New station at ROC

News reached here today from the Empire State Passengers Association that the Schenectady station has been demolished and a sparkling new facility will be open and working on that site by late 2018. Quickly calculating: that would be roundly a year from now! They won't make much progress in the bitter Capital District winter, so I figure three months for permits, three months for frenzied construction, three months for ripping it out and moving it four inches, three months to resolve disputes with the city, and three months to get the parking lot striped. All in all, eminently doable.

Which brought to mind a station that used to be located four or five hours west of there, in Rochester, which was torn down longer ago than anyone can remember and replaced very gradually with a new edifice. The structure reached its full height behind the construction fences in mid-June and the Democrat & Chronicle ran an article about its imminent opening on June 19. Well? How is it going?

I can tell you that I've learned that CSX has built two station tracks between new interlockings CP 370 and CP 371, which are located between relocated main tracks 1 and 2. I believe there is an island high-level platform that will serve the station tracks. I will welcome any corrections (I have not been there to see it) or updates on progress of the station building, canopies and platform.
Andy

dumpster.penguin wrote:News reached here today from the Empire State Passengers Association that the Schenectady station has been demolished...

How could you tell?

dumpster.penguin wrote:Well? How is it going?

This was the last I read about it:

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/sto ... 408070001/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

scoostraw wrote:

dumpster.penguin wrote:Well? How is it going?

This was the last I read about it:

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/sto ... 408070001/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

OK, I saw the video in the story. What was wrong with the perfectly good looking station that they tore down? (let me guess, some politician's brother-in-law owns a construction company...) 8^)

The previous station was an outmoded, unattractive Amshack. It was located in the same place where the new one is being built.

wtsherman100 wrote:The previous station was an outmoded, unattractive Amshack. It was located in the same place where the new one is being built.

I'm confused. The building in the video looked like a fairly attractive (1970's modern style) rather large facility, not your typical "AnShack"...

n2cbo wrote:

wtsherman100 wrote:The previous station was an outmoded, unattractive Amshack. It was located in the same place where the new one is being built.

I'm confused. The building in the video looked like a fairly attractive (1970's modern style) rather large facility, not your typical "AnShack"...

A step above Amshack, but still really bland and boring.

Roadgeek Adam wrote:

n2cbo wrote:

wtsherman100 wrote:The previous station was an outmoded, unattractive Amshack. It was located in the same place where the new one is being built.

I'm confused. The building in the video looked like a fairly attractive (1970's modern style) rather large facility, not your typical "AnShack"...

A step above Amshack, but still really bland and boring.

Still, much better than what we have here on the NEC at Metropark (which serves thousands more passengers than ROC...

I lived in Highland Park for 20 years. We're also in a day and age where we don't need a super large station house on NJ Transit stations. Metropark has a thousand shelters and an excellent canopy after that long restoration tearing away the Penn Central remains.

Those mid-level Amshacks, similar to Detroit, have two failings: One, they were cheaply built and look like garbage with any level of use after 20-30 years. Two, they are not that great for more than 20 people to board at a time. Detroit fills with 100+ people for many trains and it doesn't work so hot. You have wall-to-wall people and a narrow stairway to get them all to the train. Of course, stations with attendants feel it's unsafe to let passengers up until the train rolls in, so we jam everybody into the darn stairway. Talk about unsafe.

Of course, the grand daddy of mid-size station problems is Staples Mill. You get 3-5 trains in about the same hour each evening and it's a s***-show, all in the same size building.

Tadman wrote:Those mid-level Amshacks, similar to Detroit, have two failings: One, they were cheaply built and look like garbage with any level of use after 20-30 years. Two, they are not that great for more than 20 people to board at a time. Detroit fills with 100+ people for many trains and it doesn't work so hot. You have wall-to-wall people and a narrow stairway to get them all to the train. Of course, stations with attendants feel it's unsafe to let passengers up until the train rolls in, so we jam everybody into the darn stairway. Talk about unsafe.

Of course, the grand daddy of mid-size station problems is Staples Mill. You get 3-5 trains in about the same hour each evening and it's a s***-show, all in the same size building.

The station attendants sometimes take this much too seriously. Albany-Rensselaer comes to mind. I get safety, but man, it would be nice to stand on the platforms to wait for the train rather than be herded like cows.

Anyway, hopefully these antiquated Amshacks go the way of the dodo. They are making progress, just not enough yet.

Worst thing about Amshacks is they seem to be perpetually humid no matter what time of year. Rochester's looked a lot like Albany's before it was replaced in 2002. I'm glad that they've backed off from cheap+utilitarian on station design.

hs3730 wrote:Worst thing about Amshacks is they seem to be perpetually humid no matter what time of year. Rochester's looked a lot like Albany's before it was replaced in 2002. I'm glad that they've backed off from cheap+utilitarian on station design.

It's not just the humidity, but it just looks boring and totally 70s architecture.

Off the top of my head: Buffalo-Depew (current state of unknown given the Canalside station proposed), Richmond Staples Mill, Grand Forks, Flint, Carbondale, Tacoma (closing)

There probably are more, but either a) I've never been to it or b) I'm blanking.

MSP had and MIA has the granddaddy version of the Amshack, the 300A design meant to accommodate 300 people an hour. It looked for all the world like a combination airline terminal and lounge straight out of 1977. ROC was a 150B for 150 people an hour.