Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
Federal regulators on Friday gave SEPTA more time to finish emergency inspections and repairs of its Silverliner IV Regional Rail cars, as well as to outfit them with modern heat-sensing technology that gives crews early warnings of potential fires. The Federal Railroad Administration ordered SEPTA to take 14 steps by the end of October to ensure passenger safety after the 50-year-old commuter rail vehicles were involved in five train fires this year. Now, the transit agency will have until Nov. 14 to complete the inspections and until Dec. 5 to finish installing the sensors, called thermal protection circuits. » READ MORE: SEPTA train inspections: How many are left? “We are grateful for the FRA’s collaboration, and we are committed to following through on the required actions so that we can continue returning safe and reliable service to our customers,” said SEPTA General Manager Scott A. Sauer said in a statement. “This has been a herculean effort by our workforce.” As of Friday morning, SEPTA had completed detailed mechanical probes of 120 Silverliner IV cars — out of a fleet of 223 vehicles. FRA officials were on site for some of the time monitoring the work, officials said. Regional Rail passengers have faced extensive delays and other issues during the work. Sauer warned that disruptions would continue. “We know our Regional Rail riders have been subjected to crowded conditions, pass ups, delays, and cancellations,” Sauer said in the statement, thanking customers for their patience. Days after the FRA issued its order on Oct. 1, SEPTA mechanics, electricians and others began working double shifts on the required work. Neither the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating, nor SEPTA itself has found a single precise cause or causes of the fires. The first car of a Wilmington-bound train caught fire Feb. 6 as it pulled out of Crum Lynne Station in Delaware County. Four other Silverliner IVs later caught fire, the NTSB said — in Levittown on June 3, in Paoli on July 22, in Fort Washington on Sept. 23, and in the city on Sept. 25. In all the cases, passengers were evacuated and no serious injuries were reported. Sauer had recently asked the FRA regulators to push back the deadline for finishing the two tasks. “The work is time consuming,” he wrote in the request. Sauer also asked for more time for SEPTA to finish another requirement in the order: installing the thermal-protection circuits. Such equipment was not available when the Silverliner IVs were built in the 1970s. “Well-qualified crews are diligently working through high voltage circuits … and are taking numerous resistance measurements and conducting cabling inspections and electrical component inspections,” Sauer wrote.
