Penn Station Emergency Repairs: Trackwork, etc.

I've taken NJT trains home out of NYP the last 2 days and things seem to be running very smoothly at 4:30pm ish each day. Here's what could be glimpsed over the top of the plywood wall of the current state of track 10 today:
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There is a full page ad appearing in The Times today outlining all the "great things" ahead for Penn Station riders. It is in "open letter" format and co-signed by "Wick and Dick".

One point in the service adjustments I do not understand is that if one LD train had to be changed to a WAS end.point, why wasn't it 91-92, Silver Star, rather than 19-20, Crescent. Since Hialeah is the maintenance base for LDSL equipment, they will be at a loss to efficiently rotate the cars assigned to Crescent into "Silver" consists so as to have them get to HIA for periodic maintenance.

Had they chosen to make the Star's endpoint WAS, the problem would be eliminated.

east point wrote:Well it certainly seems odd. Suddenly there seems to be very little media coverage about this being the start of the " Summer of hell " No problems ?

Locally coverage has petered out once the media realized it's not the circus they hyped it up to be.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:There is a full page ad appearing in The Times today outlining all the "great things" ahead for Penn Station riders. It is in "open letter" format and co-signed by "Wick and Dick".

One point in the service adjustments I do not understand is that if one LD train had to be changed to a WAS end.point, why wasn't it 91-92, Silver Star, rather than 19-20, Crescent. Since Hialeah is the maintenance base for LDSL equipment, they will be at a loss to efficiently rotate the cars assigned to Crescent into "Silver" consists so as to have them get to HIA for periodic maintenance.

Had they chosen to make the Star's endpoint WAS, the problem would be eliminated.

Well, lets see ... No.92 arrives at 1438 and No.91 departs at 1505. Not enough time to turn and service the equipment. The Crescent arrives at 1005 and departs at 1955 which is plenty of time to service the equipment at Ivy City. In fact this saves one set of equipment which is always in short supply on Amtrak.

There are those of us who are old enough to remember when the Southern Crescent did turn in Washington DC. Back then it wasn't a big deal to change trains in Washington to/from points on the corridor. In fact I'll go as far to suggest that sometime in the (far) future when Superliner III cars start showing up that this train be run between Washington and New Orleans with Superliner equipment. I would also make the same suggestion for the Cardinal which would share the Washington DC Superliner pool with the Crescent and the Capital. Of course this will run afoul of the "all eastern trains MUST run to New York" crowd.

Point noted, Mr. Spatch. Agreed that to do a same day 92 to 91 turn at WAS, schedules would have to be juggled - and thatight interfere with the "Precision Railroading" hand now at the throttle down Jacksonville way.

I guess there is no alternative that when cars assigned to 19-20 need their periodics, they will have to be cut in or out the consists of 97-98 at WAS with the engine change.

Lets see Crescent 4 train sets with 36 - 40 cars in pool. How often have to rotate to MIA ? Once a month ? So every day one or two cars added to loco consist for travel to MIA? Easily done ?

Cars from the Crescent can be serviced quite nicely at New Orleans, which is a maintenance base in its own right.

Allouette wrote:Cars from the Crescent can be serviced quite nicely at New Orleans, which is a maintenance base in its own right.

Boy did this brain forget that !

At the bottom of the full page ad in the NY Times,there's a website address, http://amtrak.com/nyprenewal" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Are they going to put it back with cement or wooden ties? Continuously welded rail would be over-the-top. I assume there is no reconfiguration. Are they updating/replacing the signal system?

It seems like a bit of everything that's apart of "A" interlocking is getting worked on,at the platform tracks,a total replacement
of the tracks from stub ties to direct installation on a new concrete base.

Everything most anyone would ever want to know about this project:

https://www.amtrak.com/infrastructure-r ... ss-reports
Penn Station Infrastructure Renewal - Weekly Progress Reports
Amtrak

Amazing amount of transparency on this project. Thank you Amtrak

Switch replacement has already been done. By July 20/21st, system should be in a lot better shape as next projects get finished.

They predicted things would get really bad bit it has been pretty smooth so far and with another week of work will be even better than it was this week.

Plus commuter rails are better able to monitor and adjust for usage as well as Amtrak. Seems like media went too far covering how big of a disaster this would be.

So after a week of successful rush-hour operations, today (Saturday) everything went haywire due to overhead wire power problems. One Amtrak and one NJ Transit train each became disabled and passengers had to be evacuated requiring responses from NYPD and FDNY. So they can run rush-hour train traffic successfully but they can't get thru a weekend with lighter scheduling.

Overhead wire/catanery needs replacing and I believe its scheduled for replacement as well. I forget which project it is and when it wiil be done but I could of sworn I saw the related project somewhere.

Should definitely get better over time. Nj Transit still has catanery project in force for one of its lines for tracks it owns.