Problems on the R8 CHW

My wife told me that an annoucement was made along the R8 this morning that there was some sort of a "bridge problem" and all R8 trains were cancelled until further notice. I rode an earlier train so I was unaffected, but that means that the problem must have happened sometime between 7:47 and 8:30. SEPTA.org, naturally, said nothing about this situation, and a call to SEPTA's customer service a few minutes ago only led to my discovering that (1) the R8 is fine now and (2) the customer service rep has no idea what was wrong.

So naturally I now turn to the one place I expect to know more about SEPTA's dealings than SEPTA itself -- the railroad.net forums. Ladies & gentlemen, for a chance to prove SEPTA incompetent once again, who can answer this question: "What was wrong with the R8 Chestnut Hill West this morning?"

Just an idea here...The Queen Ln bridge over the CHW washed out in that flooding from the fall (my boss at Penndot was involved in repairing it). Maybe it had something to with that? He told me that he thought SEPTA's part of the repair was inadequate to prevent it from happening again.

the problem was, apparently, an Amtrak switch somewhere in the North Philadelphia interlocking that failed to respond. I didn't find out if it was inboud or outbound tracks that were affected.

Mine was one of the trains annuled and so I took the R7 instead. It is nice to have optioins, but I did get to work late.

To Amtraks credit, they fixed the problem and service was fairly quickly restored. I don't know how many trains were annuled.

Interesting! There was an incident in August (note thread at http://64.78.30.219/forums/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=) where outbound R8 trains were stopping at Amtrak's North Philly station because the switch wasn't throwing (and the passengers would there transfer to a train on the R8 station that was operating as a North Philly - CHW shuttle). Sounds like a very similar situation.

I realize two incidents in 6 months does not constitute a major issue, but that switch really should be fully functional. Is this poor maitinenance by Amtrak? Are SEPTA's trains not 100% reliable (stop laughing, everyone) in signalling their approach and need to exit the NEC? Then again, maybe if the switch gets worse, there will be more incentive to build the Swampoodle connection, so perhaps we should just let it be

Honestly, I do just see this as one more reason to stop dealing with Amtrak altogether on the R8. Either the R8 should be turned into a mass transit line (I've been yelled at for suggesting that before, so I won't go into it, just saying it as a theoretical elimination of Amtrak from the equation) or the Swampoodle connection should be built. The less SEPTA is dependent on other track providers, the better!

At 7:47am, AMTRAK CTEC reported low air due to a power failure at North Broad. Back in service at 8:30am.