Rail traffic throughout much of California squealed to a halt for nearly three hours Thursday when a new, fiber-optic dispatch system in San Bernardino failed.
Hundreds of Southern California commuters were among those delayed by the disruption, which primarily affected freight traffic but also stopped service on two major Amtrak routes and two Metrolink commuter lines.
"I hope I don't get in trouble for being late," fretted Robert Albee, 26, a Navy employee who found himself killing time at Union Station in Los Angeles, waiting for his train to San Diego.
The outage began at 2 p.m. and lasted until 4:40 p.m., according to Lena Kent, a spokeswoman for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. She said a fiber-optic telephone cable apparently had been cut, causing signals to fail. There no was indication that it was done intentionally.
Signals along tracks tell train conductors when to stop, slow down or continue. Kent compared the outage, affecting about 760 miles of track, with the failure of a major air traffic control tower. Put another way, she said, "It would be like all of your traffic signals going out."
Burlington Northern owns most of the tracks affected by the outage, which extended far into Northern California, Kent said. Union Pacific also experienced some disruptions in freight service, all in Southern California, according to spokesman Mike Furtney.
The two railroad companies have operated a joint dispatch center in San Bernardino since May 1999.
In all, at least 92 freight and passenger trains were brought to a standstill, Kent said.
Among them were five trains scheduled to run on two Metrolink commuter lines, one from Los Angeles to Oceanside, the other from Irvine to San Bernardino. In addition, the outage stopped an undetermined number of Amtrak trains in two major corridors, one between San Diego and San Luis Obispo, one between Sacramento and Bakersfield.
Among those inconvenienced were Stephanie Knight of Placentia and her 3-year-old son, Dorian. Knight said they arrived at the Fullerton station a half-hour before a 2:30 p.m. train was scheduled to leave for San Diego.
Three hours later, she turned in her tickets.
"We're really disappointed because this was going to be his first train ride," Knight said. "He just wanted to see the trains."
Sam Daverson couldn't leave; he was picking up his wife, who was stranded somewhere on the line between Oceanside and Fullerton.
