M-7 involved in accident tonight...

[davelirrider]

Just saw on the news... an M-7 (didn't catch the #) was involved in an accident tonight in Westbury... it hit a car which had stalled on the tracks, demolishing it. The woman driving the car escaped before the train struck it...but currently there is no service on the main line through the area.
It'll be interesting to see how the M-7's hold up after being involved in an accident like this

[Mr Met]

Wich news? is the M-7 totaled is would be cool to see 6 m-1's on flat's than a m-7 go back to bombardier

[KFRG]

Any available pictures?

-Tom

[N340SG]

Mr Met,

I doubt you'll see that.
Historically, as you know, train vs. car....car always comes up the loser.
Without knowing any of the details, I will bet the M-7 has minimal damage.
(Unless there was an ensuing fire/explosion and/or derailment.)

[jayrmli]

I don't think it was on the Main Line, but on the Port Jeff between Syosset and Cold Spring Harbor.

I heard damage wasn't that bad, as the train hit it at a slow rate of speed.

Jay

[railtrailbiker]

A Long Island woman barely escaped with her life when her car stalled on Long Island Rail Road tracks.

Nassau County police say 42-year-old Monica Davie of Syosset was crossing L-I-R-R tracks around 9 p-m last night at Syosset Woodbury Road when her car struck the base of the crossing gate, causing the car to stall.

Davie got out of the car about five minutes before an eastbound L-I-R-R train hit her car.

Service on the Port Jefferson branch was restored after the car was towed off the tracks.

http://1010wins.com/topstories/winstops ... 71703.html

[Head-end View]

Right, it was the first crossing east of Syosset Station, not Westbury.

I was listening to the scanner when it happened. Moments earlier the railroad had a gotten a report from somewhere of a car on the tracks in the Cold Spring Harbor vicinity which turned out to be the wrong location. Divide tower operator was appropriately warning trains in the area, and was actually reading a slow order to a train over Channel 3 when it happened. Just as he finished reading the order, train 1742 told Divide that he had just struck that car at the Syosset-Woodbury Rd. crossing, that the car was on fire, requested power-off, etc.

One interesting note: When power was shut off the operator (either
Divide or 204) warned the train crew that because they had M-7 equipment they should wait 5 minutes before assuming that power was completely off. Apparently this is unique to M-7's 'cause I've never heard this said before in previous incidents. Can anyone here tell us what that's about? Why would it take 5 extra minutes for the train to "power down"?

Anyway, I also heard that the engineer requested relief; hope he (or she) is doing okay. Lucky for all that the driver of the car bailed out in time. Rough night in the heavy rain for everyone involved.

[Nasadowsk]

The reason why is because the DC link contains large capacitors that hold a charge without power. That's what the "DC link" lights on the sides under cars are for, too - to warn you that DC is there.

Most industrial inverters try to 'bleed down' the link by using the power up (generally to run the electronics), but this takes time.

The DC link is quite dangerous (deadly) until it's discharged, and it can even spring back to life afterwards, though not anywhere near as bad.

5 minutes seems normal.

It shouldn't back feed to the third rail, unless there's a malfunction (serious) going on.

[Nasadowsk]

Hit the base of the gates?

Ok, it WAS raining, but man, was the cell phone chatter REALLY that interesting?

Down near Woodmere, a guy drove his BMW onto the tracks a while back and the third rail got it. I swear, ever since cell phones got big, the number of these cases seems to have gone up....

[N340SG]

Phil Nas is correct (as usual).
The Propulsion inverters and APS converter/inverters (Auxiliary Power Supplies- basically take the place of M/As) have large capacitors that'll give you a new hairdo, or worse, if you get blasted by them. You're supposed to wait until the red LEDs on the respective units extinguish. That indicates the bleedoff resistor circuit has lowered the DC Link voltage to below 50 volts.
As Phil indicated, there are diodes and/or contactors that are supposed to prevent backfeed to the third rail, but why take a chance that something is amiss? Waiting a couple minutes is a prudent thing to do.
(Generally, it doesn't take anywhere near 3 minutes. Just a safe number to work with.)

[N340SG]

I had occasion to see 7008, the M-7 involved in this accident.
The damage is on the north side corner of the M-7 car. (It must have hit the vehicle off center.)
The N/S crew steps got mangled (the steps in line with the drop sash.)There is a small hole in the fiberglass front cap of the train car, underneath the yellow part. The black apron above the pilot ("cow catcher") was bent inwards. And the barrier (the thingee that extends from the front of the car) was bent upwards slightly.

Since the M-7, of course, is still in active production, it should take minimal time to get whatever parts are needed and fix this car.
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"Shamrock one eleven heavy, you are one zero miles from Rushy. Turn right heading three one zero, speed two niner zero. Cleared for V O R D M E two two left approach."

[EDM5970]

Big capacitors can be nasty. One piece of industrial equipment I worked on, maybe twenty years ago, had a large CO2 laser (if I remember correctly) for marking plastic parts. The beam was directed through a brass stencil, and the laser was powered by a large bank of caps. The manufacturer's tech that set up the laser taught everyone involved in this project how to discharge the caps before doing any service work on the laser. There was a very well insulated probe, with a lead running to ground. The caps would make quite a flash when grounded, and dark safety glasses were a must. Kind of unnerving the first few times you did it, though.

[N340SG]

The caps in the Mitsubishi propulsion inverters on the M-7 can go up to 800-950 volts easily during Dynamic brake. In fact, the caps are sometimes going up to their high end limit (I think that's on the order of 1050 volts.) When this happens, a thyristor kicks in and does a rapid discharge to protect the system.

[Head-end View]

I saw that car 7008 today parked next to Hillside Facility Station. Didn't get a very good look though.

Also today, I saw a new highest number M-7 pair in revenue service: #7275-76 on a Ronkonkoma train.

And yes, I noticed those red LED's on the undercarriage of the cars. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Nasadowsk]

Tom - you sure that the thyristor isn't the 'braking transistor' that clamps the DC link? It would be normal for that to kick in as the voltage rises. Hmm, I guess I'd need to see a good block diagram of the whole setup - we work a bit different at our level (If the DC link voltage keeps going up, and the brake unit doesn't kick in, the drive senses this and just stops trying to brake, and throws an error code.)