Cracking forces Amtrak to stop high-speed trains

WASHINGTON -- Amtrak on Tuesday abruptly removed all of its high-speed Acela trains from service after discovering cracks and breaks in a bracket on the wheel sets of at least eight of the 18 trains. Officials feared the heavy metal piece could break loose and either fall under the train and cause a derailment or hit other trains and objects along the right of way.

Most of the Acelas will be out of service at least through the rest of the week, and possibly longer, officials said. This is a $1-million-a-day blow to Amtrak just as the passenger train corporation began converting large numbers of airline passengers into train passengers between Washington, New York and Boston.

Bombardier Transportation of North America, which makes the Acela, told Amtrak officials Tuesday that a permanent fix will not be ready before the end of August, but they are flying a newly milled temporary part from Montreal for testing by Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration. Amtrak officials said the results of those tests will determine when the trains can return to the rails.

Amtrak canceled the Acela runs Tuesday morning, causing confusion and crowding aboard trains along the East Coast, where the Acela usually runs 16 round trips a day between Washington and New York. Amtrak transferred Acela passengers to its slower regular trains, setting up hourly service that takes roughly an extra 30 minutes travel time between Washington and New York, and an extra 45 minutes between New York and Boston.

There were initial reports of crowding on many trains. One train was reported to have more than 200 people standing as they left Philadelphia for New York.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, officials said two Acela train sets were found without bracket damage and would be ready for operation today. One will make a Boston-Washington round trip, leaving Boston at 6:15 a.m. and returning from Washington at 4 p.m. The other will do a New York-Washington round trip, leaving New York at 8 a.m. and returning from Washington at 6 p.m. They will not be placed under any special speed restrictions. The trains will also undergo thorough safety inspections after each run.

Amtrak president David Gunn met with William Spurr, president of Bombardier of North America, Tuesday afternoon to discuss a redesign of the bracket, which attaches a large shock absorber called a "yaw damper" to the locomotive body.

"From an engineering point of view, this is very complicated," Gunn said.

Amtrak chief operating officer Stan Bagley said that under the best of circumstances the train could be running next week, but he said there were no guarantees. He said the temporary replacement bracket being sent from Montreal is basically the same stainless steel bracket as before, just one-tenth of an inch thicker.

"Possibly, with good karma, we could be back to full service by Monday," he said.

But Bagley said he expects the FRA to require more extensive testing, which would take longer, a plan he said he would consider "really reasonable" as a safety precaution. Even if the temporary part is approved, he said, every train would receive a thorough "teardown inspection" after each run.

Bombardier spokeswoman Carol Sharpe said the company is "sparing no effort to cooperate with Amtrak" to get the trains back into service. She said a "dedicated team of experts" is working with Amtrak to find the root cause of the problem and to fix it as quickly as possible.

The damaged brackets are just the latest in a series of long-standing problems with the popular trains, which are capable of running at 150 mph but are held to 135 mph over most of the Washington-Boston route because of an antiquated electric traction system or other physical characteristics. All 18 train sets accepted so far by Amtrak already are scheduled for up to 200 upgrades, including fixes to the braking system and to restroom doors that stick.

The new defect is far more serious because, unlike the other problems, the cracking bracket takes the trains out of service just as their popularity is gaining ground against that of air service. Until Tuesday, Amtrak carried more passengers between Washington and New York than all airlines, including the two air shuttles.

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