Amtrak had another power failure. This morning around 0730 Tue Aug 24 there was a system wide low voltage failure on the NEC's 25 Hz 12Kv system. From first repors failure occurred some where south of PHL. NJ transit sent trains to Hoboken where possible and that portion was restored firsf. SEPTA did not report problems but they may have been able to supply some power to the AMTRAK PHL area. As usual MARC suffered the most with electric motor service not fully restored by 1100. No report from AMTRAK as to the possible cause.
As usual first reports to me were not completely accurate. According to the news wire article problem lasted till 0845 with some NJ Transit not on schedule until 0930. MARC had cascading delays until about 1100.
The failure appears possibily to have happened at the Lamokin Frequency converter station (A rotary converter about 12 miles south of 30 St station). Lamokin is undergoing ARRA upgrades at the present and that work may have caused this problem. Also the rebuilding of the 138Kv transmission line from Safe Harbor Hydro generating plant to Atglen along an abandoned CR secondary may have contributed but both reasons are now just speculation..
Until the money can be had to convert to 60Hz I suspect there will be more problems. Amtrak was smart to halt all trains at the next station so to at least have Air Conditioning available to all trains until the voltage was restored.
Apparently, as Blue Streak 1 reports the technical side of the Low Voltage Power Failure on the NEC yesterday (8/24/2010). It morphed into a customer service SNAFU of epic proportions for those caught in the snarled system of Commuter Trains at MARC as well.
AMTRAK opted to notify the Mass Media ( TV, Radio and possibly printy). They failed to utilize their TWITTER page until the crisis was well on the way to being sorted out. May of the Commuting Public rely on smart phones and other electronic gimicks for scheduling and keeping up with the flow of the commuter trains. This new resource was disabled by the AMTRAK decision to NOT use that resource to notify ifts customers.
AMTRAK'S response linked here: http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=2034708
Here is a linked story about MARC and their response : http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=2034640
[On that page are a number of other stories referencing other aspects of the same situation arounf the Baltimore, Pgilly, Washington area. It was definitely, not a happy commute on the NEC yesterday!]
A rotary converter!!
ARRA will hopefully convert this to a mercury rectifier. I completely agree this is probably related to rebuild work. In engineering it's always extremely difficult to keep everything perfectly during any redesign, rehost, or rebuild.
I wish the media would report it as such, but engineers (like me) are loathe to report that any failure is due to any activity where I am working on replacing something that "just works, don't fix it" when it really, desperately, needs to be replaced.
Thanks for the details, Blue_Streak. I admire how you're so connected to get this excellent information.
As for the so-called Twitter "snafu," Twitter is an unreliable joke. They should have at least updated www.amtrak.com, which was inexcusable. Naturally if anyone dialed 1-800-USA-RAIL the answer would have been available, too, but saying Twitter is a reliable way to communicate this delay is completely irresponsible. During recent VRE delays due to horrifying downpours Twitter's system was actually *unavailable* due to "over-capacity." Twitter is not the proper channel for this. Maybe in the future, but definitely not now.
aegrotatio ARRA will hopefully convert this to a mercury rectifier. I completely agree this is probably related to rebuild work. In engineering it's always extremely difficult to keep everything perfectly during any redesign, rehost, or rebuild. I wish the media would report it as such, but engineers (like me) are loathe to report that any failure is due to any activity where I am working on replacing something that "just works, don't fix it" when it really, desperately, needs to be replaced.
aegrotatio: I believe you are correct that this may be a complete replacement of the rotary converter at Lamokin ( 20 miles SW of PHL ) The work started in FY 2009 but is going slower than expected as I can figure out from Amtrak's June spending report. This project is an ARRA funded program authorized for $57M. However 2009 spending was only $84K and so far this year $8.045M where as budget projections anticipated $22.7M thru June. It was not considered a life safety project (amtrak definition of imminent failure ?? ). Could be the contractor ran into unforseen problems?
However the FY 2010 regular Amtrak budget had a life safety repair of the Jericho Park (location somewhere in NJ ?) rotary converter. So far $2.033M spent with budget of $4.054M and is projected to now cost at least $6.5M just for FY. I'll check 2009.
Just checked FY 2009. Freq converters life safety budgeted for $12.7M but Amtrak had to spend $18.4M. No breakout for different stations. ARRA funds used in 2009 for Jericho Park was $1.575M life safety.
I can't imagine changing to a mercury rectifier installation, a modern IGBT rectifier is too modern and so spoil the quaint charm of the Amtrak Northeast Corridor perhaps?
Isn't there something better and greener than mercury rectifiers? Seems that was Old School from the 60s.
Thanks Blue_Streak for the excellent updates.
As for the current technology used, I am not up-to-date on the terms of art used to describe the thinger that converts today's conventional 60 Hz AC to whatever that section of the NEC requires for its catenary.
But thanks.
i am the Amtrak power director on zone 6, Gunpower River (sub 18 ) to Wash term. (sub 25a) the cause of the outage was 2 main things. 1) the over priced(144 MILLION) solid state convertor station in port richmond Philly Pa was on 1 convertor out of 6 working that morning. also due to a tranformer that crapped out at Safe harbor Pa earlier thaqt week there was a unusaul transmision line setup at Perryville Md (sub 16) where the P5-8 transmisssion lines come down the port road to feed the corridor. At 7:44 am when the last convertor at richmond died,the system went nuts. the junk soild state convertor station at Jericho Park Md tried to hold it but crapped out too. then we lost # 1 transmissiom line from Perryvile to Landover Md.that cut the power by more then half. At around 8 am we were told to put up a AC hold from Perryville to Washington. (no trains moving) but at that point it was too late. Harbor tripped out, and the south end went to 0 volts on the catenary.
Lamokin Street was the only thing still running !!! you cannot kill those 75+ yr rotaries! Mectuchon in north jersey was useless and a little after 8 am the dinky solid state convertor at sunnyside yard also died! meanwhile Lamokin tried to keep power up but it could not feed the whole system. it still kept power in the lines in the philly area but the volts were less then 8kv. that plain and simple fact is that the 2 soild state convertor stations, Jericho Park and Port Richmond are J U N K !!!! Jericho park was down rated 2 times before going into service because of over heating and GE's poor design. the Port Richmond plant from day 1 as been unable to have all 6 units on line due to fauilures,software problems and 1 unit blew itself to pieces 2 yrs back and had to be completely rebuilt.!!!!
the 1st offical line from the company was the fault laid in the Jericho Park units but was corrected to show the problem was with the Port Richmond facility several days later. we had many problems phasing in the 3 plants on the south end but it was done and power was restored just after 9am and the AC hold was lifted. As for NJT trains they took a little longer but power was restored to full voltage a little after 9:30 am after they finally got men to Port Richmond to reset the units and got 2 back on line. Management has *** away thousands of dollar on overtime and fixes on these soild state units. they just don't work!!!! electronics on either on or off. they do not cope well with dips and surges. the rotatories will absorb the problem,may even slow down a bit but unless it is a full fault will stay on line and RUN ! and they still will not admit to the solid staet units are failures.
as a footnote. Amtrak had SEIMENS at the Port Richmond plant all that week afterwards trying to figure what and how it all took place. (they built the place) as of today i have not heard about what they found or a true cause,but as of this AM 3 units were working. and a manager told me that the RR has already told Baltimore Gas & Electric that as JP's economic life span is ending soon they want to place 2 brand new rotatry convertors units in service as replacements.
this is the second time this has happened,the 1st 5 yrs ago. and yet the Electric Traction Dept Managers still refuse to admit the solid state units are junk for Corridor use. someday maybe they will get their act together and realize that not everything that the PRR and Gibbs & Hill built in the 30's doesn't have a place in todays railroading and that it wasn't all bad. they knew enough to build things American and to were built to last!
sorry for my rant everyone,but i take my job seriously and it irks me to see all the same *** mistakes made over and over because we don't fix or maintain equipment and the overhead system as it should be.
have a good night, RRlineman
Amazing how management can't talk to the "peons" actually having to use the equipment as to whether or not the stuff actually works. If they are spending more on repair than they did on installation, then it is time to replace and get something that works. No worries on the rant, you have to deal with it everyday. Good luck.
RRlineman: Thanks for the expanded update. I suspected that there was more to the failure than I originally posted. Question is the Safe Harbor - Atglen transmission line out of service until the rebuilding is complete and if so did that contribute to your unusual transmission line setup?
One thing I do not understand is why is the CAT is not converted to 60Hz 12.5Kv? It would seem that using commercial power ( which I would assume is much more robust ) on that section would free up the rest of the 25Hz system that could be moved or at least rewired to supply points north of Gunpow to maintain voltage? All MARC and AMTRAK services on that sector can use 60Hz?. I realize that there may be other tap offs of other equipment that would need some kind of change and the 100Hz signal system may as well. The signal system is under ARRA upgrade funds to operate under a 60 Hz back up power at present.
I have always felt that any electrical equipment that may be subject to large (5-10% +) variations in voltage, current, or frequency has to be made very robust and over built. That appears to be one reason that present locomotives seldom (?) have electrical failures now.
Hope these disclosures will not cause you problems?
Conversion to 60Hz brings its own problems. All transformers must be replaced. Will the new ones be as reliable? What about interference with existing signals and communication?
Hello. all transmission lines runing out of Safe Harbor are still in service,including those on the old Atglen to Parksburg branch. ( the low grade lines.) plans are in the works to remove all the old structors and replace them and the transmission lines with new power co. style poles and wires.
the unusual set up was due to the P5 transformer at Harbor had tripped out on a overload, and we had the tie phase breaker for #2 line at Sub 16 Perryville open and having 1 of the lines that feed to north to Lamokin feed south. Sub 16 has a lot of tie switches that we use to feed in different ways when problems like this happen.
the 60 cycle idea never had a chance, Back in the early 80's the GAO did a study of the costs to convert the system to 60 cycle from the PRR 25 cycle. the lost cost estimate was over 333 million dollars. this was when we wer getting no more the 75 million. ( the NECIP program was running at the time) the costs plus the hassel of running 2 systems side by side, the specialized equipment needed every 10 miles or so (phase breaks and associated breakers) and that none of the MU's run by Septa and NJT in New Jersey could be converted with out breaking their banks so to speak and the scrapping of the GG1's was 1 reason it died. also power companys on the corridor where not thrilled with the idea because of the balanceing current flow issues on their lines. (as CON EDISON in Conn. learned when the New Haven lines was converted to 60 cycle. we would have trippings on the overhead lines and the power company relays protecting their feeds would see the impulse spike and trip off the their lines also. that 1st winter was a laugh riot for us, not so for them!) also to raise the voltages to 25 or 50KV was a problem either due to clearances or local towns freaking out on that much power that close to the ground where it could cause major prolems if the wires came down or some jerk kids threw metal parts or chain off the bridges to the catenary.
as for our acela's and HHP's -they are so overengineered that techs have to ride trains with laptops loaded with special programs to reboot all the computers (5) that run the engines. and that happens at least several times a day from Boston to Washington.
as for problems these posts may cause, i suspect that someone will come after me if they are readers of Trains and this website. that is the railroad mentality today.
rrlineman
well that didn't take long. i can no longer post anything about any Amtrak catenary issue/problem. someone at the co dimed me out to my boss. i have been warned that i can be in trouble if i continue. sorry guys,they waved gov regs in my face. can't afford anytime off or lose of job .
That's amazing the trouble with the new equipment, but not unexpected. That kind of expertise is probably not available here in the US at a sufficient experience level to design and plan for failures.
I wouldn't call the solid-state equipment a failure, though, it's only been a few years now. I remember visiting a firefighting museum where they had installed the old mechanical fire reporting system (the kind that used the fire poles on every streetcorner for people to report fires). They were so proud that the old system worked "flawlessly" for 60 years and the new, electronic system had already failed five times in two years.
Naturally they didn't know how many times the mechanical system failed before it started that 60-year streak, and how long it took to recover from each failure. The electronic system immediately recovered from the failures.
That's important to keep in mind. I'm a computer engineer and I can bore you all day with stories of how the supposedly newfangled "crap" always turned out 1000% better than the old system. The new stuff always has problems. I'd like to have access to all the proprietary and secret documentation on the PRR's trials-and-errors in the 1930s. People back then definitely don't like to report failure. Today people like to report failure.
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