Workers fix downed commuter rail line

The busiest passenger railroad in the United States came to a virtual halt on Aug. 23. A fire in a key switching facility shut down service on 10 of the 11 lines of the Long Island Railroad.

Every weekday 265,000 passengers ride this railroad that connects Nassau, Queens and Suffolk counties to Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Heavy rains apparently shorted out a 750-volt cable supplying power to the third rail. A surge of electricity started a fire in Hall signal tower, knocking out the interlocking machine that controls 77 switches and 53 signals on the east end of Jamaica station.

This hub of the Long Island Rail Road was shut down completely for four hours. Only the line to Port Washington, which branches to the north of Jamaica, was unaffected.

Interlocking machines are important safety devices that prevent conflicting routes and signals. While the media misreported that it was built in 1913, Hall’s interlocking machine was actually installed in 1931.

This piece of machinery is 79 years old, but like an old metal typewriter, it’s very reliable. Members of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen maintain it and replace needed components to keep it protecting passengers.

With this machine knocked out, 100,000 commuters were stranded in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Railroad workers started to “block and spike” switches to establish permanent routes. About two-thirds of the railroad’s trains were able to run.

In the meantime, signal maintainers worked around the clock to rebuild the interlocking apparatus. Workers needed to replace or evaluate 200 wires, performing more than 300 tests.

Within a week the railroad was back on its normal schedule. It was human labor that repaired this problem that threatened to strangle Long Island.

Jay Walder, the $350,000 a year chairperson at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) — the entity that owns the LIRR — had nothing to do with making the repairs.

A week before this fire broke out, five congresspeople wrote to Walder, asking him to reconsider the LIRR’s furloughing of 25 signal maintainers in September.

What if these maintainers had already been laid off? How much longer would it have taken to get Hall tower back in service?

Signal maintainers work outside in all sorts of weather. It can be dangerous along the right of way and maintainers have been killed. This writer has worked in signal towers on Amtrak for 26 years, and he and his co-workers rely on signal maintainers to keep trains moving.

On Aug. 13, the LIRR notified 62 trainmen and trainwomen that they would be furloughed in a month. Many passengers change trains at Jamaica station. When a third of the LIRR’s trains were cancelled, it was workers inside the trains that often told passengers how they could adjust to the problem.

How much more chaos would there have been if these workers had already been fired?

Jay Walder has fired hundreds of station agents and other subway workers. All these layoffs go hand in hand with cutbacks in service.

That’s hell for everybody.

Millies is a member of the Transportation Communications International Union Local 1402; he was arrested at an MTA board meeting in December 2008 when he tried to throw a shoe at Elliot Sanders, Jay Walder’s predecessor.