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Porter Square has a water feature; its location might shock you
By adamg on Mon, 05/29/2023 - 9:51am
A roving UHub Red Line passenger took a photo this morning of the water spilling onto the third rail at Porter Square. He also took some video:
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Comments
This is bad
But the mold growing on the panels at Porter are more hazardous to your health.
Porter Square
Has always had a water feature. It just moves around.
Its current spot tho. I agree with the video poster. It seems a bit unsafe to have water dripping on 600VDC.
And of course just rotten away whatever the water lands.
FWIW
It looks like the water is pouring out on the wall, not directly on the 3rd rail. The 3rd rail is held ~6" off the base of the tracks with non-conductive stand-offs. The tracks themselves are on concrete slabs "floating" on rubber vibration absorbers and the water is flowing down to that netherworld.
Not to say that isn't a problem (it is), but it isn't as immediately dangerous as if the water was pouring directly onto the 3rd rail and thus energizing a bunch of pipes.
it's not a problem, not even remotely.
Are the Davis Square special snowflakes aware that the third rail on all the lines (every one!) is exposed to (GASP) rain?
Hence why the rail is sitting on insulators. It's 600V.
Imagine what these people would think if they realized the voltages on the wires on telephone poles in many neighborhoods are several times that...
Subway stations are underground. Porter is one of the deepest stations. Hence why there's always water. The fact that there's a tray there means water was intended to drain in that location.
If you look closely...
...you can see that the third rail has some sort of corrosion or mineral build-up on it. White stuff.
When the visible rust meets
When the visible rust meets the nasty white crust could that conduct electricity?
It Is Bad, Yes
Except, every time it rains, water falls on all the third rails outside. The trains still run.
It really hasn't rained all too much lately, but owing to a lot of rain we had in March, the water table is still pretty high in a lot of places. My back yard's seasonal swale is still wet and there was a frog jumping around in it yesterday.
Porter is what, 140 feet below street level? This is either a broken water or sewer pipe (Hi Cambridge DPW) or some spring has decided to relocate it's outlet to Porter.
Please don't worry about electrocution with this event unknowing film worker.
Be more concerned about low bid nearly 40 year old concrete collapsing because of water infiltration.
After all the T has had concerns about unmaintained concrete. Do you think the Quincy Center station garage was removed as some sort scheme to get cars off the road? Ha Ha Ha.
Quincy garage
Okay, I am not nuts. There WAS a garage at Quincy Center! I still remember the Marshalls nearby…
/oldtmer
Shocked
but not surprised.
Official MBTA Statement
"Nothing to see here, move along"