Keystone Corridor Improvements

I'm am not a proponent of nuclear power and I certainly disagree with your downplaying/dismissal of the risks, but otherwise, I agree with your points on rail transportation.

hsr_fan wrote:I'm am not a proponent of nuclear power and I certainly disagree with your downplaying/dismissal of the risks, but otherwise, I agree with your points on rail transportation.

I think that to a certain degree, risks need to be downplayed, because there are risks inherent in everything, and if people avoid things because of that, nothing would ever get done. When it comes to nuclear power, for example, certainly there's a risk, and it certainly should not escape mention that if something were to go very wrong, the potential effects are greater than with, say, a coal plant. On the other hand, because of that potential, the safety and security systems designed for nuclear reactors are carefully designed and tested to prevent (as best as possible) such a situation.

I think that nuclear power is a good analog to railroad safety. Nuclear reactors operate with certain safety systems that are designed to prevent accidents, in much the same way that wayside and cab signal systems, and enforcement systems, are designed to prevent accidents. The way nuclear plants are constructed is designed to try to minimize the impact of an accident if the safety systems fail; FRA crashworthines standards are the rail equivelent.

Certainly with nuclear plants, we shouldn't expect the safety systems to always work properly, and as such, build the exteriors for nuclear reactors out of cardboard. At the same time, we don't expect that the reactors (including concrete exteriors; basically the current construction of a reactor) be built under an even larger exterior shell. While doing so might further reduce the impact of an incident, between the safety systems and the first-level protection there's enough protection for the risk involved, and adding more doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint.

Excessive crashworthiness requirements are the rough equivelent. If you have a well-designed signal and enforcement system, you shouldn't have many (if any) incidents of train-train collisions. With proper track maintenance and truck design, you shouldn't have to worry about high-speed derailments. There remains the possibility for something to happen, and so there should certainly be a minimum level of protection required of rail cars. But when you start over-requiring to such an extent as to adversely affect the perfomance of the car/locomotive, you need to seriously look at whether it's worth it.

Nasadowsk wrote:There's been grade crossing accidents, non fatal, too. in fact, one once hit a bigger, heavier obstruction (paving machine) than Amtrak did in Illinois a few years ago. By a factor of 2 or so. No fatalities. the crash dynamics of US rail equipment, especially the Superliners, is horrid at best. .

There are of course no such crossings on LGV routes. On the fastest routes in Britain they have been almost eliminated. Once you go up to 125 mph you don't want to have any at all. On new built routes of course you don't allow them.

If you had a three hour NY-Boston train the airlines would shut up shop. Eurostar has a very large part of the market London-Paris. Unless you actually live near the airport the train is quicker. The same is true of Paris-Brussels; Paris-Lyon and probably even Paris-Marseille. On these routes the airlines have stopped flying, except occasionally.

Jersey_Mike wrote:There are also over 200,000 grade crossings over here. I don't see the wisdom in spending billions of dollars building bridges just so we can avoid eliminating stupid people from the gene pool. Its cheaper to fit engines with snowplows and high power windshield wipers.

We don't need to get rid of all of them right away. I suggest first just eliminating those where passenger trains travel. That solves 99% of the problems. If a freight train has a grade crossing accident, the only people who may die are those in the locomotive plus the vehicle they hit. Therefore, there's less need to start removing grade crossings on lines which will never see passenger trains. It's still a good idea to upgrade them with some kind of impassable barrier so people can't drive on the tracks when a train's coming. I don't really care if we eliminate stupid people from the gene pool at crossings but the problem is their next of kin suing the railroads.

Lastly, I suspect a good portion of those 200,000 crossings are on lines with no passenger traffic and little freight traffic, and are located in very rural areas. Leave them as is. With one or two trains a day, and not much road traffic either, it makes no economic sense to get rid of them. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if 100,000 of the crossings are on completely abandoned lines.

Probably in the end we're talking about maybe upgrading 25,000 crossings with impassable barriers, and getting rid of perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 completely. That's probably equivalent in cost to one day's worth of federal expenditures. It certainly won't break the bank, and in the long run it'll save way more than it costs.

george matthews wrote:There are of course no such crossings on LGV routes. On the fastest routes in Britain they have been almost eliminated. Once you go up to 125 mph you don't want to have any at all. On new built routes of course you don't allow them.

The TGV does get up to 220 km/hr, I believe, on older non-LGV routes. That's about 137 mph!

george matthews wrote: ...If you had a three hour NY-Boston train the airlines would shut up shop. Eurostar has a very large part of the market London-Paris. Unless you actually live near the airport the train is quicker. The same is true of Paris-Brussels; Paris-Lyon and probably even Paris-Marseille. On these routes the airlines have stopped flying, except occasionally.

While you are right about Paris to Brussels having limited air service, those city pairs are only 167 miles apart, so this was never an air-dominated route. However, on the other TGV and Eurostar routes, air is still very much a factor.

Paris (CDG & ORY) to Lyon (LYS): 13 non-stop round trips daily.
Paris (CDG & ORY) to Marseille (MRS): 24 non-stop round trips daily
Paris (CDG & ORY) to London (LHR & LCY): 31 non-stop round trips daily

Eastern Pennsylvania should be just as much a "natural" for a link to the Northeast Corridor as southern New England. There are no less than seven cities of over 50,000 population between the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers. SEPTA ran suburban/exurban service to as isolated a community as Pottsville until the early 1980's. The state has a concentration of elderly second only to Florida, and the Poconos are heavily touted as a retirement mecca.

The problem here is that the local politicians are, as always, very good at dreaming up ideas, and even better at structuring them to fit their specific agenda (I'm thinking of a long-forgotten scheme to revive state-subsidized service to the state's central counties, but to divert the end-point from Buffalo to Erie), but not so good at ponying up the hard cash required.

As a case in point, I'm attaching a link to some sound criticism of a recent pipe-dream of Hazleton, Penna. mayor Lou Barletta, from the Lehighton, Penna. Times/News

http://www.tnonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a ... /110290002

We all know that passenger rail service makes an excellent fit where the infrastructure is already in place or can be modified and upgraded over time into something economically feasible. The problems begin when the ideas are turned over to those who have no grasp of the technical and or geographic limitations involved, or a time-frame that goes no further than the next election. And when the realities are pointed out, we get tarred with the same brush.

WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE CONCRETE TIES ON TRACKS 2 AND 3?
Almost all trains, including Amtrak's, run on 1 and 4 from Philly to Paoli. They more or less have to because almost everything except the Pennsylvanian makes Ardmore. Instead, they should have followed Metro-North's example and installed the new rail and ties on tracks 1 and 4 first. Even the welded rail east of Paoli, except at the new Blue Route bridge, is over 30 years old and due for replacement.

The only way this makes sense is if Amtrak is planning some significant interlocking reconfiguartions like they did on the NEC. Will Paoli be revised in a manner similar to Holly just north of Wilmington? Namely, the two high speed tracks from the west will be realigned so they run straight into tracks 2 and 3. That will speed up Amtrak trains on the inner track, especially if they start skipping Ardmore. But all SEPTA trains will be slowed down by a two mile approach limited when coming to the interlocking, just like every R2 train to and from Wilmington is.

i think i remember reading somewhere that Ardmore might get dropped as a regular stop for most trains - folks wanting to travel to ardmore would wind up on the R5. No reason they have to do this, though; my inbound evening train stops on track 3 while the R5 waits just before the station and passengers cross the track on those wooden "pathways" between the rails.

hsr_fan wrote:What are Septa's AEM-7's rated for? 125 mph like Amtrak's? 110 mph? 100 mph like NJ Transit's ALP-44's?

Maximum authorized speeds as per my SEPTA ETT:

2301-2307 AEM-7 = 125mph
2308 ALP-44 = 100mph

2501-2525, 2550-2559 Coaches and 2401-2410 Control cabs = 100mph (pull mode) 90mph (push mode)

Since the coaches have more restrictive speeds than the AEM-7's, the trains would be restricted to 100 in pull mode and 90 in push mode.

NellieBly wrote:And BTW, I've heard nothing about SEPTA "itching" to dispose of the Bomb cars and locos. In fact, SEPTA is going out for bids for new EMUs to replace 40-year-old Silverliners. The Bomb cars are here to stay.

There is a link to the thread concerning SEPTA's desire to sell off the P/P fleet and electric locos by 2010-2011. A request for bids on the fleet is also on SEPTA's website.

http://64.78.30.219/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16557

hsr_fan wrote:But can they go that fast in "push" mode? I don't think so...that's probably one of the restrictions. I think the FRA prohibits 125 mph operation when the locomotive is pushing from the rear.

And the plan (as I heard it) is to run in push mode on the Harrisburg Line and pull mode both ways on the Corridor. Trains would still loop at Sunnyside and be wyed in Harrisburg as they are now. The stop at 30th Street in Philly would be shortened to the time it takes to do the crew change, but that's about it.

DutchRailnut wrote:The cab cars only led comming off the Atlantic city route, once engine swap was made the cab car did no longer lead, same on return trip the engine was in front of cabcar till diesel for atlantic city line was put on.
The metro liner cab cars do not work with AEM-7's or HHP-8 due to lack of pantograph controls.
Only cab car set up for electrics is 9800 but it has only be used on test trains.

I often rode and saw the Atlantic City-Washington/Richmond trains operating in push mode on the Corridor, and have video of same. Granted, they were diesel-powered for their entire trips; the only trains to operate with electrics were the Atlantic City-NYP-Springfield trains at Shore.

And, AEM-7's 947-953 can (and have) operated in push mode with control cars, unless they were since modified. Some of those units were used in tests with the SEPTA Bomber fleet in late 1987/early 1988 as that fleet was delivered before SEPTA's own AEM-7's arrived. However, it was not done in the normal course of service, seeing as how Amtrak used diesels with the AC trains except for the Shore-NHV portion (where pull mode was preferred to max out speeds on the NEC, and they sure didn't plan to make 947-953 captive units for one train.

I remember now that any train with a former Metroliner cab cannot operate in push mode into and out of NYC. I guess dwell time in PHL will be about 10 minutes at the most. I was also wondering if the Pennsylvanian will operate with a motor as well as count as a limited stop express on the Keystone. Something tells me that it will be diesel west of Philly. It makes sense since it continues west of Harrisburg. In addition, genesis units are better off on the expresses, not locals.

From the SEPTA forum:
http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopi ... 4582c7dd4f

Actually, the FRA study document that is guiding the Keystone Corridor project does anticipate that service to Suburban will be restored. It didn't discuss details of scheduling and operations through Broad Interlocking, but the overall goal of a 90 minute running time to HAR includes originating at Suburban.