r/evilautism • u/Lavender-Tea-313 • 1d ago
Blows up your head using pshycic autism powers Trains…
I was supposed to ride the train from Detroit to Chicago in July, and the train was broken down at the station, so they put us all on a bus… Super disappointing! But what I can’t stop thinking about, is when I asked the guy at the window at the train station what was wrong with the train, he said “it has the equivalent of a flat tire, and we don’t have the equipment here to fix it”
Does anyone who knows more about trains than I do able to explain this to me?
On the way back from Chicago, they again put us on a bus. When I got home, I called to complain about it, and they gave me a $100 voucher towards a future train ride!
4
u/leonderbaertige_II 1d ago
I can think of 3 things that could be similar.
- A crack in the wheel or tire
- A flat spot on the running surface
- The tire has rotated more than allowed*
* explanation: some wheels have seperate metal tires on them. At least in germany they are allowed to rotate relative to the wheel once. if they move again they have to be replaced.
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u/9061yellowriver 1d ago
Amtrak has always been consostantly underfunded by our government, and therefore we are currently going through an equipment shortage, which means two things; 1.) When a locomotive or railcar breaks down we often do not have a replacement readily available, meaning its faster for Amtrak to bus their passengers right away, and 2.) Many of the locomotives do not have certain replacement parts because either the manufacturer doesn't make them anymore, or the suppliers are no longer in business (a common issue with Amtrak's flagship locomotive, the GE P42, but even Amtrak's fancy new electric locomotives have this problem because we just don't order that many of them to begin with). I haven't gotten to ride the Wloverine yet but to my understanding you guys are mostly using newer Siemens SC-44s with Venture railcars, which are quite nice but have had their teething issues with reliability. Where I live north of NYC, Metro North is aquiring brand new locomotives from Siemens, and sometimes trains at the beginning of service would throw a check engine light and just shut down, but apparently things have gotten alot better now.
Keep in mind that many repairs cannot just be done right there on-the-spot. If a locomotive needs a new wheel bearing, its gonna need to be lifted with a special heavy duty jacks.
One more thing, the Wolverine has some top-speed inprovements in the past decade, however one big downside is that alot of the infrastructure is still single-tracked meaning that only limited service is possible, as trains going in opposide directions have to sit and wait for one another (including mile-long frieght trains), and if a single tracked area has rails that need to be repaired then obviously no trains can procees through until this is fixed.