A damaged overhead wire in the South Waterfront prompted the complete shutdown of the MAX Orange Line late Wednesday and into the Thursday morning commute.
The issue was detected when a train reported power problems around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. It was traced to a “defect” in the MAX overhead power line near Southwest Moody Avenue, TriMet spokeswoman Roberta Altstadt.
The defect caught and damaged the train’s pantograph — the arm that connects the train to the overhead electrical wire.
TriMet inspected all of its MAX trains’ pantographs before sending them into service on Thursday, and several trains were taken out of service for repairs. Because of the sidelined trains and delays due to the inspections, about a quarter of MAX trains on other lines ran with just one car, leading to crowding and delays for some riders.
Meanwhile, crews were inspecting the entire length of overhead wire, from the Orange Line terminus at Park Avenue Station in Milwaukie to Portland State University.
A nick in a train’s pantograph can cause damage to other parts of the overhead power line.
“We’ll definitely be looking at this to see if there are additional repairs or something that needs to be done to prevent this from happening in the future,” said Altstadt, adding that this kind of issue was uncommon in her experience.
Altstadt said the Orange Line was expected to be back in service by midday.
Shuttle buses are serving MAX stations in the interim.
“Any incident like this is a major inconvenience for riders,” she said. “We do apologize and thank people for their patience.”
The outage came at a particularly inopportune time for commuters headed to Portland from the southeast. The Sellwood Bridge is closed through Monday for a concrete pour.
