MBCR RailMail About July 22nd Delays

I received the following email from the MBCR's RailMail service at approximately 11:30 a.m. today. It is nice to have an explanation as to why the Worcester line's trains were so messed up today. The only weird thing is . . . I didn't notice any buses at the Grafton station. I wonder what "Worcester stations" received the buses? Were they actually in the Worcester-vicinity or were they stations on the line closer to Boston?

TO ALL OF OUR WORCESTER/FRAMINGHAM LINE PASSENGERS

MBCR would like to take this opportunity to both apologize and explain the delays that took place this morning on this line.

At approximately 6:10a.m. today train P502 experienced a mechanical problem at Southborough. The train crew was able to recover, after an 8 minute delay, and proceeded to Framingham.

Upon arrival at the Framingham station MBCR received word from the CSX dispatcher that they (CSX) were experiencing a system wide failure in their communications department. As this is the company who manages and dispatches this territory we are not allowed to operate our trains without the mandatory paperwork required by CSX; this paperwork is what enables trains to operate safely through that area. This outage left MBCR without the ability to operate trains either inbound or outbound to Worcester until the CSX system problem could be fixed. As a result, train P502 was held at Framingham to operate as an on-time P504 making all stops into Boston. The MBTA ordered 12 buses to enable passengers who board at the Worcester stations to travel between Framingham and Boston.

At approximately 7:43a.m. the CSX communications system was recovered and commuter rail service was able to resume at that time. Unfortunately, it created a cascade effect of delays as well as a cancelled train that would impede our ability to recover normal service for sometime thereafter.

We offer our sincere apologies to the passengers who had to ride into Boston without lights and air conditioning; however, if the choice is to cancel a scheduled trip, especially considering the CSX communication problem, or run the train without lights and air conditioning, the train will make its scheduled trip.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with this explanation and apology and thank you for riding the commuter rail.

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