All things Harrisburg (Keystone) Line

only tangentially keystone corridor but interesting nonetheless
http://lancasteronline.com/article/loca ... iness.html

Where are the western distant signals for Park Interlocking? I went down on Sunday and there were alot signal maintainers out. Most of them were at Atglen. That was my first stop. I thought the trains will be switching over at New Park then Leaman.

BuddSilverliner269 wrote:

ExCon90 wrote:A question for Mike Espee (or anyone else who's been there): Are the distant signals for LEAMAN equipped to display Approach Slow? It was mentioned somewhere above that the crossovers at LEAMAN will be slow speed, and there is often a tendency not to use Approach Slow but instead just display Approach, which I don't think is really sound practice.

I just recently qualified the line and just ran it once as a day off work and I had the luck of crossing over at Leaman and I can confirm that you will get the approach slow on the distant signals.

Thanks. Nothing like an eyewitness acount. My concern was (although it wouldn't apply at LEAMAN), was that if the best you can get on the home signal is Slow Clear, and day after day you get Approach on the distant and Slow Clear at the home signal, one day the route won't be available and the home signal will display stop, and some engineers wouldn't be ready for it.

I visited Lancaster station for the first time on Saturday.
There are contruction projects everywhere, both inside
and outside the station. It does seem like they have torn
apart just about anything and everything. While there must
be a rhyme and reason to the project, it doesn't show much
yet. One four man crew was working to spray paint the
structure beneath the canopy on the eastbound side.

One thing that I noticed was that both main tracks have
concrete ties through the station, but near middle of the
station area, there are 14 wooden ties on both tracks.
Anyone know the purpose of that setup? Thanks.

ExCon90 wrote:My concern was (although it wouldn't apply at LEAMAN), was that if the best you can get on the home signal is Slow Clear, and day after day you get Approach on the distant and Slow Clear at the home signal, one day the route won't be available and the home signal will display stop, and some engineers wouldn't be ready for it.

And that is why when complying with an Approach aspect, engineers operate prepared to stop at the next signal. We have to be ready for it, or else. You also usually get a second cab signal drop to Restricting in the block if the next signal is a Stop Signal or Stop and Proceed.

I will have to see if all the signals at New Park are high or dwarf signals. You can only get Slow Clear aspects on the position light dwarf signals...

Oops...........forgot about no Slow Clear on high PL. To cross over I guess they'll have to give a Slow Approach and have the cab signal clear up when the train is out of the interlocking. And since both tracks are reverse-signaled I would guess there won't be any dwarfs. (I assume that they won't be crossing over much at LEAMAN anyway except for trackwork and things like that.)

Jersey_Mike wrote:... To spend millions or dollars on upgrades to shave 3 minutes off of what is basically a commuter line is a waste of money that could be better spent on increasing speeds on the plethora of 60mph lines that Amtrak currently has to deal with or even better to expand Amtrak or other rail service to where it currently doesn't exist.

So far, ridership has responded well to the improvements that have already been made so I'm not sure why that wouldn't continue. the minutes saved may now be smaller, but every minute saved makes it that much faster than driving. At 95 minutes frm harrisburg, it makes some sense to take the train. at 80 minutes it's MUCH faster than driving. same with lancaster, at 70 minutes that's great, at 55 min, why drive?

It's called opportunity cost. Apply the money to where it will do the most good. Even within the state of PA you'd get more cars off the road with an R3 extension than with a 5 minute speed improvement on the Harrisburg Line.

I think Jersey Mike is on to something here with the focus on opportunity cost. The goal here is maximizing mobility for Pennsylvanians per dollar spent, and it's wasteful (and would be appropriately called "pork") to upgrade the Keystone to 125mph *if* it could be shown that 110mph might be fast enough for the line itself, and a bigger/cheaper source of new Keystone patrons might actually come from a better feeder network from Altoona, Lewiston, State College, Carlisle, and Chambersburg....and the feeder service might be trains, they might be on upgraded rail lines, or the feeders might even be operated by <shudder> a bus, and all have the potential to outperform 125mph running on a investment-per-new-passenger basis.

We're seeing something like this play out in Virginia, where extending just NEC two (non-electric) trains a day to Lynchburg (that offer one-seat rides to Boston) have been highly profitable (in part in their own right and in part by freeing up space on long-distance trains). Initial indications that new (non-Amtrak) connecting bus service from Roanoke and Blackburg (Virginia Tech) will add a lot of train passengers too. These new riders came not from upgrading the NEC under the catenary, but from extensions of non-electric service and from bus feeders.

It may be the way to add Keystone corridor riders is to make investments elsewhere in the Pennsylvania network, or even to extend Keystone trains in interesting directions on the other side of PHL, and not from raising speeds between HBG and PHL.

Arlington wrote: I think Jersey Mike is on to something here with the focus on opportunity cost. The goal here is maximizing mobility for Pennsylvanians per dollar spent, and it's wasteful (and would be appropriately called "pork") to upgrade the Keystone to 125mph *if* it could be shown that 110mph might be fast enough for the line itself, and a bigger/cheaper source of new Keystone patrons might actually come from a better feeder network from Altoona, Lewiston, State College, Carlisle, and Chambersburg....and the feeder service might be trains, they might be on upgraded rail lines, or the feeders might even be operated by <shudder> a bus, and all have the potential to outperform 125mph running on a investment-per-new-passenger basis.
We're seeing something like this play out in Virginia, where extending just NEC two (non-electric) trains a day to Lynchburg (that offer one-seat rides to Boston) have been highly profitable (in part in their own right and in part by freeing up space on long-distance trains). Initial indications that new (non-Amtrak) connecting bus service from Roanoke and Blackburg (Virginia Tech) will add a lot of train passengers too. These new riders came not from upgrading the NEC under the catenary, but from extensions of non-electric service and from bus feeders.
It may be the way to add Keystone corridor riders is to make investments elsewhere in the Pennsylvania network, or even to extend Keystone trains in interesting directions on the other side of PHL, and not from raising speeds between HBG and PHL.

I think you're looking at ti the wrong way. the better the line, the more it makes sense to feed it with buses. the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. second, most of the work isn't actually about increasing speeds to 125 but about state of good repair. state interlocking is ancient and speeds are nowhere near 110 let alone 125. I don't buy the argument that we should be happy with 15-45 mph. pay attention to track conditions, many of the interlockings are ancient. having a goal of 80 minutes from harrisburg to philly is not a bad thing for connecting bus service. VA is similar but a little different. they pay NS an incremental access fee for track, the keystone line is mostly passenger so fewer trains results in higher costs per train...higher speeds are needed to run more trains.
After spending 2.5 hours sitting in traffic not moving on the turnpike yesterday, I'd love a cost effective alternative that doesn't involve the highway to pittsburgh.

A new Middletown Amtrak station could be ready for commuters by 2013...The new station is estimated to cost $30 million, with PennDOT paying 20 percent, Garrett said. The Federal Transit Administration will pay the remaining 80 percent.

For now, PennDOT is “just going through the processes,” Garrett said, working on right-of-way land acquisition and federal environmental clearance.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index. ... omple.html

I did get to see the station. the coffee shop has moved, the brick looks like it's been repointed, and the platform canopies look like they have new roofs, if nothing else. still plenty of work left to do

STATE Interlocking (Harrisburg, PA)

Active interlocking tower controlling the Harrisburg Station terminal area. The former Pennsylvania RR tower is located in the station building and contains an original 1937 US&S Model 14 interlocking machine with 127 levers.

Tower is manned by a Train Director who also handles crew sign-ins.

Attached is a pic from the Penn State facebook page ... This is the Harrisburg campus Middletown, PA with the tracks just beyond the intersection ...

This is a photo of the entrance to the Penn State Harrisburg campus, taken on Wednesday, Sept. 7. The submerged car seen in the intersection belongs to a Penn State student, [...]

Service will be back to normal on Monday September 12th on the Keystone Line (to Harrisburg) and on the Pennsylvanian (to Pittsburgh).

nomis wrote:Attached is a pic from the Penn State facebook page ... This is the Harrisburg campus Middletown, PA with the tracks just beyond the intersection ...

This is a photo of the entrance to the Penn State Harrisburg campus, taken on Wednesday, Sept. 7. The submerged car seen in the intersection belongs to a Penn State student, [...]

Ah yes, the old Alma Mater (At least for my M.A.) I know that intersection well and no that is not my car.

Nick

seems like the elizabethtown and lancaster station renovations are turning out very different
http://lancasteronline.com/article/loca ... nside.html

so the station design was based on ten year old ridership levels? certainly it doesn't sound like amtrak is the only problem here, a lot has changed in ten years and the project should not have moved forward with that design. they spent a ton of money on driveways and adding an inadequate 60 spaces but neglected the concourse as well as adding significant parking. sounds like all parties botched this one..though you'd think that bench refinishing and painting would be part of regular maintenance, not a long term capital project
http://www.whptv.com/news/local/story/W ... n1CWg.cspx

It looks like the Keystone line is getting some additional funding. USDOT just announced a $40 million grant "to eliminate delays in and out of Harrisburg on Amtrak’s Keystone Corridor."

http://www.fra.dot.gov/roa/press_releas ... 9-11.shtml

Any guesses as to what this money will cover? I thought the initial grant of $23 million was enough to fund closing the remaining grade crossings as well as signal and track work around Harrisburg.