIRR operated straight through. They operated a real solid PM rush and worked fully through the night. Around Satruday morning things started getting stuck so they pulled the plug on the minor branches and switched to running just on the Babylon/Port Jefferson/Port Washington/Ronknonkoma branches. Thins morning they brought back everything except east of Babylon and east of Huntington. Tomorrow everything except a couple of rush hour trains and some territory in eastern Suffolk is back running normally.

I must say all of us in LIRR land must tip our hats to the LIRR for the fine job.

scoostraw wrote:Besides bringing in rotary plows from out west, what exactly do the NE railroads have to deal with that kind of snow?

ThirdRail7 wrote:Typically, rotary plows don't play well with catenary.

Do any of the rotary snow plows that the Milwaukee Road and the Great Northern Rwy. used still exist? Or is today's problem that proper snow fighting machinery is old fashioned? Even though they didn't play well with the catenary, they still cleared the line, and the Great Northern's was 11,000 Volts, 25 cycles! The Milwaukee released publicity photos showing their rotary working in snow almost as high as their catenary, although the photos didn't show what kind of locomotive was pushing it.
In recent years, Metro North got burned because some of the traction motors under ConnDoT M.U. cars don't play well with ingested snow.

Wet,HEAVY snow can be a pain to deal with a snow blower or Rotary plow,tends to clog up the works,and require
the plow operators to stop and remove the clogs safely.
The DRY power snow finds ways around filters,baffels and screens and then shorts out traction motors and relays
Even GG-1's had fits with the powder snow.
Round two of snow ,frozen rain,etc will hit shortly,this will get interesting.

The institutional memory is a bit longer at the MTA than railroad.net. This is not surprising.

Zanperk wrote:The institutional memory is a bit longer at the MTA than railroad.net. This is not surprising.

I remember that, and that story has changed the mentality at MTA NYC Transit (which is separate from Metro North). It's stories like this that caused, IMO, the shutdown during Sandy.

Back on topic, did Amtrak have any damaged infrastructure from the storm? Also, does Amtrak own any snow removal equipment for their tracks?

Amm in NY has it:

For the next few months, the MNCR management got hell from the press and from the New York State politicians

In this day of multiple 24-hour news outlets, Twitter, Facebook, etc... You get the irate passenger situation that, if given a serious enough situation, will eat the management alive. Recall the trains stuck last summer on NEC with no A/C for hours. We never heard the end of indignant posts here, and the news outlets weren't much better.

The bottom line is:

What do you want? Service through all weather with the possibility that thousands of passengers may be stranded on-line where they can cause a PR firestorm, or proactive cancellations where people are heavily inconvenienced but there's no Donner-style emergencies on the railroad?

Me, I'm adventurous and I'm also not a dolt, so I'd take the chance. But I know I can't then lambast railroad management if my train gets stuck for a few hours.

Tadman wrote:Amm in NY has it:

For the next few months, the MNCR management got hell from the press and from the New York State politicians

In this day of multiple 24-hour news outlets, Twitter, Facebook, etc... You get the irate passenger situation that, if given a serious enough situation, will eat the management alive. Recall the trains stuck last summer on NEC with no A/C for hours. We never heard the end of indignant posts here, and the news outlets weren't much better.

The bottom line is:

What do you want? Service through all weather with the possibility that thousands of passengers may be stranded on-line where they can cause a PR firestorm, or proactive cancellations where people are heavily inconvenienced but there's no Donner-style emergencies on the railroad?

Me, I'm adventurous and I'm also not a dolt, so I'd take the chance. But I know I can't then lambast railroad management if my train gets stuck for a few hours.

Years ago, you could strand people on a train during a weather emergency for hours. When they emerged, they basically THANKED YOU for the delay. They had the attitude "well, I knew the weather was rough. This is what happens when you travel in a blizzard, hurricane, etc." They thanked you for the effort even if things went south. It was kind of like that scene from Airplane: They bought their ticket, they knew what they were getting into!

That sort of understanding has fallen by the wayside.

Ridgefielder wrote:Two, and specific to this storm: the governors of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts declared states of emergency and closed the roads to all but emergency traffic. Mass went so far as to threaten people disregarding the order with up to *a year* in prison. Even if the train went through, what were the passengers going to do when they got to their station? Are all the stations east of New Haven still even manned 24/7, or are you facing the possibility of (admittedly less-than-intelligent) people de-training and being left without shelter on a bare platform when its 25 degrees and there's a 40kt wind blowing?

I seldom rely on a private car to get to/from any train station, and in snow like this, one does have to plan that taxis and buses may not run either and gauge whether the trip still makes sense. Most of mine pass that test. In this case, I was in Boston less than a mile from South Station, and 0.3mi on the other end from home. While this snowstorm didn't affect my trip, I'm used to telling people that something like snow is mot going to prevent Amtrak from running, at least not with the totals we were expecting. While Boston got hit worse this time, I don't know that the NEC overall got hit any worse than it did when a snowstorm happened during this same annual trip for me in 2006. I believe it was also early February, maybe the 12th. My Acela ran from Boston to NY even though you couldn't see the other tracks out the window and could only see ruts where the railhead was on Track 1. No, my trip was not essential (beyond not getting stuck with a hotel bill and maybe needing to take time off from work if it were open), but it seems like used to be able to rely on rail, and it's taking some getting used to how little seems to cancel it anymore for days on end.

JimBoylan wrote:

UPDATE: Amtrak to Restore Limited New York - Boston Service on Sunday, Feb. 10
Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013 11:15 a.m. ET
On Sunday, Feb. 10, Amtrak will restore limited service between New York and Boston. In addition, Empire Service (New York - Albany) will operate a normal Sunday schedule.
The Downeaster service (Brunswick, Maine - Boston) has resumed service with some modifications.
All Springfield Shuttle service (New Haven, Conn. - Springfield, Mass.) remains canceled.
Amtrak crews continue to clear track of deep snow, remove downed trees and make necessary repairs to restore full train service in the Northeast following the severe winter storm.

This seems to be the 1st train out of Boston, it is not yet reported at Bridgeport, Conn.:

135 Northeast Regional
From New Haven, CT (NHV) 4:11 pm Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:00 pm Departed: 49 minutes late.

I was on it. We got held up a bunch of times. I suspect the largest chunk of that was waiting for the open Thames River bridge to close again (barge). We also had another delay before another bridge. The announcement was too soft but it sounded like they were concerned about the condition of the bridge and were taking some sort of special precaution and inspection for each train. Apart from that, if anything was going to happen timewise along the trip, we were going to lose it. So it lost a few mins here and there along the way. Allegedly out of Boston there was a plow train somewhere ahead, though it didn't seem to obviously slow us.

We were an hour and 5 late when I disembarked at Newark, but hey, I got there.

Just thought this needed to be said based on some comments i've read here...

Remember, amtrak does not operate in a vacuum. Local connection services, taxis, busses, rapid transit etc need to be up and running too.

MBTA, MTA and CDOT all suspended service, and the state of massachusetts closed all the roads the day before the storm, CT and RI followed suit soon after. Who exactly is going to be running the trains, radio rooms, moveable bridges etc if the roads are closed, and who is going to be riding these trains?

After you have to re-position equipments and assets and inspect the physical plant and wait for those local services to start operating and the roads to re-open. All of this plus the daunting task of clearing the lines of snow and running test trains and getting all the facilities back up and fully staffed...

People act like trains are being held with engineers in the locos for the storm to pass. It's ridiculous.