RAILROAD SIGNALS of the U.S.

the BALTIMORE RAIL TRANSIT
COMPLAINT DEPT

 

RAILFAN GUIDES HOME
RAILROAD SIGNALS HOME

I don't often go off about much.  But I take exception with the Light Rail system in Baltimore.  It is run by a bunch a boobs all the way from the top down.  If you don't like bad language, hit the home button and leave, I get worked up sometimes.

A southbound "2 pack" running alongside Howard St, stopped at the Convention Center.  The Bromo-Seltzer tower is in the background, and Camden station is behind me to my left.  The tracks just left the middle of Howard St in the background.

First, I worked there.  What better way to get to know the politics?

Second, and I'm sure this is not confined to the Baltimore system, the MTA uses outside contractors to design and build their stuff, unlike the old streetcar days.  Why is this such a sore point with me?  Because.  (I would let it go at that, but you deserve more of an answer)  Because most of the engineering firms are too new and don't have the real railroad experience needed to properly design a system....their engineers are (mostly) young, book/school trained, don't have any rail experience, don't look into the future, and are not concerned with cost.  Most contractors look to the Light Rail systems as endless buckets of money.  Even the mentality of the MTA management looks at Annapolis as a source of unending money (until they say NO).

Let's start off with some examples of what I am talking about:

1)  When I was there, they decided to expand the capabilities of the system, and add a separate substation for the North Avenue yard.  The biggest reason for this was so we could keep the cars powered up overnight during the winter when it was cold outside and the heating needed to run.  After the sub-station was installed and powered up, the main breaker started tripping when all 35 cars were in the yard with the heat on.   Some bright individual finally noticed that the sub-station was a one megawatt unit, instead of a two megawatt unit they wanted.  Of course, at the low level I was at, we never heard as to whether the unit was incorrectly specified in the first place, or the manufacturer supplied the wrong unit..... and if they did, why wasn't it caught on the final inspection of the install (and that PRESUMES they even do quality inspections).  Whatever the case, it's a good example of what happens when the government tries to run things.  I also never heard who paid for the second transformer.

2) The MOW department, for some reason, wanted a Gradall.  Why, I don't know.  They can't really use it for anything.  It doesn't even have hi-rail capability.......  and there is precious little right-of-way that they can access with the thing without it.  But, they went off to Annapolis with their request (The state senate and congress have to approve major expenditures such as this, as it cost $250K).  The rumor floated around that the justification was that "they needed it for snow removal".  Well, the A***oles down in Annapolis, not knowing any better, approved the purchase.  It sits around 95% of the time not doing anything.  Good use of MY tax money, yesiree!

I found this Gradall working in Hunt Valley while taking Light Rail Pictures, but it IS NOT the MTA Gradall.

3) One lonely night, myself and another ET were asked to take a look at a speedometer, it was reportedly not working.  We took the car out into the yard and tested it, and yes, it didn't work.  So we got George to order us a new one out of the storeroom.  We got the new one, and I shook it from side to side (they are those industrial 270 degree 20ma instrumentation meters).....  the needle didn't budge, just like the bad one we took out.  George, the foreman (and no, his name wasn't George Foreman), told us to put it in anyway.  WHY?  Dunno,  I guess he thought we were trying to pull one over on him.  So we put the bad one in, and wasted your tax dollars again.  This also reminds me that they have no form of incoming inspection to weed things like this out, and even if they did find it in-op when it came in, they probably wouldn't return it anyways.....

4) After many, many years, and untold millions of dollars spent to put a pre-emption system in the cars, they are taking it out to make room for other equipment.  First, they had never received a GO from the city of Baltimore to install a pre-emption system.  Sure, it would save an average of two minutes for the light rail trains to go thru downtown Baltimore, but no-one really gave it much thought on how badly it would screw up the auto traffic in town.  This is also related to the clusterfuck in the next paragraph.

5) How many GPS units would you say it would take to operate a Light Rail Vehicle.  If your guess was three, you're right.  Why three, you ask.  Well, let's see.  First there was the position reporting system.  This was supposed to take the location information from the GPS unit and report it back thru the new trunking radios they were supposed to install. 

These first GPS units were supposed to have a second RS-232 port on them so they could interface with the pre-emption system.  Guess what?  They didn't.  So, instead of shipping them back, and getting the correct model, they accepted the wrong GPS heads.  THEN, they added a second GPS unit for the pre-emption system.  Again, I don't know if the engineering firm fucked-up specifying and ordering the units, or if the MTA engineering staff fucked-up in specifying, or if the MTA was just to lame to tell someone that the units were wrong, and you need to take them back and give us the right ones with two RS-232 ports.  Then, a third unit was needed to interface to the automatic braking system....great!

6) The trunking radios mentioned above, another FUBAR mess.  They went to the trouble of installing trunking radios in all 35 of the original cars.  They actually assigned them all of the necessary group codes and ID's, but never put them into service.  They even went to the trouble of taking out a clearance lamp on one end, and sticking a quarter wave whip up there for the radios.  Never to be used.  They just started installing an automatic braking system, which needed the space the radio head took up, so now we had to pay to have all the radios taken out.  Bright, really bright.  The Light Rail freq BTW, is 161.01.

7) Now, you wouldn't think I would leave one of my all time favorites to this far down on the page.  The poles.  The catenary poles.  This one really gets my goat.  Anyone familiar with the Pittsburgh system can say what they want about their poles being designed to withstand something like a 120mph wind.  But they at least put them in the right place....in the middle of the tracks.  Our engineering people, and the genius' they employed to design the system, didn't.  Why does this bother me?  For a number of reasons: a) It costs more money, b) it's twice as ugly, c) it takes up more real estate, and (the selfish reason) d) you can't get good pictures.  I know the transit systems don't care about d), I can't fault them for that, railfans don't pay their bills.  But a) should be the driving force for puttin' the line down the middle.  If the system was eventually planned to be double track, as this system was, why didn't they put enough forethought into it and put the poles in the middle.  It seems obvious to me.  Goes back to what I said about using young, inexperienced designers.  As for c), there are some places where we have limited real estate for the right-of-way.  Here in Riderwood is a prime example, near the old Northern Central station.  They barely had room for two tracks and one pole line to squeeze in back of a strip-mall, but they still didn't put the pole in the middle, they used a single pole on one side and used a really obscene two track hanger.  I don't know what it costs to have a second pole line put in, but I betcha I could retire now with what it costs if it was in my pockets instead of the contractors.

8) I just heard this one not too long ago.  It's about the track alignment just north of the main shops.  Again, instead of planning for the future, they designed the single track with easier curves coming up thru the little valley along the Jones Falls.  Now, with the double tracking project going on, it all had to be torn out and re-laid to accommodate the second track.  Bright, real bright.

9) They react to problems that have already occurred, instead of being pro-active and having intelligent people think of problems that could happen and take measures to prevent it from happening before it does.  Case in point:  the two collisions they experienced years ago at BWI airport, where the operators let the trains run into the bumpers.  AFTER the second one, they instituted a system by where the operator has to creep up to the station.  Prescription drugs or not, the operators should have been fired....we can thank the union for keeping these morons on the property to risk ours lives another day!

10) Up in the Hunt Valley industrial area, the track takes five really sharp curves going into the final station.  The MTA brilliant engineers and management ones said they didn't want to get grease all over the place, so they came up with a bright idea of putting flange lubricators on the wheels.  They didn't work, and God knows how much money that FUBAR cost the MTA.  Last I checked, they weren't refilling the sticks when they wore out.  Too bad it goes below freezing around here, Dallas has a unique solution to the problem.... they have small holes in the rail that let out water, it works great, as all one has to do is watch the trains in Hunt Valley during the rain.

11) Years ago, when I was working for Westinghouse (before it got gobbled up by Northrop Grumman, and I could write many times more stuff about them) they experimented with a thing that was called "quality circles" back in the 80's.... using the people that work there to come up with ideas to help solve a particular problem the company faces, or to come up with enhancements.  The MTA did a similar thing around the 1996 timeframe, and one of the things I suggested was running the LRV's after a ballgame, similar to how the Baltimore Transit used to, back in the old streetcar days at Memorial Stadium.

Pack up a streetcar, and send it on it's way WHEN IT IS FULL!  That's called mass transit.  The manager assigned to oversee this project at our facility was Wayne Jubb.  What a moron.  He said it couldn't be done because they had to stick to their schedule.  My answer was, "WHY".  Ya'll made the rules, ya'll can change them (That is STILL One of my standard responses when management tells me something CAN'T be done).  You can modify the rules to meet a particular operating scenario.  It never changed, and they still throw in your face how they run something like, 98% on time.  Big deal.  I guess no-one in management wanted to make the change because of the possibility that one Light Rail train would run into the back of another before they got into ABS territory.  Who knows, maybe I should try again, for he's long gone - Bonehead.  His backward and conservative thinking is why most transit companies can't come close to making any money.

12) My other suggestion was to take the block between the light rail and heavy rail stations at Lexington Mall and put it under cover and enclose it for the safety and convenience of those wishing to transfer between the two systems... it obviously was an idea that didn't go anywhere.

I bring this up, because they are now in the planning stage a third mode and separated system, with no real transfer point... the Red Line.  I can understand the MTA wanting to keep costs to a minimum, but if you want to attract suburbanites and get them into the city, then make the system easy and convenient (and hopefully safe) to use.

13) Who got the bright idea to use "FINISHED SERVICE", instead of "out of service"?  How can something be "finished service" when it just came out of the shop for it's first run in the morning?  A***oles.  Someone must have seen the light, for sometime in late 2009, or early 2010, they did away with this and went back to using "out of service".... maybe someone at the MTA read this page!

14) The head of the MTA is an appointed position.  He is handpicked by the governor, usually to reward a particular political crony for doing well.  The person knows nothing about transportation, much less how to run an organization of this size that impacts soooo many people on a daily basis.  A good portion of the management under the administrator exhibit the same stupidity and lack of common sense.  An EE I know, that was responsible for designing things at Light Rail, is now in charge of the Light Rail division, and I understand that he has now been corrupted by the people he works for.  Something happens when you get that high.... you lose touch with reality and common sense, and what is fair, and what is right and wrong.  It's too bad, for transit companies could probably turn a profit if it wasn't for this "acquired from the ranks" stupidity.  Update May2007.  The EE I refer to above, Dave, is gone..... in fact, there was about 3 or 4 management spots left vacated by people leaving in early 2006.

15) This here new fangled contraption, the RED LINE..... anyone heard what they want to do with it?

Well, for starters, would it come to anyone's surprise that it is going to be ANOTHER separated system, with no commonality between either of the existing systems.

What the Hell is wrong with the MTA management and designers?  Do they not understand that they are in the business of moving people?  Do they not understand that in order to entice people to get out of their cars, they need to make the system easy to use?  Have any of them tried using their own system to get from Hunt Valley to Hopkins?  It's a literal trip from HELL!!!

My best friend and I have made several pitches to a few not-too-well connected people to make some changes in the design:
1 - Re-vamp the Metro system to use lower floor cars, and if possible, a hair wider....
2 - Make the Red Line System use the Metro line under Baltimore Street....
3 - Make all of the cars a combination of high and low floor cars, so it can handle the high level platforms in the Metro....
4 - Re-route the Light Rail System to use the Metro tracks coming down under Eutaw St, well, at least one of the two routes anyways.....
5 - Have the Red Line use semi-low floor cars, and convert the Light Rail system to use the same....
6 - By doing all of this, we now have ONE standard car used across ALL THREE services, which further reduces re-occurring costs because everything is the same, instead of three different rail cars....

Once this is done, Baltimore would have a truly universal and usable rail transit system you could take from anywhere and get to any other destination.  Then, maybe people would be more likely to use it!!!

NEW 2005
last fraked with: 12/22/2011