For Amtrak No. 581, It Was Just a Bad Day All Around

It was a day Amtrak would rather forget, a commuter’s nightmare, a story of mishap and misfortune on northbound train No. 581.

And before it was over, about 500 Amtrak passengers had spent almost three hours sitting dead still on the tracks--without air conditioning--because of a faulty locomotive air compressor, a broken-down van and a clock-watching crew that refused to take the train into Union Station in downtown Los Angeles because their workday had ended.

The engineer remained at his controls. The conductor and two assistants who punch tickets sat down and waited. Rules were rules. Federal law forbade them to work a second longer.

“It seems that everything that could have gone wrong did,” said Renee Banks, an Amtrak public affairs spokeswoman in Washington. “This certainly is an unfortunate incident. It really doesn’t happen that often.”

It all started innocently enough after the train left San Diego, on time, at 2:45 p.m. Friday for what should have been a 2-hour and 50-minute commute to Union Station. It didn’t take long before things began to fall apart.

First, the locomotive’s air compressor failed just outside Oceanside, shutting off electrical power to the passenger and dining cars. The train slowed to a stop at 3:45 p.m. and sat there, without lights or air conditioning, for almost 90 minutes as temperatures hovered in the high 70s.

The Amtrak locomotive was dead, so national railway system officials urgently searched for a replacement to rescue the stranded passengers. In desperation, Amtrak turned to the Santa Fe Railway, which leased it a locomotive.

As the passengers waited patiently, the new locomotive was connected and the journey north into Orange and Los Angeles counties resumed.

But the locomotive, intended for pulling freight trains, proved to be much slower, Banks said, further adding to the delay. The train chugged on, making stops in San Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana and Fullerton before heading into its final run into Los Angeles.

Passengers began looking at their watches, realizing that they would be late, but not knowing what was to come next. They didn’t realize that the crewmen were also looking at their watches.

The train suddenly came to a halt in Pico Rivera, miles from the closest Amtrak station.

The crew had stopped the train because of a federal law called the Hours of Service Act. A safety-conscious Congress had passed the law to make sure that railroad workers do not stay on the job too long without rest.

“They knew they weren’t going to make it into L.A.,” Banks said. “The crew really didn’t know how late they would be. The problem was with the freight locomotive, which significantly slowed down the train.

“They were only 11 miles out of Los Angeles when the clock ran out,” she added.

The crew, she said, notified Amtrak that a replacement crew would have to meet the train short of Union Station.

A emergency replacement crew was rounded up and sent out in a van to meet the train at a Santa Fe Railway yard--but the train never made it that far. The clock had run out and the engineer had shut down the locomotive short of the rail yard.

When they learned the train had stopped in Pico Rivera, Banks said, the replacement crew members jumped back into their van.

“But the van wouldn’t start,” Banks said. “It broke down.”

Amtrak No. 581 was stuck again.

The replacement crew could not get the van to start, so they piled into an Amtrak superintendent’s car and sped off to Pico Rivera.

Banks said it was another hour before the new crew arrived at the train, and with the old crew now seated with the passengers, guided the train into Union Station.

The train pulled in at 8:27 p.m.--nearly six hours after leaving San Diego--or roughly the time it normally takes to commute from San Diego to Los Angeles and back .

Throughout the ordeal, Banks said, the passengers were frustrated and some were understandably angry, but most remained well-behaved.

“I didn’t hear of any problems,” she said. “Obviously, the passengers on the train would be concerned if they were sitting there in the dark with no circulation or no air conditioning. I would be.”

At Union Station, Banks said, Amtrak officers were flooded with calls and questions from families and friends who had shown up--at 5:25 p.m.--to meet the train.

“I understand that they were obviously very concerned,” she said.

Amtrak No. 586, the southbound commuter to San Diego, left Union Station at 10:40 p.m., almost two hours late.