I Guess That Counts As A Good Enough Excuse

The New York Times’ William Neuman explains in great detail why he was late to work yesterday:

The beating of a butterfly’s wings, it is said, can lead to a hurricane an ocean away. And a break in a Manhattan subway rail, though it may lack poetry, can really foul up the morning trip to work in Brooklyn and Queens.

That is what happened at 6:55 a.m. yesterday, when the operator of a Queens-bound N train leaving the Lexington Avenue station radioed a dispatcher to say that the train was being delayed by a red signal that should have been green.

For many riders on the N, R and W trains, that was the beginning of a morning journey that was more headache than head-to-work.

. . .

The radio call from the N train went to a dispatcher at the Rail Control Center, the subway system’s computerized nerve center in Midtown. The dispatcher told the train operator to go slowly past the signal.

A call then went out to a pair of track maintainers based at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, two stops from the problem.

They jumped on a train and by 7:15 a.m. were at work at the Lexington Avenue station, according to John Johnson, the Rail Control Center’s assistant chief. They discovered a break in a rail about 1,200 feet from the east edge of the platform.

It was not unexpected. A red signal of the type that stopped the N train is often a result of cracked or broken rails, according to Antonio Cabrera, director of track engineering. That is because electrical power for the signal system flows through the rails, and a crack can break the circuit to the signal, sending it into its default red position.

“It was a clean break, like if you cut it with a knife,” said Mr. Cabrera after reading a report about the work. “It was up and down. It looked like a joint exactly.”

The cause of the break was not clear, Mr. Cabrera said, although the cold weather may have been a factor.

The metal contracts in the cold, he said, increasing stress on the rail, and small cracks can turn into large ones.

Once the break was discovered, Mr. Johnson said, dispatchers at the control center halted Queens-bound trains heading toward the Lexington Avenue station.

Now workers had two separate problems. The break had to be repaired, and trains had to be diverted.

A repair crew was called in and by 8:20 a.m. had set to work. Power to the third rail was cut on that section of track.

Using a large drilling machine, a crew of three workers and a supervisor drilled holes in the rail on either side of the break, Mr. Cabrera said. Then they fitted metal bars to both sides of the rail and bolted them in place. At 10:15 a.m. an empty subway train made a test run over the mended rail. And at 10:20 service resumed under the East River to Queens, just over three hours from the time the broken rail was discovered.