Remember when lightning struck a Washington State ferry at the Edmonds terminal Oct. 10? Turns out that same strike might have prompted the latest glitch in Edmonds’ wayside horn system.

That’s the word from City of Edmonds Public Works and Utilities Director Phil Williams, who explained the new issue affecting the system, which was launched in June 2019. The system’s goal is to reduce noise pollution from train horns at the city’s Dayton and Main Street at-grade railroad crossings by isolating the audible warning to the crossing area only.

While there was a power supply problem with the wayside horn system a couple of weeks ago — possibly related to the lighnting strike — that has been repaired, Williams said. Now, however, the city is addressing the aftermath of that issue, which is that train crews are continuing to blow their horns at Main Street — even though the wayside horn system is now functioning properly.

The issue began Oct. 12, when BNSF officials notified the city they had detected “a small amount of stray electrical current” coming from the wayside horn system, which was feeding back into the BNSF signal cabinet located at Main Street, Williams said.

“Their cabinet and our cabinet have control wires between them that bring their activation signal to our system, so it knows when to start the wayside horns,” Williams explained.

Because of the stray current, BNSF notified the city that it had disconnected the city’s horn system. That was followed by a meeting between BNSF and city officials that afternoon “to see if we could work together to troubleshoot the issue,” Williams said.

The public works director stressed that the automated horn system at both Dayton and Main Streets had been functioning properly prior BSNF’s disconnection. Investigating BNSF’s concerns, city officials “believed we had isolated the problem to the power supply in our cabinet,” Williams said. “We immediately ordered two replacement power supplies to replace the one we thought was failing and also provide a spare.”

While the parts were ordered with express shipping, they didn’t arrive until Thursday, Oct. 22. The new power supply was installed the same day it arrived, but it didn’t fix the stray electrical current issue that had been observed by BNSF, Williams said. However, BNSF determined it would allow the wayside horn system to continue to operate until further notice while efforts to resolve the issue continued.

The system was reactivated Oct. 22 and again was functioning properly, “albeit still with a small amount of leaked current reaching the BNSF signal cabinet for an as-yet-unidentified reason,” Williams said. The city also called the BNSF dispatcher’s office and requested cancellation of the order for train crews to blow their horns in Edmonds, which had been done as a safety measure while the wayside horn system wasn’t working properly.

Although that order was issued, train crews have continued to below their horns, an issue that Williams described as “frustrating.”

“We went back down to check the system on Friday to see if it was functioning as expected,” he explained. “It was, but while we were there we watched two trains come through that were still sounding their horns. We called the dispatcher again to find out why. He didn’t know but said he would reiterate to the train crews to stop blowing train horns in Edmonds. Here we are on Monday and they have continued to blow train horns all weekend long that are not needed. We called today to again get them to stop and have been assured they will.”

Williams said officials believe the issue “could be related to the very large lighting strike” Oct. 10 at the ferry terminal, which is not far from the two signal cabinets on Main Street.

“BNSF checks their signal cabinets every month and have never had this issue before,” Williams said. “But the day after the lightning strike the problem was very apparent. The Dayton Street system was unaffected.”

— By Teresa Wippel