Jeff Smith wrote:If they were going to clear anything up with a 5th track, they should look at acquiring the building on North Main right at the mouth of the Danbury Branch. From a satellite view that appears to be the only north-side impediment to a New Canaan branch style track 5 setup similar to Stamford. It could still be a stub track; you'd have to tear down the inbound station and parking deck to make it through, but it still keeps from fouling the main for a shuttle train.
I don't think fouling the main for the Danbury shuttle is really that much of a problem. It's only on there for what, 200 yards from the junction to the switch for the WB pocket? That's certainly not enough of a problem to require the outlay of tens of millions of $$ you'd need to acquire the properties on North Main and reconfigure the rather tricky bridge across the intersection of Main and Washington streets.
Guess my bigger question is- why did they rule out a lift span? Is the bedrock unsuitable for the needed tower footings? Acquiring property and building a temporary bridge doesn't exactly sound like the cheap alternative.
Also- the blog post from Nancy on Norwalk says the temporary bridge would be
north of the current structure, but the properties cited in the
Hour article as being potential CDOT acquisitions are on the
south side of the tracks. And they're all on the east bank of the river-- but I don't see how it would be possible, without an
extremely tight radius curve, to get the line onto a temporary structure without demolishing either the IMAX theater or part of the Aquarium on the west bank.
If anything, by the way, I could see this being a spur for the State or somebody to throw enough money at the HRRC/Maybrook problem to make it go away and get the P&W trains to Danbury back onto a Devon-Derby Jct. routing.