BandA wrote:NEtransit roster showing Orange Line (1) jet snow blower, Red Line (3) one each jet snow blower, flat car with plow, snow blower, Green Line (6) wimpy looking non-powered mini snow plows (looks like a weighted down truck with a pickup-truck style plow on the front), Blue Line (0). Is that it?
See some pics on the internet of big wedge style railroad plows, but from 2011.
The 'wimpy' plows are usually adequate because they just run non-revenue trains back and forth as snow-pushers all night long. Green stopped needing anything like those ancient Type 3 powered plows when LRV lash-ups became powerful enough to push a non-powered trailer with equal-or-greater force.
The bigger concerns for rapid transit are going to be:
-- Downed trees on the D and C from the tropical storm-force winds. Downed wires on Blue and Orient Heights from the
hurricane-force winds ripping one down in open air.
-- Blue. Which obviously takes a different type of pounding in an ocean storm than all the others. They can run Bowdoin-Logan pingbacks from the cars stuffed in the tunnel overnight, but how long will it be out-of-commission past Airport? Orient Heights would be first to reopen, but they have to worry about downed wires and flooding in the yard itself. And there's no telling what mess they'll have to clean up outbound of there.
-- Cold starts. Fleet availability's going to be a nightmare with all the drifting snow caked up into the cars parked outdoors getting sucked into the traction motors and whatnot. Central Subway is obviously going to be stuffed to the gills tonight with parked cars because availability out of Riverside and Reservoir is going to be dicey.
-- Digging out the yards.
-- "@#$% happens" stuff out of their purview like major power outages on the local grid or a water main break closing individual stations. And slower-than-normal fixes for those types of emergencies.
-- Keeping some outdoor platforms safely clear. If it happens to be at the right wind angle (especially if it's a station in a cut) the snow is going to re-drift and re-drift and re-drift the second it's cleared. Definitely some delays passing through, worst-case some individual stations have a late opening if they just can't keep a safe width of platform clear up to the yellow safety line until daybreak when it warms up enough for the snowmelt pellets to start to stick.
-- Staff availability. While I'm sure an over-full shift of MoW staffers...and then some...are going to work 12-hour shifts through the night and some operators will be bunking in at the carhouses to be ready for the morning, rapid transit staff have to commute to work too. No commuter rail means some are going to have to make alternate arrangements, and while the state will give them a safe highway escort to work as mission-critical staff that's easier said than done if there's a major highway shutdown (think shoreline-facing roads...Southeast Expressway, Route 1A, Route 3A, Route 128 on Cape Ann). Probably going to be threadbare crews for several hours.
B/C/E grade crossings shouldn't be an issue this time despite the drifting and monstrous plow mounds. This is going to be very dry, powdery snow...not the heavy wet stuff with the consistency of spackle like in the Blizzard of 2013. The constant churn of LRV plow mashups can blast right through some freakishly tall piles like it's no big deal when the snow is that powdery consistency. It'd be a much bigger problem if the mounds were half as tall but had twice the water.
Flooding shouldn't be a problem anywhere except on Blue. Too cold for ponding, very dry winter so far so low-lying areas not a concern.
Mattapan is obviously being bussed tomorrow. The jet snowblower has to blast the High Speed Line clear, and since it crawls very slowly to do its job there's no point to busting it out until the snow stops and the drifts settle enough to not drift right back up over the tracks. Those things are probably going to be strictly on yard duty tomorrow keeping Wellington and Cabot clear.
The E is obviously not running past Brigham until Thursday at minimum. And initially probably won't run past Northeastern because fleet availability problems always truncate it there.
Commuter rail...whooo-boy! We're not gonna see purple trains for a couple days. And anyone who values their sanity probably doesn't want to ride one until Thursday or Friday if they can avoid it.