Service suspended between STM and GCT

Con-Ed over time bought and took over power generation from the RR's as the RR's figured out the cost of operating the power plants
hurt the bottom line of profit $$$. Con Ed is the sole supplier to NYCTA's subway power to boot.
Most of the substation feeders come from the "Hi-Tension" switching stations scattered around the city.

The Orignal New Haven electrication pre-dates the PRR NEC Electfication by a few years,PRR may have used
"lessions learned" from what NH did when building their's to "Goof Proof" the PRR network to a point.

FYI: There's a point when too many redundent systems tend to "plug the drain" when trying to restore power
from a massive failure.

Lets hope this "meatball" fix from Con Ed works,limited is better than nothing!

From the WTNH article:

"They don't know what they're doing, and they're communicating that they don't know what they're doing," said commuter Patrick Hicks.

On Thursday, Malloy said he met with officials from Con Ed and Metro-North and quote was "Pushing them pretty hard."

Why doesn't he demand more Maxi's out of MN? Of course this is the guy who one time answered an open-ended question I asked about improvements to rail transportation in CT by stating that Amtrak owns the NHL, so it might be a stretch for him to figure out the difference between an electric and a diesel...

The State will push back at Con Ed the next time a rate hike request is on the docket in Albany,
wonder when Gov Cuomo will chime in?

CTRailfan wrote:

RearOfSignal wrote:

CTRailfan wrote:That's basically true. The idea that they get scheduled out elsewhere isn't a valid point though, as they could divert equipment when necessary, like they should be doing now with the Maxi sets.

What would help them is more coaches, and maybe some more used P40's or something similar, as they could fill in on the upper Harlem, upper Hudson, Danbury, Waterbury, NHHS, or SLE, and free up the P32's to GCT. That way, they would be multi-purpose, and not one very specific type of equipment.

Even if P40s could be used as shuttles to the upper Hudson and Harlem, MNR doesn't have enough electrics to supplement that kind of service. Believe me first thing this morning I came and spoke to yardmaster and trainmaster and they were scrambling all night to get trains in place to cover the diesels that they DID move. So for some to say that MNR is being complacent is completely false. But MNR is not going to cripple the entire railroad because of a problem with one of its lines.

And whoever thinks that the upper Hudson trains aren't crowded, is sorely mistaken. You can not replace an upper Hudson maxi bomb train with a mini bomb or even combine trains and not have the same level of overcrowding that the NHL is currently experiencing.

In this case, the M-8's could have been moved over to the Hudson and Harlem to fill up the Maxis' slots. Also, there is no way that 50-60% capacity north of the electrification would cause anywhere near the level of problems that the New Haven Line is having due to running a small fraction of their normal service. The response has been an abysmal failure of operations management, even given the situation in the first place, and what equipment they actually have.

M8s can't cover Maxi slots, M8s can only run under wire or third rail.

Regarding Amtrak's P32's, they are in high demand. Always in use. There are 17 on Amtrak and one is still OOS. Of those, 2 are in sunnyside for 63 & 69 in the morning and a third is the protect engine in penn. Half of the rest will be on Empire Service trains before lunch time and the rest will be working those trains in the afternoon. They are too important for the Hudson line. There is no way Amtrak could send them over to MN and still keep all their Empire Service trains running.

I agree with Pumpers
Hcobin has the best post
Instead of all this speculation I would rather learn
how the problem is going to be solved
it is easy to be a Monday morning Quarterback and
speculate and make suggestions
but it is hard to get the job done for real
Thanks Hcobin for good informational post
and Thanks Pumpers for recognizing it and giving credit

lirr42 wrote:I would imagine supplying Metro-North's substation would be just like supplying any other Con Edison substation. There's got to be a power plant someplace, and they don't just string a wire to your home, it goes to some sort of utility substation first as well, and I'd imagine power to the MN substation is just like delivering power to any old substation (and Con Ed's backup stuff is there to step in when Con Ed has to do work on their normal substations as well)

Yes but I'm not asking how they get power to MNR's substation -- I've been in the substations and seen the power feed from Con Ed -- I'm asking how they get power to the temporary substation they're setting up in Harrison. Obviously it comes from a power plant via a grid.

What I was asking was, how do they get power to the temporary substation? Con Ed does have 138Kv transmission lines in Westchester. But those lines go to Con Ed substations where the power is stepped down to 13 Kv for distribution to area transformers. (Those are usually what 'blow' when we have a serious storm.) The transformers distribute the power to the low voltage grid (which houses and office buildings etc. are hooked into).

The photos Hcobin was kind enough to post show Con Ed crews hooking up directly to the catenary distribution cables. He also said a Con Ed spokesman said the transformer shown needs to step-down then step-up power to go from 13 kv to 27 kv. So they're going to be feeding 27 Kv power into the NH Line power grid.

There's also new information coming out as to how exactly the failure occurred. Before taking one of two main feeder lines out of service, Metro-North reportedly ran extra trains through the affected section to test if the single feeder cable could carry the load.

During the summer tests, the railroad ran a higher than normal number of trains through the area on the 36 year-old feeder cable to see if it could bear the additional load, MNR spokesperson Majorie Anders said. The normal design life of the feeder cable is 30 years, she said.

However the power failure may've been a result of that lone cable failing after all.

Though it may take officials weeks to determine the cause, it appears the 138,000 volt line that was left to bear the burden of energizing trains along an eight-mile stretch of track in Westchester County, N.Y. from Pelham to Rye became overwhelmed and superheated.

Here's a link to a Stamford Advocate news story.

Also interesting is, a Con Edison spokesman said the utility had yet to examine the cable because it's still superheated. Con Ed is using liquid nitrogen to cool it so it can be inspected.

RearOfSignal wrote:M8s can't cover Maxi slots, M8s can only run under wire or third rail.

That you captain obvious. They could cover the Maxi slots GCT-Croton and GCT-Southeast, and put together regular diesel trains north of those points with somewhat reduced capacity.

Does anyone know why they can't pull power from anywhere on the line through the 138kV overhead system that used to distribute power from Cos Cob?

CTRailfan wrote: Does anyone know why they can't pull power from anywhere on the line through the 138kV overhead system that used to distribute power from Cos Cob?

That's going pretty far back. Because it's not there anymore would be my guess.

This also relates to why I was curious about how they were going to feed the temporary substation at Harrison. I misunderstood, I thought they were going to be feeding in 138Kv. I don't think Westchester County will let them casually do that. If Con Ed wants to run temporary feeder cables they probably have to get permission.

But in rereading hcobin's earlier message I saw that they're going to be feeding 13Kv power. That's what they use to supply neighborhood transformers so that is something Con Ed can probably do routinely. (Edited to add - They still might have to get permission from Harrison and/or Westchester County.)

Even if they could re-use the Cos Cob feeders they'd have to be very careful. These are extremely high voltages we're talking about. And as I mentioned, Con Ed is a regulated utility.

Mr. Meehan, I don't think getting permission from any sort of municipality will be an issue. Would you like to be the elected official that is holding up the commutes of hundreds of thousands of New Haven Line riders!?

Tommy Meehan wrote:

CTRailfan wrote:

RearOfSignal wrote: ....
Does anyone know why they can't pull power from anywhere on the line through the 138kV overhead system that used to distribute power from Cos Cob?

That's going pretty far back. Because it's not there anymore would be my guess.

This also relates to why I was curious about how they were going to feed the temporary substation at Harrison. I misunderstood, I thought they were going to be feeding in 138Kv. I don't think Westchester County will let them casually do that. If Con Ed wants to run temporary feeder cables they probably have to get permission.

But in rereading hcobin's earlier message I saw that they're going to be feeding 13Kv power. That's what they use to supply neighborhood transformers so that is something Con Ed can probably do routinely. (Edited to add - They still might have to get permission from Harrison and/or Westchester County.)

Even if they could re-use the Cos Cob feeders they'd have to be very careful. These are extremely high voltages we're talking about. And as I mentioned, Con Ed is a regulated utility.

I'm no expert at this except when I land on power company square in Monopoly, but from my understanding based on comments from friends who work alongside ConEd in these matters, ConEd has been known to be reckless in some of its endeavors in situations like these. Often sub-contracting out work like this(probably not so high profile in this case) to other companies to clean up their own mess. Would we really trust ConEd to be experimenting with such large sums of power when someone gets an idea and says "Hey let's I've got an idea, let's try this!" when they got us into this predicament in the first place. I imagine a five year knocking over a vase at home saying: "Mommy, mommy I can fix it, I can fix it." At this point ConEd is probably working under an abundance of caution, after several face palms from people up top with shiny hard hats.

CTRailfan wrote:

RearOfSignal wrote:M8s can't cover Maxi slots, M8s can only run under wire or third rail.

That you captain obvious. They could cover the Maxi slots GCT-Croton and GCT-Southeast, and put together regular diesel trains north of those points with somewhat reduced capacity.

I see then that my point was missed, as it wouldn't make sense to cover 100% capacity of a train with electrics over a point where no stops are made, just to have people cram on a mini bomb or whatever else is imagined for the rest of the ride.

Tommy, Im sorry.. With the way the media has been screwing things up as of recent, I take everything thry say with a grain of salt, Im with Dutch on this one.

Clean Cab wrote:Con Ed is going to try to back feed the 13,000 VAC from Harrison Station. If this is successful it could mean some electric trains could resume operating. But there would not be enough juice to allow for a normal number of trains. And even the ones that do operate would have to use no more than 50% power consumption while operating in the affected section. I guess its better than nothing.

As of the 11:00 news on WCBS ch. 2 last night there was NO mention of this being done. perhaps they are being guaudedly quiet about it?