What do you make of this, Johnny? Red, Orange lines dead again
UPDATE: A spokesman said power was restored around 1:15 p.m.; no word on what caused the problem, though.
Alert New England tweets major power and communications problems mean all trains are being held in their stations. T riders tweet trains go for a bit, then stop. The lucky ones are able to get out at the stations and look for a cab. The unlucky ones sit in tunnels or on the Longfellow; at 12:44, Bill Haddad tweeted he'd been stuck underground for an hour.
At 12:15 p.m., Earnest tweeted the trains were running again out of Forest Hills; at 12:33, But at 12:37, Nicole Minard tweeted her Orange Line train was stuck at Downtown Crossing after managing to get there from Back Bay.
At 12:55, Finn reported:
Just spent an hour on the red line between Harvard and Kendall. Dropped off at Kendall; told time to DTX was 30+ min.
Pshaw, that's nothing. QuagMeier tweeted at 1:04 that she'd just spent two hours on the Red Line between Andrew and JFK.
Did somebody trip over the power cord again?
Comments
Perfect art for this
Perfect art for this story.
What I want to know now is whether holding all trains in stations represents a single point of failure (bad) or a precautionary attitude and the capability hold the trains (good).
Orange Line inbound at North
Orange Line inbound at North Station was held for some 5 minutes around 12:25. Then the train backed up three feet and the doors opened.
/facepalm
This?
Well I can make a hat...or a broach! Or a Pterodactyl....
(The pterodactyl might be a better way to get around anyways..)
The Needham commuter rail
which doesn't run on Sunday, has a train just outbound of West Roxbury stop idling on the tracks now for over an hour.
Had some trouble on a C line
Had some trouble on a C line traint too. Pulled out of Coolidge Corner station and spent about minute halfway through the intersection. Then it pulled forward and they had to get someone to decouple the two cars so it could proceed.
Nothing like spending two
Nothing like spending two hours in a tunnel though. They should evacuate people at that point.
On a subway, what's the
On a subway, what's the chance there's someone with a phobia who can't take 2 hours trapped in a car in a tunnel?
Or someone who can't hold their pee or bowels that long.
Or someone who HAS TO BE SOMEWHERE AND IS SICK OF RIDING THE T MEANING BEING A SECOND-CLASS CITIZEN.
Solution: Semaphore flags
Any chance that grownups will be taking over this operation?
Tunnel phones?
I thought I remembered from the discussions of taking the cell phones away in the first place that the MBTA had tunnel phones on hard-wired lines that would communicate back to central command in the case of being stuck in the tunnel.
radios?
I seem to recall the conductors on the Green Line having radios, similar to police radios, to call back and forth to each other. Am I hallucinating that memory?
All trains on the subway lines
have two way radios. The problem in this case is that, if the trains lose power, the radios don't work.
And yes, inspectors and other ground personel do have portable radios. However, that doesn't do a whole lot of good unless those people happen to be on the trains that have lost power.
The power that went out was
The power that went out was to the signal system and the radio system, not the 600V DC power that moves the trains. So Red and Orange line trains were stuck with fail-safe stop codes and no easy way to get instructions from central control to override it.
They do have tunnel phones
And they're designed specifically for this kind of situation. They're the last-ditch, hardwired connection straight to dispatch.
I've never seen one used, but you really don't want to be in a situation where they ARE being used.