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The Orange Line comes to a halt; a dead train is at fault
By adamg on Fri, 11/18/2016 - 8:58am
Sign of the times at North Station. Photo by Sara Brooks.
The dreaded "severe" delays are forcing Orange Line riders to hold tight due to a train that took a ride with Elijah between Wellington and Assembly.
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Comments
I waited an hour for a train
I waited an hour for a train at Sullivan. The three that went by too full to take passengers. A call to the MBTA did nothing - they don't now when a train will be full, so there's nothing they can do to help. I eventually took the 93 downtown, nearly an hour late for work. There was no one at the station to help. With issues this bad, there should be ample MBTA employees at the station answering questions, identifying alternate routes, offering vouchers, telling people that they should save their money and time. It was worse than winter 2015 on the red line.
How are employees supposed to get to the station
to help if there are no trains running?
Use their state vehicles that
Use their state vehicles that they're always parking on the sidewalks outside!
It's too bad …
That the Orange Line doesn't have three tracks there so they can't route abled trains around the disabled one.
This has been discussed before
In theory, the third track could be used to re-route northbound (outbound) trains around a disabled train. However, this is not considered practical due to a) the deteriorated condition of the third track (i.e. dead slow speed), b) the poor condition of the third track platform, not to mention the lack of disabled access to/from said platform (broken elevator), at Community College station, and c) the lack of a third track platform at Assembly station.
It's not just the elevator at
It's not just the elevator at Community College - the entire platform is out of service. It lacks tactile warning strips and is full of crumbled concrete from the decaying canopy. If a northbound train were to use the third track, it could only stop at Sullivan and Wellington.
Also, the only crossovers on the 3-track stretch are right at Wellington, so if a southbound train were to take the center track, it wouldn't be able to switch back to the correct track until the Charles River tunnel portal. Meaning that northbound service would have to use the third track, which is a nonstarter.
Correct on all points
Appreciate the clarification DTP.
Baker's on it!
Baker's on it! Globe is reporting that the Baker administration will start a 1 year pilot to the Gillette Mall in Foxboro with 4 round trips daily. The owner of the mall and the patriots, Kraft, is a big Trump/Romney/Baker proponent and funder so it makes sense to divert commuter rail trains to this project since its running so well the state can afford to give up a few to run people to Kraft's mall.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/18/mbta-could-test-daily-commut...
After looking through the
After looking through the past couple pages of stories here on UHub, are there actually any MBTA train cars still in service?
To their credit ...
The people who work in the T's shops are amazing at getting these trains back in service, even if it is kind of funny/sad that the T has to hire actual blacksmiths, at least on the Orange Line, to make parts because the company that made the trains is no longer in business.