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Amtrak train shoulda turned left at Albuquerque, or Ruggles perhaps
By adamg on Tue, 06/24/2014 - 6:51pm
According to T alerts, Needham, Providence and Franklin Line riders who just want to go home are currently delayed due to "congestion."
MBCR explains that, in this case, "congestion" means an outbound Amtrak train was mistakenly switched onto the Needham tracks, which is sort of like the train equivalent of a truck trying to get on Storrow Drive, given that Amtrak trains use electric power and the Needham Line, well, doesn't.
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Comments
Ya that sucked
It took almost an hr to get to the hills. I knew something was up, as we were not on the normal track. Then to throw salt on an open wound, the 5:50 train (next one out of SS) passed us. Good thing I'm reading a great book.
Given the fact that all
Given the fact that all Amtrak NEC trains are electric, I'm really curious how this happened. Surely the dispatcher just lined the wrong switch and the delays resulted from the train coming to a stop and then reversing. I can't imagine it actually went through the switch onto the Needham branch.
Pretty much
I don't have the full story yet, but I imagine the engineer knew something up at some point and stopped the train. Rush hour is so congested however, that simply reversing to crossover - which is already not a simple thing to do - was complicated by the lack of time slots for existing schedules sans switching corrections.
Great MBCR tweet: "Moves were
Great MBCR tweet: "Moves were made." Indeed they were.
https://twitter.com/MBCR_info/status/481581835567112194
Mercury Retrograde will be over
..in 5 more days.
It's had quite a run with daily mishaps and deadly ones seeded by mania and folly.
A Storrowed train is about as weird as it gets.
Oh. Well.
So much for taking the 5:20 outbound Needham Heights train to get home "early"....
A few months ago in Philly,
A few months ago in Philly, an Amtrak train was supposed to back up for a trainlength or two to turn around. Instead, it kept going and going backwards, until it reached the big dead end bumper block at the end of the Bala Cynwyd line.
Regulators said there was no rules violation, since they didn't pass any red signals.