More time? SEPTA asks for extension of federal deadline to inspect aging Silverliner railcars

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SEPTA is running out of time to meet the end-of-the-week deadline to inspect its older Silverliner IV railcars.

Earlier this month, the National Transportation Safety Board warned SEPTA to take action following a series of fires involving the 50-year-old railcars this year. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued an emergency order for SEPTA to inspect the trains, adding that “failure to comply” with the Federal Railroad Administration’s order could lead to “increased oversight of the system at the federal level.”

Now, just days before that deadline, SEPTA is requesting a two-week extension to finish the inspections.

“We had expected that we were going to have to do this in order to complete the inspections,” said SEPTA’s Andrew Busch. “We’ve been talking with the FRA throughout this process.”

Out of 223 Silverliner cars, inspections have been completed on 108.

“We’ve been happy with the progress we’ve made so far,” Busch said. “We’re getting through an average of about eight cars a day. So, it’s been a good rate of completion for these inspections.”

Out of those cars that have been inspected, about two-thirds have failed and only 35 have been returned to service.

If the two-week extension is granted, Busch believes the inspections can be completed in that time frame. They expect to have a decision by the end of the week.

Because SEPTA crews have focused on getting through inspecting as many cars as possible, repairs have not yet started on the trains that failed inspection. Once inspections are complete, repairs will begin.

“Most of those cars have some minor repairs that we’re going to do before they get back into service,” he said. “Those haven’t been major safety-related repairs, but you know, we go in and find an old component that needs to be replaced or something needs to be upgraded, something that we would find in our normal inspections. We’re going to go ahead and replace that before it goes back into service.”

SEPTA’s current timetable would put the rail fleet back at full strength around the end of December or the beginning of January.

In the meantime, the loss of those cars on the rails has caused big delays for passengers. SEPTA is currently in negotiations to find replacement train cars that could be purchased or leased affordably.

“We don’t have anything finalized yet, but we’ve talked to several agencies, including MARC in Maryland, New Jersey Transit and some others, to see if there’s some railcars that we might be able to either lease or buy that will help add to the fleet that we have available,” he said.