Inspection Results in Slowdown Order on Amtrak Line

Federal railroad officials on Friday ordered speed restrictions on 75 of the 102 miles of Santa Fe Railroad track between San Diego and Fullerton, which will add from 15 to 25 minutes to the one-way running times of Amtrak passenger trains using the line to and from Los Angeles.

The speed restrictions will last until Thursday of next week, when Santa Fe track crews are expected to complete maintenance work required by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) after its two-day inspection using a new rail car equipped with sensing devices.

Santa Fe announced the restrictions late Friday and said it would have its crews working daily to bring the line back to normal standards, which involve running speeds as high as 90 m.p.h.

Seven Amtrak passenger trains run daily in each direction between Los Angeles and San Diego along the line, which is Amtrak’s second busiest after the Northeast corridor. The running time under normal circumstances is about two hours and 40 minutes.

The line is mostly single track between San Diego and Fullerton. Between Fullerton and Los Angeles, the line is part of Santa Fe’s main east-west transcontinental route and is not affected by the slow orders.

“Barring any weather-related circumstances, we hope to have the track back up by Thursday at the latest,” Michael A. Martin, spokesman for Santa Fe Railroad, said in an interview. “Our engineer people said that we are not going to compromise the safety of the line . . . If the FRA had said we had to run at 35 miles per hour all the way to San Diego, then we would do that.”

While the federal inspection was coincidental to the Amtrak collision in Maryland on Sunday that killed 15 people and injured more than 100, Martin said the tragedy nevertheless contributed to the rapidity of Santa Fe’s response Friday.

The restrictions involve a variety of speed reductions, Martin said. In some places, the trains will have to slow from 90 m.p.h. to 80 m.p.h. In other areas, such as the Rose Canyon section near San Diego, trains will slow from 35 m.p.h. to 15 m.p.h.

Martin said that the inspection turned up problems in what are called surface conditions, such as rough spots at certain track joints and at some switches, which in the worst case might result in a derailment.

“We are not talking about track repairs that are going to shut us down or involve major maintenance projects,” Martin said. “The basic integrity of the line is still good.” Federal officials classify the line as Class 5 track, certifying it for maximum speeds of 90 m.p.h. Only Class 6 track between New York and Washington, with a 120-m.p.h. maximum, is ranked higher.

The coastal line is the first to be inspected by federal officials using their new rail maintenance car, which will check all lines nationwide over which Amtrak trains run. Martin said that Santa Fe engineers are not convinced that the San Diego-Fullerton line has as many problems as the FRA found.

“But we are not in any way criticizing what the FRA ordered,” Martin said. Martin said that Santa Fe has its own high-technology maintenance cars that check the line at least twice a year. “What we want to do is find out the (calibrations) and data-gathering procedures of the FRA car and improve on our own, to standardize inspections,” he said.

“It costs us a lot of money to run our own inspections, and we want to make sure that the criteria that we use are correct.” Martin said that, because it is new, the FRA car could be overly sensitive. “But the FRA is responsible for enforcing the standards,” he said.

Martin said that Santa Fe considers itself one of the top railroads in terms of safety. “This news is like the (Chicago) Bears being beaten by Tampa Bay in football,” he said. “It’s really eye-opening for us.”