Long Island Rail Road service is suspended through Jamaica because of damage to signals from a lightning strike at Jamaica. Customers should monitor MTA.info for the latest updates. Service is operating on the Port Washington Branch."
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But while all lines except Port Washington Line is marked "suspended" notes per line indicate there are trackmen manually operating switches at Jamaica and one should expect delays.
Henry: You would think that afer the fire last year that LIRR would have built contingency positions. Although we do not know where and what the Lightning strike dammage I wonder if:
1. Many CPs on Amtrak have the ability for someone to open a signal bungalow and operate that CP manually much like a towerman would operate but just from the bungalow.
2. Wonder if LIRR has any such provisions?
3. Hope this is not going to be a long term problem?.
Well, they are doing manual swicthing from one tower. That's their language so I'm not sure what it means. They reported that lightening struck one of the towers in Jamaica. Interlocking tower or power line tower or what? Not sure, I thought they did away with interlocking towers and all was controlled in the office building there. At any rate they are reporting no service to Penn Sta. at this hour but are running trains to Port Washington (line unaffected by power outage) plus on "the Ronkonkoma, Huntington, Babylon, Hempstead, Port Washington and Long Beach branches";half hourly service from Atlantic Ave (Brooklyn). Not mentioned are Far Rockaway, West Hempstead, Oyster Bay, east of Babylon to Patchogue, Speonk and Montauk nor from Huntington to Port Jefferson, and to Greenport. from Ronkonkoma. Nothing moving west of Jamaica. Just redid the whole thing after last years fire and updates to the railroad system wide. Commuters figure, lightening, schlitening, why can't I get home on this railroad!
NY Times says...
A $56 million state-of-the-art computerized signal system was installed last fall at the railroad's hub in Jamaica, Queens. It replaced a World War I-era contraption whose levers and pulleys caught fire in August 2010, snarling service for days....
A bolt of lightning struck and fried the supposedly impermeable microchips. The backup system failed, too - as did the triage software that was supposed to diagnose the troubles. In a virtual rerun of the fiasco from last year, workers were forced to use the old-fashioned "block-and-spike" method to manually set switches with mallets. The railroad was paralyzed for hours.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/nyregion/lirrs-new-signal-system-brings-same-old-reliability-issues.html?ref=todayspaper
Another story, New Jersey to pay $95 million for cancelling ARC Tunnel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/nyregion/nj-to-repay-us-95-million-over-hudson-tunnels.html?ref=todayspaper
Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. In broadcasting, those who live by the numbers, die by the numbers.
It seems to me, in railroading, those who live by the chip, virtually die by the chip nowadays. Electornics and microprocessors, whizz bang up to the second technologies. When there is a glitch, a hiccup, a sputter, its all gone and you've got to try to find guys who remember how it used to be done. Hand signals, written orders, read the timetable, look at your watch and do "this" because that's how it happens, Or happened. What is going to happen when, one day in the not too distant future, there won't be railroaders who can reach into their back pocket and pick out a miracle of the past that made it happen, made it work. Already today there are those working the business who can't believe what was achieved when there were no radios, no electronics to work and guide the way. You used to run ten or twenty trains a day...in each direction...on a single track where today it is dictated that no more than three or four can be run in any direction in any given 24 hour period. It was costly, though, because it employed manpower not electrical power.
Solid state devices are incompatible with long wires stretched along steel rails. The old relay systems could short the lightning to ground and recover. Solid state devices are so low voltage that they fry immediately when exposed to static. The only answer is to eliminate all of the wiring systems and go wireless. Wireless systems will be affected by lightning but only on their receiving front ends. These front ends can be protected with simple solid state devices. You can't effectively protect systems connected to long wires (especially along phone poles in the air).
The railroads will eventually switch to use G3 and G4 internet systems for their communication and signalling and join the 20th century. Line side signals are a thing of the past.
Line side signals are going out...no question, there....MNRR has plans to do Suffern to Port Jervis in the near future so I wouldn't be suprised if Suffern to Harriman doesn't get it right away with the forced rebuild of the line segment. But the problem is the housing for the electronics and the interfacing of the elcetronics to electricity can be cooked faster than instant rice in a blast furnace. When that goes, so goes the system. Pulling boards and chips is neat for maintenance but something more sophisticated has to be developed for back up.
If we were talking about the EMP from a nuclear weapon, I would understand it. However, lightning is an everyday occurrence thousands of times a day across the US. Surely an important railroad facility would have several levels of protection against such a commonplace hazard. Also, the "cure" for a fried circuit board is a spare circuit board in the supply closet. I'd be interested in LIRR's explanation of exactly what happened.
LIghtening is a funny, precise, undeterminable, surprising, fickle, constant: like a woman, you can prepare yourself, make all the right decisions, think you've got it all figure out, and then, wham, it does something so unpredictable you can't find an explanation in the dictionary or encylopedia. I think the LIRR has suffered such a moment, as have their suppliers and contractors...they are all scratching their singed and balded heads trying to figure out what was or wasn't done and why it happened. One bolt of lightening, out of the blue, into a tiny crevice in the system, and it blew!. It is simple to say and print the words, surge protector, its another to build and install a fool proof one evidently.
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