Passenger Trains > 110mph on Chicago-St Louis Corridor suspended

Effective 1700 hrs, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017, ITCS (Positive Train
Control) on the Amtrak Chicago-St. Louis corridor was ordered shut
down.

Trains must proceed according to timetable Special Instructions but
not exceeding 79 MPH.

why?

KansasCityChief Wrote:
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> why?

Because it was too simple to do something tried and true like installing UP's cab signal system and the ACSES overlay.

abyler Wrote:
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> KansasCityChief Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > why?
>
> Because it was too simple to do something tried
> and true like installing UP's cab signal system
> and the ACSES overlay.

I believe the STL line actually has Automatic Cab Signals (see youtube). ITCS began life as a grade crossing safety system that morphed into PTC. Because of the extreme numbers of grade crossings on midwest routes, ITCS would relay crossing failure information with the ACS providing the train protection functions. Michigan Line went with pure ITCS, but the STL line is using the system as originally conceived back in the 90's.

Unless things have changed recently there were only a handful of
110 mph miles and within that short distance were two permanent
speed restrictions. I doubt if there will be any noticeable change
in timekeeping.

When I rode it last October we only briefly reached 110 mph.
On the northward trip we were treated to a penalty application
that brought us to an abrupt standstill about 1/4 mile north
of the old Dwight depot. In fact we were on the platform of the
not then in service new depot.

Don't lose heart CHI-STL highspeed fans! I have been going through some press releases:

New French Turbotrains will soon arrive capable of 120mph.

St. Louis trains will soon begin operation through Chicago to provide one seat
service to Milwaukee.

A space-age system of four-quadrant fence type gates will be installed at McClean, Ill.
They will provide absolute safety for drivers and trains.

Service to Peoria via a connection with the highspeed route will open up a totally
new market to Illinois' 7th largest city.

Rockwell International will soon begin work on an advanced computer based signal
system that will allow high speed train operation.

The head of the FRA has announced that Chicago - St. Louis (as well as CHI-DET)
will be 110 mph by 2017.

A fleet of thoroughly modern double deck cars will soon be delivered.

Oops! Sorry. I confused my stack of ancient PTJ news clips with reality.


All kidding aside I believe the highest CHI-STL speed has already been attained and
likely will never be exceeded. I heard this from the person directly involved. He
was working as a trainman on one of the turbos. He went into the cab to see how things
were going. The speedometer was on 120 mph. Veteran runner Jimmy Clark turned to the
trainman and said "if you don't like what you are seeing, go back in the train".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/17 07:37 by Englewood.

Lincoln Service trains have been held to 79 mph between Pontiac and Dwight for at least a month and probably longer. Last time I topped 100 mph on the line was in June.

Posted from iPhone

KansasCityChief Wrote:
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> why?


Who is John Galt?

Posted from Android

abyler Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> KansasCityChief Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > why?
>
> Because it was too simple to do something tried
> and true like installing UP's cab signal system
> and the ACSES overlay.

During the infancy of the MI and IL programs, my WSDOT client came to me during the January TRB meeting, and told me that he was going to direct a PTC salesman to me. Listen to the spiel and assess. The salesman was promoting ITCS, effectively selling vaporware in advance in order to have the funds to develop the system that they said they had but didn't. The number of important questions that he could not answer would fill a book. Afterward, I found my client and told him that if he sees that sales guy coming, run the other way, don't walk.

TAW

>A space-age system of four-quadrant fence type gates will be installed at McClean, Ill.
They will provide absolute safety for drivers and trains.

Wellllll, the Little Silver Men came down a long time ago from their advance bases on the far side of the moon, bringing four-quadrant gates with them. The attached is from The Railway Signal Engineer, 1917. The flasher was powered by acetylene gas.

---

Does the failure of PTC here have any common threads or causes with the PTC oriented grade-crossing circuitry on the Denver RTD commuter rail lines, deemed unreliable thus far, and has all crossings manually guarded ?

joemvcnj Wrote:
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> Does the failure of PTC here have any common
> threads or causes with the PTC oriented
> grade-crossing circuitry on the Denver RTD
> commuter rail lines, deemed unreliable thus far,
> and has all crossings manually guarded ?

Yes and no. ITCS enabled grade crossings are designed to alert the train if the crossing gates aren't working in some way or if the early activation system isn't working. Early activation is a more reliable form of speed prediction so that the gates can drop sooner in the presence of a 110mph passenger train vs a slow 50mph freight train. The ITSC is aware of approaching train, level crossing is informed of 110mph train, gates drop early, ITCS tells train OK, train is good to go at 110. If any part of that fails the train gets an 80mph TSR in the cab. It's a complex system, but the fallback is 80mph operation.

Denver RTD did...something...idk what exactly, but it results in the gates not going down at all if there is some failure in the communications path.

Are all of the area Amtrak crews qualified to run Auto Train (assuming qualified on that territory), or is there a certain additional training needed to run Auto Train?

Fondly at a meeting with Jim Young he boasted Union Pacific was hosting high sped rail in the Midwest between St. Luis and Chicago. I chuckled in response stating there is nothing high speed about 110 MPH. We agreed to disagree. He was a hell of a CEO and true gentleman. UP certainly is suffering without him.

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Does the failure of PTC here have any common
> threads or causes with the PTC oriented
> grade-crossing circuitry on the Denver RTD
> commuter rail lines, deemed unreliable thus far,
> and has all crossings manually guarded ?


I'm not sure about that but I know freight trains have been constantly going into Suppresion around Russell for whatever reason PTC is causing.. literally had days where train after train would have PTC drop out and go into suppresion. Doesn't help with the additional congestion..

mbrotzman Wrote:
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> Denver RTD did...something...idk what exactly, but
> it results in the gates not going down at all if
> there is some failure in the communications path.

Denver RTD picked a vendor who did... something...

As far as what I've heard, when there's a failure in the communications path of any sort, everything goes failsafe and it takes a couple minutes to recover the system. The gates were going down just fine, but it is actually the opposite problem - they're going down way too needlessly early. There would be a comm loss, the system was stopping the train, bringing down the gates, calling out the national guard, etc. such that the train wasn't actually over the crossing for a couple minutes. This meant drivers were driving around gates since they'd effectively stopped being functional warning devices - which is why they have to pay for crossing guards and have the FRA live with them.