Passengers stranded on MARC train for hours

Ron - knock it off with the plagiarism. We're all capable of reading the links without you posting snippets without attribution.

To heap more onto MARC's plate, I was on the 3:20 departure from Washington this afternoon. What happened when we got to Bowie State?



If you guessed "overran the platform by nearly 1/4 mile and had to back up to service the platform", you're absolutely right!!!

And the MDOT Secretary sent out a smoking e-mail concerning the situation using adjectives like unacceptable....

This will get interesting before it gets better....

P.S. some one posted the entire letter over at T/O if you want to read it....

Thanks, I got it in my mailbox on the MARC alerts feed (along with a handful of others, it's been good reading this afternoon).

Why not let the passengers get off the cars that are on the platform?

VRE runs an 8 car train on both lines and if they have to put the last car on the platform at Lotron (for the wheelchair) person, thne the first 3 cars will not be on the platform and the conductors announce that passengers will have to walk back to the fourth car to detrain. Other than this, VRE trains have rarely, if ever, overshot the platform. I think sometimes they slow down to early, unlike this MARC train that slowed to late.

In the case of Odenton, it's because it's the most heavily traveled station on the Penn Line - unloading through only a few doors proved to be so slow with the track work that was going on that running the NEC left handed in the evening rush was a preferred solution to having to board across the bridges. Since it sounds like things were already gummed up with another train following closely, I can see where they didn't want the train dwelling for the time required to offload everyone.

In the case of Bowie State, it was because we were nowhere near the platform.

I thought they overran it by 3 car lengths not just having three cars platform.

Looks like Amtrak is trying hard to fix this. In the Post today: Amtrak unveils plan to dispatch help when MARC trains break down

Yeah, that plan seems like it'll help if it's implemented correctly. My favorite part wasn't mentioned in the article, there's a new policy that no train (Amtrak or MARC) is to pass by a disabled train without stopping to pick up stranded passengers.

As a cool aside, I learned of the plan from Joe Boardman when talking to him at the event - he gave me a copy of it and outlined it for me when I told him that my biggest concern was that they take this opportunity to set up plans and procedures to deal with things like this. It's easy to get it right and have an Acela Express make an extra stop at Odenton when Swaim-Staley can make a phone call to Boardman and make it happen. The real test will be how service is improved in 6 months, or next summer.

Overall I left the two meetings with a positive outlook - the brass all said the right things, so we'll just have to see how things shake out. I was a little concerned that the MTA is just now asking for a daily report of what went wrong (and why) the previous day - Roland Wells (the MTA Administrator) was surprised when I told him that VRE not only gets the info from Amtrak, but posts it on their website daily (http://www.vre.org/service/daily-download.html), so I'm hoping that the same data becomes available on the MARC side soon.

Yeah, that plan seems like it'll help if it's implemented correctly. My favorite part wasn't mentioned in the article, there's a new policy that no train (Amtrak or MARC) is to pass by a disabled train without stopping to pick up stranded passengers.

I absolutely do not agree with that new policy. If MARC passengers want priority service they can pay Regional or Acela prices. Commuter passengers have paid for a lower quality of service and it is not Amtrak's responsibility to upgrade people to first class when, surprise suprise, they get the level of service they have paid for. Since most Regional and AX trains are largely full up anyway this is an empty gesture that will only ruin the ride for the folks in the rescue train. I think the appropriate line is "You pays your nickle, you takes your chances."

Re the rescue diesel I do not think the issue was ever the availability of power, but the availability of a crew to pilot it and getting it out of the yard. Better positioning of the diesel will help the latter, but it seems that Amtrak might use the crew from the next train to rescue the stalled one with the next train then being canceled. I can't wait until people start bitching about how their train keeps getting canceled.

Frankly I don't see why this is Amtrak's call in the first place. MARC pays for the service and MARC should set the policies. If MARC wants to have a policy about ruining the trip of two trains instead of one Amtrak needs to make it clear who's choice it is and what the ramifications are.

BTW, why is everything breaking down so much in the first place?

Jersey_Mike wrote:I absolutely do not agree with that new policy. If MARC passengers want priority service they can pay Regional or Acela prices. Commuter passengers have paid for a lower quality of service

That's not at all true. It's not at all about quality and priority, it's about Amtrak using all of the resources at their disposal to provide the service that I have paid for.

Frankly I don't see why this is Amtrak's call in the first place. MARC pays for the service and MARC should set the policies. If MARC wants to have a policy about ruining the trip of two trains instead of one Amtrak needs to make it clear who's choice it is and what the ramifications are.

Because Amtrak is the operator for both services. If they screw up, they accept the responsibility for fixing it. If they don't want to inconvenience their regional or AX passengers, they can hire engineers that can manage to stop a train at an 800' long platform.

BTW, why is everything breaking down so much in the first place?

I'm not sure that it is, to be honest - I think that it's the epically poor handing of this incident in particular that's just focusing everyone's attention on the matter. I'm also not sure that Amtrak or MTA collect the data and compile it to be able to answer that question - past generalized On Time Performance numbers, it appears that nobody's doing any analysis of why the OTP numbers are what they are (if they are, the MTA administrator isn't aware of it, because I asked him directly and he was surprised that VRE had and published that data).

Wow, im dumbfounded by this.......

Talk about blowing things totally out of proportion.

Engineers are human too - I guess none of you ever made a mistake at your job? Must be lonely at the top.

It wasn't this big of a deal when an NJT engineer missed Princeton Jct and nearly A THOUSAND people had to back track. Sure it was on the news, some people were cranky and ticked, but most were "oh well". NJT came out and told the truth, which was that the job that the engineer was on changed like the day before, and for months he was bypassing PJ, and then well that first day, he forgot that he didn't bypass PJ any longer! Now, Amtrak COULD have stopped the train, and reversed the train back to PJ, but that would have banged so many other trains, that it wasn't feasible, and everyone just got off at the next station and caught the next eastbound back to PJ.

Thats my hunch as to what happened here, the eng stopped, told the disp what happened and the disp said, "just continue on to the next station" Is the dispatcher going to face any discipline? Remember, the train crews just do what they are told by the higher ups. They don't make these decisions up......when someone actually decides to make a decision that is. Yes, the eng missed the station. But the disp didn't let him go back. And if the train was only 3 car lengths from the station when it stopped, the following train could not have been THAT close to it. Even if the following train was in the next block behind him, he could be held where he was by a Form D "welded to the rail" and the other train given permission back into the station.

I work the extra list as a commuter engineer, and every day im running different trains, with different stops, on different lines. Some days, each train is a local, and im making upwards of 100 stops a day, other days, htey are all expresses, and I make 6 stops a day. Most days it somewhere in between. It hasn't happened to me yet, but it will happen, and it happens to pretty much every engineer at one time or another in their career. And there is discipline, chucksc, sometimes its a few days off, but if the eng has a good record, its "time over their head" most times, which means if you screw up again in a certain time frame, you will get X days off.

So now, if a train breaks down, the following train will be canceled as well? So thats two canceled trains for each breakdown. Cool - thats going to make folks happy.....especially if they are on the following train!

Having a protect loco at Union Station is a good thing, but the problem is when there is a breakdown the tracks are still clogged and the loco still has to make it out to the location, which can be a problem when they are doing transfers from one train to another, or it can still get "stuck in traffic" trying to get to the train, especially if the train is broken down on the far end of the system far from Union Station.......

While we're talking about things being blown out of proportion, I never said that I was perfect or expected locomotive engineers (or dispatchers) to be perfect as well.

Jtgshu wrote:So now, if a train breaks down, the following train will be canceled as well? So thats two canceled trains for each breakdown. Cool - thats going to make folks happy.....especially if they are on the following train!

I'm not seeing where a broken down train is going to automagically result in the next train being canceled.

Having a protect loco at Union Station is a good thing, but the problem is when there is a breakdown the tracks are still clogged and the loco still has to make it out to the location, which can be a problem when they are doing transfers from one train to another, or it can still get "stuck in traffic" trying to get to the train, especially if the train is broken down on the far end of the system far from Union Station.......

True, but if the breakdown is far from WAS, then equipment from Baltimore or Martin's State Airport could be dispatched.

HokieNav wrote:Because Amtrak is the operator for both services. If they screw up, they accept the responsibility for fixing it. If they don't want to inconvenience their regional or AX passengers, they can hire engineers that can manage to stop a train at an 800' long platform.

Seems to me that that is pretty much demanding perfection right there.......

But anyway, the article says that when a train breaks down, that the train following it will be canceled and set out to pick up the passengers...?

The Washington Post article wrote: If a MARC train breaks down and loses air conditioning or heat, the next MARC train will be canceled so that train can rescue the stranded passengers, he (Boardman) said

Thats a pretty straightforward statement to me, with not much for misintrepretation

Does Amtrak or MARC have a protect crew and loco based in Balitimore or wherever on standby? Because if not, its not easy to round up a crew and just hop on a loco and ride out to the rescue. With reference to the stranding of the folks on the hot train a few weeks back which started all this, sure, if there was a protect crew on duty (there obviously wasn't one, or else Mr. Boardman wouldn't be touting that they are adding one) they might have gotten there sooner, but not much sooner, and the situation wouldn't have been THAT much different. People, especially politicans, don't wanna hear that, but its the truth and any one who actually works on the railroad will say that. Generally a best case scenario is about an hour for a rescue, which is from the time the train broke down, giving the crew time to work on it, it not working, decided to send out the rescue crew (who probably were told pretty much immediately to saddle up and prepare to go out), and for them to actually get there and then hook up to the dead train, do various tests and then move. Nothing happens quick on the railroad, its just the nature of the beast.

I'm not defending the crew or their actions or the decisions of Amtrak or MARC or anyone involved in these matters - im just saying how it is. Yes, things can always be done better, but there are only so many things that can be changed and "modified" - but there is still going to be significant delays and problems when trains breakdown and people are going to be very inconvenienced. No matter what knee jerk programs and policies are implemented to make the politicans happy. It sucks, and it always will suck, but it will happen. And from my experience on the railroad, and Amtrak, these knee jerk reactions often usually end up making things WORSE the next time they happen...........

Jtgshu wrote:

HokieNav wrote:Because Amtrak is the operator for both services. If they screw up, they accept the responsibility for fixing it. If they don't want to inconvenience their regional or AX passengers, they can hire engineers that can manage to stop a train at an 800' long platform.

Seems to me that that is pretty much demanding perfection right there.......

Not at all, its not an inconvenience to folks if it happens once in a great while - everyone understands that s--t happens. If it rises to the level where it's happening frequently enough to inconvenience Regional and AX pax, then yeah, there's a problem. For what it's worth, in addition to the Odenton overrun on Monday, Bowie State got overran on Tuesday (I was onboard) and Wednesday (my wife was onboard), so that's at least 3 in 3 days (in the two at Bowie State, permission was granted to back up and service the platform).

The Washington Post article wrote: If a MARC train breaks down and loses air conditioning or heat, the next MARC train will be canceled so that train can rescue the stranded passengers, he (Boardman) said

Thats a pretty straightforward statement to me, with not much for misintrepretation

That's the Washington Posts interpretation of what Boardman said - it's decidedly NOT a part of the plan (which can be seen here: http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... 30-10).pdf ). Sure, there are cases when the temperature is dangerous that the situation will dictate canceling a train to rescue folks, but it certainly isn't a case of "if a train breaks down, the following train will be canceled as well". In fact, by having a protect trainset on station, cancellation in the event that a rescue train is needed should be very unlikely.

With reference to the stranding of the folks on the hot train a few weeks back which started all this, sure, if there was a protect crew on duty (there obviously wasn't one, or else Mr. Boardman wouldn't be touting that they are adding one) they might have gotten there sooner, but not much sooner, and the situation wouldn't have been THAT much different.

Crew doesn't have anything to do with that situation - the rescue engine was on scene rather quickly, but mechanical problems with the brakes releasing stopped them from dragging the dead train back to WAS.

This may be a naive question ( I am not a railroad expert by any means) but I don't recall ever hearing about the kind of almost catastrophic mechanical breakdowns involving GG1 hauled trains, or even trains consisting of the old MP 54 MU cars that we're talking about here. And both of these types of old equipment ran through as much hot weather as we have had this year during their operating lives. Do we have a problem with the modern day technology ( particularly electric) that didn't exist "back in the day" or am I missing something?

I don't know either, but computer controls probably don't help.