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A train heads uptown on a downtown track — but good visibility prevents tragedy


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Forget about trains with bedbugs. At least those trains were on the right track. A subway operator on the (A) line recently piloted an express train uptown — on a downtown track — for several minutes before coming to a stop, according to sources. A dispatcher tried to contact the crew by radio after realizing the train had pulled out of the Canal St. hub on the wrong track, and was moving against the regular flow of traffic. But the crew later told authorities they never heard the emergency radio broadcasts, the source said. The operator only halted the A train after she already had passed through the Spring St. station and spotted the headlights of a southbound express idling ahead of her at the next station, W. 4th St., the source said.
 
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Or looked out the window through Spring Street.

I'm just amazed at people.  They just don't pay attention.  I see it on the buses and trains... Bus or train takes a detour and people don't even blink and they usually don't know where the bus or train is going but they sit there anyway.

 

I'm also disturbed by the crew though.  Sometimes I wonder what type of training these folks get because they do things that I know that they have to be trained on.  In the case of B/O's pulling the bus into the curb instead of stopping in the middle of the street when there is no reason to... Things that are common sense... What this crew did just boggles my mind....

 

Reminds me of the crew on the (D) that pulled into the local track at Columbus Circle, yelled emphatically that the train would be going express, and then went local. LOL People were cursing up a storm, including myself.  <_<

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And as usual passengers are clueless... See it far too often... People are just too involved in their world.  I bet no one even thought about what was going on or asked any questions... 

 

Because the downtown tunnels have some kind of defining features which make them impossible to mistake for uptown track?

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Because the downtown tunnels have some kind of defining features which make them impossible to mistake for uptown track?

Stop making excuses for people's incompetence... You always have an excuse... I see what people do every day here... Has nothing to do with anything but just sheer laziness and a lack of paying attention.

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Stop making excuses for people's incompetence...

 

I can get if it's a bus route diversion and you're a regular, but it's the goddamn subway. All the tunnels look exactly the same.

 

 

 

You always have an excuse... I see what people do every day here... Has nothing to do with anything but just sheer laziness and a lack of paying attention.

 

And you're always blaming people for the stupidest things. Passengers can be stupid a lot of times, I agree, but this is one scenario where blaming them for not noticing makes no sense at all.

 

I'm sure passing through a local station, you'd notice you're too far away from the local track you're supposed to be next to.

 

How do you figure? The track can't be seen from the train anyway, and unless that station is your home station I doubt you have learned its ins and outs. It's a big system, you can't expect everyone to know it like the back of their own hand.

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http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/train-heads-uptown-downtown-track-good-visibility-prevents-tragedy-article-1.1915299

 

Forget about trains with bedbugs. At least those trains were on the right track.

A subway operator on the A line recently piloted an express train uptown — on a downtown track — for several minutes before coming to a stop, according to sources.

A dispatcher tried to contact the crew by radio after realizing the train had pulled out of the Canal St. hub on the wrong track, and was moving against the regular flow of traffic.

But the crew later told authorities they never heard the emergency radio broadcasts, the source said.

The operator only halted the A train after she already had passed through the Spring St. station and spotted the headlights of a southbound express idling ahead of her at the next station, W. 4th St., the source said. An A express train went the wrong way on a a downtown track.

The passengers on the Aug. 11 ride apparently remained clueless that they essentially were going the wrong way on a one-way street.

Luckily, the screwup happened on a stretch that, for the most part, is a straight track with good visibility, a veteran motorman said. If the train operator had been going around sharp curves, and wasn’t hearing or receiving dispatchers calling out on the radio, this could have ended with a serious crash, the knowledgeable old-timer said.

“She could have had a head-on collision,” he said. “That’s the only way to say it. There’s no nicer way to put it.”

A MTA spokesman and a union official both agreed this was a serious breach of safety protocols, but said there was no real threat of a collision. The train at W. 4th was ordered to remain in the station. The A train operator was only traveling at 10 mph or less, the union officials said, and was proceeding very carefully.

The A train originally was traveling south when signal problems started causing extensive delays in the system. Dispatchers began rerouting service, and the A train operator was told to was told go back uptown from Canal, sources said.So how does a train wind up going the wrong direction?

The proper series of steps would have been to empty the train of passengers, pull into a spur track just south of Canal, and then maneuver through a switch to the northbound express track, authorities said.

Instead, operator simply went north on the same southbound track, apparently thinking she would soon encounter the crossover switch she needed by going in that direction.

The MTA has reassigned the A train crew to desk duty as it investigates the misadventure, the spokesman said. Before it pins all blame on the train operator, the MTA has to answer these questions: Are the crews’ radios inferior to an earlier model, as some workers have claimed? Was that part of the problem here? And why, despite all the advances in technology, are motormen and conductors claiming they still encounter “dead zones” underground where all radio communications are lost?

I'm confused about something. There are signals for running against the current of traffic. The train would have passed several signals before getting to Spring street. Even though the crew didn't hear calls on the radio, if the signal was "clear" to proceed, they followed the signal and wouldn't think to call.

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Hold on. Dispatchers were aware of the problem. Don't tracks have signals that face both directions just in case of a wrong railing? Dispatchers can't remotely raise a trip cock?

 

Also, when you look a signals facing the wrong way, they're ALWAYS red. How in the world does the T/O miss that?

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I can get if it's a bus route diversion and you're a regular, but it's the goddamn subway. All the tunnels look exactly the same.

 

 

 

 

And you're always blaming people for the stupidest things. Passengers can be stupid a lot of times, I agree, but this is one scenario where blaming them for not noticing makes no sense at all.

 

 

How do you figure? The track can't be seen from the train anyway, and unless that station is your home station I doubt you have learned its ins and outs. It's a big system, you can't expect everyone to know it like the back of their own hand.

 

 

The operator only halted the A train after she already had passed through the Spring St. station and spotted the headlights of a southbound express idling ahead of her at the next station, W. 4th St., the source said. 

 They passed the Spring St. station going Northbound.... The only way that you don't that you're going in the wrong direction is if you're clueless, a tourist or not paying attention...

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 They passed the Spring St. station going Northbound.... The only way that you don't that you're going in the wrong direction is if you're clueless, a tourist or not paying attention...

 

Unless you're a regular at the station, you get a maximum of 20 seconds glimpse at the platform. I doubt all non-users of the station would be able to register what it looks like 100%. And on the off chance they did, why should they know that this be important later?

 

I find it absolutely hilarious that whenever a buff gets mad at passengers for not being as familiar with the system as they are, then they get bad comments from all over, but a non buff suggests it and nothing. A buff might have been able to recognize that the train was on the wrong track, but many passenger do not know as much about the system as we do, so I think they can be forgiven for not knowing something was up, eh?

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Because the downtown tunnels have some kind of defining features which make them impossible to mistake for uptown track?

 

...but it's the goddamn subway. All the tunnels look exactly the same.

 

How do you figure? The track can't be seen from the train anyway, and unless that station is your home station I doubt you have learned its ins and outs. It's a big system, you can't expect everyone to know it like the back of their own hand.

 

Unless you're a regular at the station, you get a maximum of 20 seconds glimpse at the platform. I doubt all non-users of the station would be able to register what it looks like 100%. And on the off chance they did, why should they know that this be important later?

 

It's not really about how the tunnels look, but more about how they were set up. With some exceptions, NYC's subway system is set to right-hand traffic just like cars, and their "roads" are generally divided to either four-lane or two-lane bidirectional traffic. Platforms in use are either island or side platforms that serve both directions. This means one can figure out whether their train is running express, local, or the wrong way, simply by observation and using logic. I can see why passengers at Canal might not see any problems, but at Spring St that should have raised eyebrows.

 

Arguably, because the subway system has long stretches of similar setups, it should make things easier for people to remember - or even picture -  the system.

 

Plus, when passing through any station, there is more than enough time or lighting for anyone to see the rails, if not the track bed.

 

That's how I see it. However, I'll agree that passengers are different from me and I can't expect all passengers to pay attention to this stuff. even if it seems to me to be pretty easy to figure out. They have their reasons, and that's their prerogative.

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It's not really about how the tunnels look, but more about how they were set up. With some exceptions, NYC's subway system is set to right-hand traffic just like cars, and their "roads" are generally divided to either four-lane or two-lane bidirectional traffic. Platforms in use are either island or side platforms that serve both directions. This means one can figure out whether their train is running express, local, or the wrong way, simply by observation and using logic. I can see why passengers at Canal might not see any problems, but at Spring St that should have raised eyebrows.

 

Arguably, because the subway system has long stretches of similar setups, it should make things easier for people to remember - or even picture -  the system.

 

You said the key phrase... Common sense... You can only go but so many ways... North, South, East or West... <_<

 

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I don't even know how this an argument. Many areas in the system are set up to be bi-directional. How on earth is a regular everyday passenger suppose to know something is wrong? I'm a railfan, and I would've just been like, "well, this is new!" You guys ever heard of wrong railing. I'm just trying to figure out the details of this myself, though. I don't think the trips of signals are up for trains going in the wrong direction...or, better said, I'm not sure. One thing I think I am sure of is the train moving in the right direction would have been tripped. So, I guess the violence of this crash would have been determined by the speed of the wrong-railing train. I don't know what the signals are like in that area, but I do know that the blocks for wrong-railing are way bigger because of the infrequency of that occurrence. I kinda baffled as to how this happened.

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