Any Details on Acela Brake Cracks?

[wdornfeld]

It was news in May that the Acela trains had "cracked brake disks", but there haven't been many details. About the best I have seen are:

http://host18.hrwebservices.net/~myjackp/may1205.html

and

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051102089.html

Can anyone point me to updates or details? Tnx.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Existence of a problem was news to me. Thanks.

Existence of a Government Accountability Office was also news to me. I don't know whom to thank for that. ;-)




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[unclesyd]

I wonder if the Accountability Office should have been the Accounting Office. No two agencies would ever have the same initials. The GAO (General Accounting Office) has been around for years and are real good after the fact types. They act just like the congressional oversight committee's.

There was a lot of bits and pieces of information about the rotor when they took the Acela trains out of service. There were several investigative reports by people that knew absolutely nothing about nothing. This was evident by the display of car/truck brake rotors with heat checks, had nothing to do with the actual problem on the Acela.
I have an ex-colleague who was close to the problem and was keeping up with the progress but told me that all of a sudden there was a blackout on information at his end. He was initially under the impression that his group was going to get a part for investigation but that never happened.

If the few pictures of the rotor that have been published are represenetive of the actual failures the direction of the crack is a little difficult to explain from an operational point of view. Seen through the hub failures, traverse spoke failures, rim failures, etc., but never radial spoke failures other than some manufacturing defects.