NBC TV

JEEZ, is it too much to ask of Amtrak for them to keep their locomotives in a good enough state of repair that they don't keep burning-up while on the road??? Apparently it is.

Well I give credit to this reporter for stating that it was only a train engine that caught fire. However he negated that credit in the second paragraph:

Um, there is no Amtrak Train #123, but I bet I could tell you what the engine number was on the point of a certain Silver Service train, which was either #91 or #97.

WRAL TV

Well YA, this experience would I think teach that Amtrak is not a reliable mode of transit. We don't expect our cars to catch fire, and most of us know that the only time they do outside of an accident is when they have not been properly maintained. Amtrak catching fire is proof that Amtrak does not keep their locomotive in a state of good repair, no amount of spin will alter that perception. The only question is who gets the blame, is it Amtrak or is it Congress or is the the PREZ or is it the American taxpayer.

smithfieldherald

The obvious question is what the hell is wrong at Amtrak Operations which makes it that they don't know that they have a fire and call the fire department before a good citizen along the ROW does? So let's review, an Amtrak Locomotive catches fire, neither Amtrak nor the RR calls the fire department, passengers don't get information on either what happened or how they will get to their destination......How many different ways can Amtrak screw things up?

Steve,

We're not talking about the space shuttle here. Amtrak operations wouldn't have a clue that the locomotive was on fire as there is no monitoring equipment on the engine that transmits real time info to operations.

Depending on just how things went down, it is quite possible that someone standing alongside the tracks would indeed be the first to see a fire in the engine compartment. Even if the engineer noticed something in his guages or his mirrors, his first action would be to stop the train. His second action would be to radio the host RR and request that they dispatch police, fire, and rescue units to his location.

His third action might be to use his cell phone to call 911, assuming that he had a signal. Next assuming that he still had any motive power; he most likely would try to detach the engine from the rest of the train, so as to protect the passengers in the coaches and sleepers. Or depending on the size of the fire, he might try to put it out with the onboard fire extinguisher. Then if need be he would try to assist in evacuating the passengers, if that need was urgent.

Finally after all of the above, he might actually try to call operations to let them know about the problems, again assuming that he has a cell phone signal.

But the bottom line here is that operations would be, and should be, the last to know. The engineer and the host RR are the best people, short of a bystander, to call and coordinate local fire and rescue teams.

As for the passengers, despite the complaints of some, from what I read it seemed like most passengers knew what had happened, either from simply seeing the events or from the crew telling them. And according to the last article that you posted, Amtrak did indeed provide them with buses to their ultimate destinations.

I quote the fire chief:



Now we can debate about whether poor maintenance lead to the fire, or lack of money to buy new parts. But beyond that area, it would appear IMHO that Amtrak did what it was supposed to do, reacted appropriately and according to RR operating rules regarding this event.

We don't hear about fire truck chasing down the train, so I think we know that the train had come to a stop before the fire department was called. The unknown is how long before the call was made did the train crew know that they had a fire, and how long did the train sit before the call was made? I don't buy the argument that the engineer should not be able to stop the train and call the dispatcher at the same time. Cell phone to either Amtrak or 911 might be a problem, I agree.

First we getting everything through the media, which make any info subject to question. The fact that the media noted that someone living alongside the tracks called in the fire, doesn't mean that the engineer didn't call the dispatcher before that bystander did. The breakdown, if there was one, could well have been with the dispatcher trying to find the appropriate number to call and report the fire. And for all we know, maybe the fire department did indeed get a phone call from the dispatcher first. We don't know how accurate the reporter was in his/her investigation. All we know for sure is that someone living alongside the tracks called in a fire. But none of that has anything to do with Amtrak operations knowing that the train was on fire and placing a call to the local fire company.

Second, I wasn't suggesting that the engineer couldn't stop the train and call the dispatcher at the same time. I was simply saying that his first action would be to initiate stopping the train. I had the experience of once riding an Amtrak train into an emergency stop because the engineer thought that he had hit someone. The first thing he did was to hit the emergency stop button. However even as we were still coming to a stop he was on the radio screaming to anyone and everyone that train #449 was in emergency and that he believed that he had hit someone.

Q: do AMtrak employees follow host railroad emergency procedures or is it Amtrak procedures that have been signed off on by the railroads?

Amtrak engineers and conductors must first follow host RR emergency procedures, and it's really more the procedures agreed upon by collective RR's. East of the Mississippi most RR's follow NORAC (Northest Operating Rules Advisory Committee) procedures, west of the Mississippi, it's called GCOR (General Code of Operating Rules). With the exception of small short line RR's that didn't join one of those two collectives, everyone follows those rules whether they are running on their own RR's tracks or running on a competitor's tracks through shared operations.

Once those are taken care of, then and only then can Amtrak require further procedures/steps that they must take.

Do you ever have anything good to say about AMTRAK???

Sure, when Amtrak conducts passenger rail in a way that reflects on Amtrak favorably when compared to the passenger rail systems of any of the other 50 most wealthy nations. Over the last few decades that has sadly been rare. Go to Germany or Japan or France or even England and tell me how often you hear about locomotive fires on the road there. It does not happen, it should never happen. I will cheer lead for Amtrak when and if they ever start doing things well. Maybe they can't without more money, but stuff like this makes me wonder. Locomotive fires point to systemic maintenance procedure problems, very basic maintenance in fact. I don't see how this is a money problem. This looks like a management or incompetence of the front lines (in the shops) problem.

I am a "railfan" that is to say a fan of rail. I love rail travel and have been doing it for over 40 years in the states and in Europe. I love trains. I do not love Amtrak, I am not a fan of Amtrak, because Amtrak pretty much sucks. In my opinion you should save your anger for Amtrak sucking instead of directing it towards those who point out the obvious. If you are a fellow railfan perhaps you will in time come to the conclusion that America deserves better than Amtrak as it is currently conceived. To be honest, I can't quite figure out why every railfan is not Angry about Amtrak.

Hmm, actually I think it's quite easy to see how this could be a money problem. Now I'm not suggesting that it is, or that the scenario I'm about to describe is true, but it could well explain how something like this could happen.

Let's pretend that one locomotive mechanic can check 8 locomotives during one 8 hour shift for problems, lube, and little general things. The base needs to service 24 locomotives during that 8 hour shift. Originally Amtrak employed 4 mechanics, however now due to budget cuts they only have 3 on duty during that 8 hour shift. There are still 24 locomotives that need to be checked out, but now one of two things must happen. Either 8 hit the road without any inspection at all, or all 24 get an inspection that is shorter than the necessary 1 hour. And neither choice is a good one.

Now yes we could argue for hours that management should have found another way to cut the money out of the budget, but even then the odds are that something else would have needed to slip. Maybe the parts that the mechanics needed.

Is it also possible that the fires are because some mechanic didn't do his job? Sure, I must admit that. We do see it every where in our society, workers who don't do their job and still want to collect a pay check. But most Amtrak workers are at least doing their jobs. Yes, maybe they could be a bit more excited or take one extra step sometimes to avoid a problem. But I don't believe that the bulk of the people who work at Amtrak are lazy or uncaring.

Finally in closing let me also mention one other thing. Don't try to compare US trains to those in Europe. Yes, there are many things that they do excel at over the pond. But just because you don't hear about problems, doesn't mean that there aren't. There is a well respected man who posts to two other train boards that I watch. The gentleman a US citizen has spent the bulk of his adult life overseas helping many different countries build their RR systems. He has mentioned many, many times that almost all the overseas RR's make considerable efforts to sweep their problems under the carpet.

Bottom line here being that they too have problems, they just don't talk about them and the press unlike here in the US doesn't go digging for every little bad story that they can find. Many in our press like to go bashing Amtrak, since that seems to be the political climate over here. Over seas RR's are just common place and accepted.

In my opinion the failures that cause fires are failures that developed over a period of weeks or months. Fires are not cause by failures that develop over a few trips, and are not noticed on the turn. Mechanics are through the locomotives for one reason or another on a regular basis, if they are any good they will instinctively notice stuff that is wrong that might be a fire hazard. They will notice a leak that is in a wrong place, a smell that it not quite right, a sound that is off, even if they are only walking through for some purpose totally unrelated to where the problem is. There is little doubt in my mind but that in most cases where we have a fire multiple mechanics either knew or should have known over the weeks and months previous that the unit was at risk, but nothing ever got done about it.

Also, engineers, even Amtrak engineers, have some basic working knowledge of how their equipment operates, when something is going on that might point to a major problem. Engineers spend a lot of time with these locomotives, they know what is normal and what is not. If Amtrak has the proper procedures in place there is in the culture a mindset that compels the engineer to notify someone, and for the one who is notified to take the information seriously. The mechanics will get many reports that don't worry them, that are not a cause for doing even minimal investigation, but others should ring an alarm in somebodies head and motivate them to go down or send somebody down for a peek. These rash of locomotive fires over the last 18 months is only a money problem if the problem has been noticed, the shop people have been notified, the managers want to fix the problem, and they get told no because there is no money to do it. I seriously doubt that this is what is going on. I have noticed now several reports where it is claimed that Engineers notified their chain of command about a potential problem with their locomotive but where over the coming weeks nothing is ever done about it. If Amtrak is not fixing known problems that in time turn into locomotive fires then it is guilty of gross stupidity. One locomotive fire will cost Amtrak big time on the short term bottom line (lost capacity, extra employee time, charges by emergency agencies and railroads, alternate transportation) as well as long term on the bottom line as people hear these stories and swear off Amtrak. They also erode Employee morale, public confidence, and what remains positive about the Amtrak brand after years of neglect.

We would need to get the insights of insiders to confirm my suspicions, but I believe that these locomotives fires are the result of a cultural problem at Amtrak, one that has nothing to do with money. This if true is damning of Amtrak as an organization, which is why I am a little hot about all of these fires.

It is a well known fact that employee morale at Amtrak is quite low, and that is unlikely to get fixed unless Amtrak and Congress can create a climate where employees have a Union contract in place, that is reasonable. Absent doing something about fixing such well known problems we can all keep collectively carping all we want and nothing will change, other than perhaps our collective blood-pressures. Actually I think the fact that Kummant is trying to get a contract in place with the Engineers' union is a step in the right direction.

If Amtrak employees had contracts like their European brethren do (the French and Germans basically get set up for life as I understand it) and if Amtrak had funding like its European counterparts do, I would be very surprised if its trains did not run as efficiently as the European ones do.

You speak truth JIS, throwing money at Amtrak would make running Amtrak easier and make Amtrak better, and if you take offense to words "throwing money" please remember that I am the one who thinks that Amtrak should be funded at around $5 billion a year. However, at the end of the day organizational leadership is responsible for establishing and maintaining the culture with-in the organization, and for morale with-in the organization. Lack of money is an obstacle for the leadership to overcome while putting the culture and morale to rights, but it does not doom the project which is why I say that problems caused by a cancerous culture and/or poor morale are not problems caused by lack of money. It has always been easier for Amtrak leaders to blame money problems caused at the political level for culture and morale problems with-in Amtrak (no doubt even to themselves), because when they believe this then they are off the hook and don't need to fix the problems. Several Amtrak CEO's in a row have ditched their duties to look after the well being of Amtrak as an organization, they have said and thought that it is Washington's fault, and washed their hands of the stink. I wish that someone would hold Gunn's and Warrington's toes to the fires, ask them why it had to be that Amtrak cultural and morale problems were caused by the political leaders when I venture to say that every Poly/sci expert will point out that adversity is one of the best tools for building culture and cohesion with-in a group. Leader after leader all through history has created adversaries for the sole purpose of building up their organization, society, group. Anti Amtrak Presidents and care not Congress's should have been a tool for the strengthening of Amtrak as an organization, they are not the reason Amtrak culture and morale sucks. The culture and morale suck because a series of Amtrak CEO's have not done their jobs.


For whom ever accused me of always bashing Amtrak: I have said that in my opinion all signs are that Klummant gets it and is trying to fix the underling problems that have hobbled Amtrak for nearly two decades now.

Note: multiple language mistakes have been fixed...I was in a rush when I originally posted.