Dominion Energy outlines investigation after repeated Manassas Park railroad crossing-arm failures

Dominion Energy engineers told the Manassas Park City Council that a rising stray-voltage issue appears correlated with recent failures of the railroad crossing arms at the Manassas Drive crossing and that the utility is modeling potential mitigation steps.

Calvin O’Dell, the city’s director of community development, framed the problem for the council, saying Norfolk Southern technicians told city staff they had been tracking stray voltage at the crossing for nearly 15 years and reported the magnitude of those readings recently increased. “We were also lucky enough because Dominion is doing their transmission line upgrades to have representatives of Dominion … to join that meeting here with Norfolk Southern,” O’Dell said.

Rob Mason, who represents Dominion Energy’s transmission operations engineering group, said Dominion began a focused engineering study in July and has combined the company’s field measurements with an outside consultant’s modeling. “Once we have all that and that model is accurate and representative, we’re gonna roll immediately into … working with that consultant on designing a mitigation strategy,” Mason said.

In council questions, Mason said his team’s first awareness of Norfolk Southern’s long-term tracking was in July and that data centers in the region are not the direct cause but have increased load flows on the local network. He described an abnormal system condition that occurred while a parallel transmission line was out for upgrade work, forcing more flow onto the line that runs alongside the railroad corridor.

Council members and residents asked about ownership and maintenance responsibilities for the rail corridor. The transcript records that the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority (VPRA) recently purchased the line, and Norfolk Southern remains involved during the transition. City staff said they have worked directly with Norfolk Southern on testing and asked Norfolk Southern and VPRA to brief the council on any action plans.

City staff said Dominion and Norfolk Southern performed simultaneous measurements on the rails and the power lines at the crossing in late July and early August to validate the consultant model; Dominion expects a preliminary consultant report by the end of next week. The council thanked Dominion for the presentation and said it will await the consultant’s mitigation recommendations.

The council did not take action on the matter at the meeting; staff identified the consultant report and subsequent mitigation design as the next steps.