Amtrak Vermonter / Montrealer

GP40MC 1116 wrote:I was looking for a thread on the Vermonter and this seems to be it (Correct me if I am wrong)

I've recently been working up in the St. Albans/Swanton area on a project that's associated with the NECR. I wanted to verify some information as to it pertains to the Vermonter. On Wednesday May 1st, I had the opportunity to observe the S/B Vermonter prepare for its departure and depart from St. Albans. Power was P42 # 77 with Cab Car # 9651 on the other end. Later that day while driving home (with a rest break in White River Jct.) I was able to catch the N/B Vermonter with P42 # 21 (North) with the 9647 on the rear end. Now that to me would be interesting the next day (May 2nd) as the 9647 would have been leading S/B 55 out of St. Albans... I wonder how often that happens? Does Amtrak have any redundancy plans when/if the cab car or locomotive should fail in Vermont? At least with the Downeaster service 99 percent of the time you have a spare set of a engine, and a coach, cafe and cabbage sitting in Portland.

I was speaking to the conductor on Wednesday in regards to how there crew schedules were, seems Conductors start and end in Springfield, then change again in New York? I want to say I recall also the engineer's switched out in Brattleboro, Vermont? I find it interesting that the crews do a round trip, bracketed in between by a night in the crew hotel and go back South the next day. I wonder how many days a week/per month a crew works. Seems similar to the airline's schedules?

I can say commuting to Okemo in Ludlow From Stamford CT BLF-STM weekly for my Days off usually Mon-Thursday, Conductors Harry & mike are on the Vermonter almost every day in either direction. The cafe Attendant is the same what seems to be once a week to every other since they go Washington DC to St. Albans and then joining Mike & harry is an extra board or another assigned conductor. The Vermonter conductors SPG-SAB are really cool polite and have a great attitude. I saved a total of about 20,000 miles on my car this winter taking the train. When you factor in Gas & wear and tear on my car thats about $5,000! I am looking forward to the CT River portion being done. and having a faster commuter. I always hated the drive and am glad I actually got to take the train weekly this past ski season

I'll second the crews from Springfield to Vermont being really good
When I went we had a conductor named Dave heading back
He was with a female who was also nice
Didn't catch her name being how Dave read back what the dispatcher said to our train heading to and from Saint Albans
By the way what is PMB
My guess is Physical Mobile Base?

Just a guess, but PMB could be the dispatcher's initials.

GP40MC 1116 wrote: Does Amtrak have any redundancy plans when/if the cab car or locomotive should fail in Vermont? At least with the Downeaster service 99 percent of the time you have a spare set of a engine, and a coach, cafe and cabbage sitting in Portland.

Jp1822 addressed the rest of the post correctly so I'll tackle this part. If it fails and there is enough notice, they'll yogi a replacement. If it is close to departure, it'll run with "rubber wheels" at least to SPG, possibly NHV.

I remember seeing a video of a rescue shuttle that came from Springfield to Palmer
To pull vermonter southbound to either Springfield or New Haven
Because of the other engine having a failure of some kind
The engine was 107 on rescue shuttle cab car was 9639?

Looks like things are moving right along. The mayors of Holyoke, Northampton and Greenfield have written a letter asking for an extension of Springfield shuttle service to their towns beginning next year. See article below. Includes a graphic of the station design for Northampton.

http://www.gazettenet.com/home/6140772- ... d-and-verm

parkerdog wrote:Looks like things are moving right along. The mayors of Holyoke, Northampton and Greenfield have written a letter asking for an extension of Springfield shuttle service to their towns beginning next year. See article below. Includes a graphic of the station design for Northampton.

http://www.gazettenet.com/home/6140772- ... d-and-verm

1) hasn't the goal from the beginning to eventually extend multiple Shuttle round trips north of SPG?

2) 40 feet (unless they were referring to the mini-high level) is pretty darn short for a platform for a 5-6 car train

This may have been answered already, but if runs are extended up to Greenfield, would the train turn on the main line? Given the little freight train traffic, I suppose that's a distinct possibility.

NH2060 wrote: 1) hasn't the goal from the beginning to eventually extend multiple Shuttle round trips north of SPG?

2) 40 feet (unless they were referring to the mini-high level) is pretty darn short for a platform for a 5-6 car train

Yes, the 2010 MA State Rail Plan discussed having a goal of 7 daily trains over the Knowledge Corridor to Greenfield. The current plan appears to be extend 1 shuttle north to Greenfield at the start, but the Mayors want additional trains to be added more quickly. The issue may be scheduling and equipment availability because every shuttle that is extended to Greenfield will likely take 2-3 additional hours round-trip. MA DOT will have to pay for the additional service, so they may want to incrementally expand service frequency in response to passenger ridership. Amtrak may also be waiting until the most of the upgrades on the NHV-SPG corridor are completed, which will cut the trip times for the shuttles.

The reporter obviously thinks the mini-high is the complete platform. I would expect there will be a full length 400' or 500' long low level platform at each of the 3 new stations/stops in MA. And there will likely be mini-highs at all 3 to be ADA compliant. The mini-highs should be faster than rolling out the lift when they need to board someone in a wheelchair and cut boarding times as it can be used for the elderly, passengers with bad knees, or towing large suitcases.

afiggatt wrote:

NH2060 wrote: 1) hasn't the goal from the beginning to eventually extend multiple Shuttle round trips north of SPG?

2) 40 feet (unless they were referring to the mini-high level) is pretty darn short for a platform for a 5-6 car train

Yes, the 2010 MA State Rail Plan discussed having a goal of 7 daily trains over the Knowledge Corridor to Greenfield. The current plan appears to be extend 1 shuttle north to Greenfield at the start, but the Mayors want additional trains to be added more quickly. The issue may be scheduling and equipment availability because every shuttle that is extended to Greenfield will likely take 2-3 additional hours round-trip. MA DOT will have to pay for the additional service, so they may want to incrementally expand service frequency in response to passenger ridership. Amtrak may also be waiting until the most of the upgrades on the NHV-SPG corridor are completed, which will cut the trip times for the shuttles.

The reporter obviously thinks the mini-high is the complete platform. I would expect there will be a full length 400' or 500' long low level platform at each of the 3 new stations/stops in MA. And there will likely be mini-highs at all 3 to be ADA compliant. The mini-highs should be faster than rolling out the lift when they need to board someone in a wheelchair and cut boarding times as it can be used for the elderly, passengers with bad knees, or towing large suitcases.

Platform length probably depends on whose default spec they're engineering it to. If the state of MA is calling the shots, they probably will mandate the MBTA-standard 800' for all new/modified platform construction in unconstrained locations (450' the bare minimum if there isn't room). They overbuild all their commuter rail platform lengths across the system to fit up to 9 coaches, even when there is zero need to run consists that long. Nobody else in the region is anywhere near as rigid about it (MNCR/CDOT rarely ever exceed 6 cars in diesel mainline territory, 4 cars on branches and SLE; Amtrak even less picky on tertiary routes like the Downeaster). But I guess they see an institutional advantage in being locktight about this now 30 years on into overturning the system for accessibility, because Eastern MA has very consistent overall platform sizes except for olllllllllld non-accessible relics that haven't been touched since the steam era. There aren't that many shorter outliers except when laws of physics intervene, so I would not be at all surprised if they pour asphalt for 800-footers on the Conn River no matter how laughably overbuilt that'll look to the untrained eye.

(Of course, you're just talking the low-platform asphalt there, since it's limited to 1-2 car mini-highs by the freight clearance route. So going long isn't that much of an overbuild in money or labor.)

I think a better move than just extending shuttles to Greenfield is to establish a morning train out of White River Junction and an evening train north out of Springfield for White River Junction. Further I think Brattleboro is just as good a destination as Greenfield would be and I think Vermont might well be interested in this and offer some support as well. Maybe not every train but at least more than what exists today. Biggest fault I see in Brattleboro is the lack of parking, they need to do something about that if they want more service.
Noel Weaver

Better to use the shuttles as is, and just run them up to Greenfield and back. This is currently
(partially) a commuter service south of Springfield, and the 3 car shuttle trains are well
suited for this task north of there as well. The one shuttle up and back to start makes
a lot of sense. They can see how it goes, and then add more. It does seem to me kind
of dumb to go to all that work to upgrade that corridor and then not get full use out of it.

Noel Weaver wrote:I think a better move than just extending shuttles to Greenfield is to establish a morning train out of White River Junction and an evening train north out of Springfield for White River Junction. Further I think Brattleboro is just as good a destination as Greenfield would be and I think Vermont might well be interested in this and offer some support as well. Maybe not every train but at least more than what exists today. Biggest fault I see in Brattleboro is the lack of parking, they need to do something about that if they want more service.
Noel Weaver

I would extend a shuttle up to WRJ, but arriving around midday or early afternoon and departing south in the early evening, and would run it WRJ-NYP. Of course, depending on whether the Vermonter's schedule would get pushed back or forward after the Conn River reroute would depend on a better time for this new train, which I've dubbed "Connecticut Yankee". It would be really nice to see a second daily train serving the east side of Vermont, and would give people more flexibility.... especially if you didn't have to spend an entire day on the train to get to your destination.

Brattleboro actually just got an expansion in parking last year, to a small lot on the east side of the tracks. But the main problem there is the grade crossing. Any station activities and traffic is backed up well into NH to the east and into downtown to the west. According to Railpace, a new station was "really close" back around 2000. Not sure whatever happened to that idea, or if it involved an entirely new location. There aren't too many places to move the station to and get off the grade crossing, unless you wanted to go north of downtown / out by the West River bridge. The line is still double-tracked from the Conn River Bridge north to West River, but the east iron hasn't been used in quite some time (decades?).

I have a feeling these next few years are going to get really interesting!

I would extend a shuttle up to WRJ, but arriving around midday or early afternoon and departing south in the early evening, and would run it WRJ-NYP.

I would go one further and extend it up to St. Johnsbury, if only to provide new service to an area that doesn't have it already and open direct access to the Northeast Kingdom and Upper Valley.

NealG wrote:

I would extend a shuttle up to WRJ, but arriving around midday or early afternoon and departing south in the early evening, and would run it WRJ-NYP.

I would go one further and extend it up to St. Johnsbury, if only to provide new service to an area that doesn't have it already and open direct access to the Northeast Kingdom and Upper Valley.

One thing at a time. They're not going to be able to get passenger service on far more mediocre VTR-maintained track for a long, long time. Much less anything with commuter-level density sans a signal system. VT's capital investment priorities right now are taking advantage of the upgraded Conn River track with whatever value-addeds they can squeeze and getting the Western Corridor up to spec. I'm sure in the long-range plan they want to do something passenger up to St.J because it's probably the "best-of-the-rest" stretch of track to tap for future passenger service after the Montrealer is back and the Western Corridor is fully expanded. It's attractive in its own right. But no way is that going to be on the table until the mid-2020's when they settle up the laundry list of improvements still to tackle on their Top 2 corridors.