Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Cloudy with a chance of 20 pound chunks of metal from the Liberty Avenue el train tracks


 NY Post

A giant piece of iron fell from the elevated A train tracks in Queens and smashed through the roof of a black cab Tuesday afternoon — narrowly missing the terrified driver inside.

Driver Ana Leonardo was waiting to pick up a passenger on Liberty Avenue at 100th Street in Ozone Park when she heard a loud crash through her Camry’s rear window.

 “I was stopped here because I had to pick up a customer,” she told The Post, adding in Spanish that she was “asuste mucho” — very scared.

“If something like that comes through the head of people, they’re going to die right away,” said her husband, Manuel Mendoza.

Mendoza told The Post that the two of them share the vehicle, lugging passengers around the city for fares.

“Thank god my wife is fine, but the car is crazy,” he said. “We use it 10 hours a day, so we have no job right now.”

Leonardo is just the latest near-victim of falling subway parts, after multiple similar incidents in Queens in the spring.

Update:

This is from the comments section and I hope Governor Cuomo, NYC Transit, The MTA and Andy Byford reads it, because what this man says has validity and something this catastrophic will happen at the pace these chunks are flying off the rails.

Especially to Byford, you should have quit when I told you to last year and when you had the chance a few weeks ago.


Ceramic track tie bushing, the snap on spring clamp came off and that's likely been launched atop some rooftop perhaps a block away.
 

They need to go back to the wooden ties and spikes
 

That MTA jackass from England & Canada thinks he's running trains on the ground with ballast rocks.
--Not so in New York City.
 

Trains running faster, vibration, excessive torque from harder braking is causing all European style new hardware to break loose like bullets going right threw the netting baskets or flying elsewise.
Its also causing life & death damage to the 100 year old steel structures.

These "IMPROVEMENTS" are for the worse here.
Last week a bolt went flying, the nut had cleanly snapped of at the thread from the excessive force and torque from the vibration and swaying.

Send Byford, his suits and computer apps back to England and hire somebody actually qualified with NYC's train hardware before a section of elevated & 10 car train of people ends up down in the street or a city block of homes !!
 

Go below any station on the 7 train, the noise & vibration being transferred down the structures is horrifying. It was and never so intense, like a Saturn 5 rocket shaking street, rattling storefront windows.

-Gino


8 comments:

Gino said...

Ceramic track tie bushing, the snap on spring clamp came off and that's likely been launched atop some rooftop perhaps a block away.
They need to go back to the wooden ties and spikes
That MTA jackass from England & Canada thinks he's running trains on the ground with ballast rocks.
--Not so in New York City.
Trains running faster, vibration, excessive torque from harder braking is causing all European style new hardware to break loose like bullets going right threw the netting baskets or flying elsewise.
Its also causing life & death damage to the 100 year old steel structures.

These "IMPROVEMENTS" are for the worse here.
Last week a bolt went flying, the nut had cleanly snapped of at the thread from the excessive force and torque from the vibration and swaying.

Send Byford, his suits and computer apps back to England and hire somebody actually qualified with NYC's train hardware before a section of elevated & 10 car train of people ends up down in the street or a city block of homes !!
Go below any station on the 7 train, the noise & vibration being transferred down the structures is horrifying. It was and never so intense, like a Saturn 5 rocket shaking street, rattling storefront windows.


-Gino

Anonymous said...

Why does this all seem to be happening at once?

We've gone for decades without a single piece of metal falling off the elevated tracks to having nearly a dozen in one year. Have the media just not been reporting on it before? Did no one notice? Is there some sort of low-key sabotage going on?

Gino said...

Why does this all seem to be happening at once?

I have some theory's as I said above I will add some more
Because the governor know it all is demanding fast modernization compounded by this new suit ex station manager jackass from England. This guy tossed everything tried and proven down the toilet. This rush for so called "modernization" and running trains faster is causing everything to break. And whats breaking & falling appears to be new recent hardware.

2- The workmanship and skill level of the workers is shit too. Most them guys are from the Caribbean. They get stoned, zone out, drink coffee and don't give a shit.
Then repeat every 3 hours. =Thank the unions for that.

3-Why are these "new and improved" parts making up most of whats breaking, falling we see on the TV and news?
Is this cheap steel from China compounded by improper installation ?
Remember what happened to the Titanic with defective cheap steel and speed

The MTA needs the old bosses and foreman with the cigars back, not suits and armchair monkeys selling everybody a bunch of horseshit.

Gino said...

JQ-LLC:
I think I may have claimed in July "it will get much worse when winter nears and the tracks get shorter" ?
The wheels of the trains fall into wider gaps (potholes) where the rails join and what you get is each train car wheel creating the force of a 80 ton jackhammer.

Rob in Manhattan said...

"Trains running faster, vibration, excessive torque from harder braking is causing all European style new hardware to break loose like bullets going right threw the netting baskets or flying elsewise.
Its also causing life & death damage to the 100 year old steel structures."

Alarmist Bull----.

The trains are just running as they did before the accident in 1995 that caused two-decades of slowdowns.

I regularly ride the 4,6 N,7 and A for business. They are just barely as fast as years ago, only the 7 really tears along and it take the curve onto Roosevelt (after 46th)much slower than a decade ago. Perhaps there is some problem there, but the rest of the route is faster.

BTW: The rolling stock, particularly the R10-R11 were far heavier than what is on the rails now.

What is happening is simply sloppiness of contractors and workers. They fail to clean up after changing out parts. I see bolts, those J clamps and other debris on the track every time I ride.

Rob in Manhattan

Anonymous said...

Could this be deliberate based on MTA workers not having a current contract? Hmmm

TommyR said...

A good reminder to keep your time beneath any el tracks to a minimum.

Anonymous said...

I'm kinda amazed at posters blaming this on trains going faster, when it seems like the trains are going slower than ever, and only started going back to something distantly resembling the normal speed just recently.