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Posted by
Gold_12th
on Thu Feb 26 17:39:36 2015
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The rail tunnels that connect New York City and New Jersey are 105 years old, and the technique that Amtrak employees have been using to keep trains running through them this frigid winter is hardly more modern.
In essence, it involves a whole lot of whacking.
Three or four times a day, a crew armed with telescoping yellow poles topped with hammerlike appendages rolls through the tunnels hunting for icicles. When the workers spot one dangling from the arched ceiling, they signal for the rail car operator to stop and they reach up and take aim.
A few quick whacks and the Ice Patrol rolls on, having headed off another potential disruption of the tightly choreographed train traffic under the Hudson River. But on some especially cold days — Friday, for instance — the ice forms faster and in more places than the Ice Patrol can handle.
The result can be a disastrous start, or end, to the workday for thousands of commuters who depend on the two single-track tunnels. They provide the only direct passage for trains traveling between Manhattan and points west. Each weekday, about 450 trains operated by Amtrak and New Jersey Transit pass through them.
Commuters were delayed going into the city on Friday morning and again trying to get home that night. Both times they were told that the culprit was Amtrak’s Ice Patrol — an explanation that for years has elicited dubious responses on social media.
Frustrated commuters took to Twitter on Friday evening to question the wisdom of deploying the Ice Patrol during rush hours and even to question its very existence. A woman posted a remark about “the excuses train conductors give.” A man followed with a message about the Ice Patrol, saying, “I’d love to meet them or see their uniforms.”
Well, yes, Twitterati, there is an Ice Patrol. But the closest thing to a uniform that its members wear is a reflective orange vest and a plastic hard hat.
On Tuesday morning, a crew of four regulars and three trainees boarded a dingy, diesel-powered “catenary maintenance vehicle” beneath Pennsylvania Station and set out in search of icicles. But first, Scott Mayers, the driver, had to call for the electricity that powers trains through the tunnels to be shut off.
That 12,000-volt current runs through copper wires just below the ceiling of the tunnel. Those wires are part of the catenary system from which the trains draw the electricity that powers their engines.
When ice forms on or above the wires, it can play havoc with the catenary system, tripping circuit breakers and leaving trains powerless on the tracks. If left unchecked, the ice can weigh on the wires enough to cause them to snap or fall.
John H. Kremp, who oversees the Ice Patrol, said that Friday, when temperatures were in the single digits in the morning, was an exceptionally tough day in what has been an unusually challenging winter. Ice knocked out the power in the tunnels 12 times that day, he said.
Even worse, Mr. Kremp said, it caused a cable to break inside the south tube on the cusp of the evening rush. Trains scheduled to depart from Penn Station were delayed for more than two hours.
“It was the worst possible time,” Mr. Kremp said on Wednesday, as the Ice Patrol rumbled through the narrow passage past the scene of the damage. “Thank God nobody was stuck in here. They were delayed but they were delayed inside the terminal, where it was warm and they had food.”
A member of the Ice Patrol said there had been so much ice on the walls and ceiling of the tunnel on Friday that it “looked like Crystal Cave.” Monday had been another challenging day, he said, because temperatures had fallen sharply after a brief warm spell on Sunday.
Mr. Kremp said the south tube posed more trouble in cold weather because eastbound trains heading into Manhattan enter it at speeds as fast as 60 miles an hour, pushing a clot of cold air ahead of them. That frigid air contacts the water seeping through the pits and cracks in the concrete inner shell of the tunnel and turns it to ice, he said.
Mr. Kremp, whose title is assistant division engineer for electric traction, said Amtrak tried to limit the ice problem a few years ago by spraying a sealant inside the tunnels. But he said that did not prove to be a lasting solution.
For now, the Ice Patrol is left to do battle the old-fashioned way. On Wednesday, after clearing a few icicles from the north tube under the Hudson, Mr. Mayers parked the rail car on the New Jersey side and waited for the go-ahead to switch to the track leading to the south tube.
As inbound trains stacked up behind it, the Ice Patrol resumed watching for its searchlight to reflect off icy crystals. Through the plastic shield covering his bearded face, Randy Honeycutt spotted the enemy: ice wrapped around the copper wire overhead.
Mr. Honeycutt, standing on a small platform on the back end of the rail car, stretched out his pole and swung it at the cable. Whack, whack, whack, and down came a shower of ice chunks.
With the Hudson tubes cleared, the Ice Patrol chugged on to its next assignment: clearing ice out of the century-old tunnels under the East River that connect the Long Island Rail Road to Penn Station. The aim was to have those tunnels ready for the afternoon rush, too.
“We do everything we can to minimize the disruption of service,” said Craig Schulz, a spokesman for Amtrak, which has been pressing elected officials for a new set of tunnels under the Hudson. “It’s certainly not our desire to have to run the Ice Patrol during the rush hour.”
But the buildup of ice, Mr. Schulz added, “is unscheduled, it’s unpredictable, and we need to get in there and rectify it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/nyregion/taking-aim-at-icicles-to-keep-trains-moving-into-and-out-of-new-york.html
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