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player ready...The South Shore Line hopes to create a backup dispatch center. That’s among the lessons learned from the Aug. 11 derecho that knocked out power to NIPSCO customers across Northwest Indiana.
President and General Manager David Dech told the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District board on Monday about the storm’s impact.
Members of the Indiana House Ways and Means Committee were touring the West Lake Corridor project that day. Raindrops were just beginning to fall when they got off the train at the Hammond Gateway Station. By the time they got to the tunnel under the tracks, it was pouring.
That tunnel is where Dech and others gathered to wait out the rain on March 31, just before the railroad celebrated the first public run along the new Monon Corridor.
Dech shared video of the parking lot being pounded by rain and hurricane-force winds during the derecho.
It was an unforgettable experience for the legislators.
It was a challenge for the railroad to get service back to normal, too. Fortunately, the overhead wires weren’t down even though thousands of trees were toppled across the region. But the power failure hurt. “We are as dependent on commercial power as anyone else,” Dech said.
The railroad contacted a company that provided 150 generators to power the trains. Railroad police had to beef up patrols to protect the generators from neighbors without power, and even then some of the generators disappeared, Dech said.
Without the power for grade crossings, train crews would have to get off the train and flag down cars as the trains crawled past. At that point, walking would have been preferable, Dech said.
He gave credit to NIPSCO for its response. “They really worked hard to get us back up and working.”
Until then, crews were running generators, having to gas them back up as needed.
The railroad suspended service the first day, then began operating with a weekend service even on weekdays until everything could get back to normal.
Ridership took a big hit this summer, with first the South Shore Freight derailment that required busing around the damaged section and then the derecho, Kelly Wenger, director of strategic planning and grants, told the board.
Among the lessons learned from the derecho, Dech said, was that the railroad needs more backup power, more generators and an incident command center.
“We don’t really have a good, solid backup dispatch center,” he said. If power goes out or another disaster affects that dispatch center, the railroad needs the ability to perform that function from another location.
That takes money, and the railroad has already been warning lawmakers about the hit that public transit took from the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’ve been giving tours and speaking with lawmakers in Indianapolis on this funding,” Dech said.
The House Ways and Means Committee got a close look Aug. 11 at the success of the Monon Corridor project for the state’s only commuter railroad, admiring the new stations as well as the service itself.
The railroad’s next big project is realignment of the tracks in South Bend, moving the station from the east side of South Bend Regional Airport to the west side. That would eliminate 18 grade crossings, a fact that improves the chances of getting a major federal grant for the project.
On Monday, the board approved preparing a contract for a private company to get appraisals and other paperwork started, as soon as the railroad receives a major grant to begin the project.
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Twelve homes would need to be acquired to relocate the tracks and build the new station, Dech said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.