Regional Rail service is creeping back to normal

Regional Rail trains are operating with fewer canceled trips and are running with more cars after months of service disruptions while SEPTA rushed to inspect and repair 223 Silverliner IV cars after five caught fire last year.

Yet packed two-car trains and skipped stops persist on some lines during peak travel times.

“It’s been three months and our customers had reason to believe things would be better sooner and they’re frustrated — understandably,“ SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said. ”There is still some catching up to do."

SEPTA decided late Thursday to restore 24 Regional Rail express trips on the Lansdale/Doylestown, Media, Paoli, West Trenton, Norristown, and Wilmington Lines, Busch said. The restored expresses had been running as locals.

An Oct. 1 federal mandate to inspect and mitigate Silverliner IV fire risks required the transit authority to take the workhorse of Regional Rail offline, leading to shorter trains and furious riders.

SEPTA’s records show it canceled 2,544 Regional Rail trains from October through Dec. 31, though the number steadily dropped over time — from 1,324 to 752 to 468.

As of Thursday, 180 of the Silverliner IV cars had met all the milestones set by the Federal Railroad Administration to return to service.

Regulators demanded each car pass a safety inspection, have necessary repairs made, and have a modern thermal-detection circuit installed.

So far, however, just 78 of those 180 Nixon-Ford era rail cars have been returned to service.

That means work is yet to be completed on 35 Silverliner IVs. All together, the cars make up 57% of the Regional Rail fleet.

“Over the last couple of days, we’ve been adding more three and four-car trains,” Busch said. With the restoration of express service, that should continue, he said.

To keep Regional Rail service running in its slimmer form, SEPTA has been using its 120 Silverliner V cars, which arrived between 2009 and 2011, as well as 45 coach cars, which have no motors and are pulled by locomotives.

The Silverliners have onboard motors, carrying passengers and providing propulsion at the same time. The 78 returned to service will also add capacity.

In addition, SEPTA plans to use an additional 10 passenger coaches leased from Maryland’s commuter railroad. They are here, but train crews are undergoing training, which was delayed by vacations and work schedules over the holidays. They should be ready to go a couple of weeks, Busch said.

The transit agency is seeking to buy 20 used passenger cars from Montreal but has not heard whether it won the bidding.

Recovery has been slow for a variety of reasons.

For instance, SEPTA has not been able to finish installing the thermal detection circuits, designed to give earlier warning to crews of potential fires because it apparently bought the entire North American supply of the specially coated wire used.

Back-ordered shipments arrived around Christmas, and now there is plenty of wire to finish the job, SEPTA says. The deadline for the installations was Dec. 5, but under the circumstances, federal authorities did not punish SEPTA.