R6 Cynwyd: SEPTA's "Dinky"

queenlnr8 wrote:Try to ride all the way out to the Airport. And, if you have been really good, you might actually get to ride the special 'Yellow Bird' Airport cars out there. Its a good trip.

Sorry, the Yellowbirds have been gone since mid-2000. The entire Silverliner fleet is now in the "red-fade-into-blue" stripe scheme.
Unless you meant that tongue-in-cheek and it went totally over my head! LOL!!

To get back on topic, I remember when service ran all day to Ivy Ridge (later Cynwyd) in the 80's. There are many reasons why the line is the way it is now. Just to mention a few:

1. Cut back to Cynwyd due to the bridge over the Schuylkill being in severely deteriorated condition. I asked about Barmouth, and I was told that at the end, passenger boardings there were in the single digits daily.

2. Rider demographics changing (i.e. people moving further into the suburbs from Wynnefield, retiring, etc).

3. Riders on parallel bus routes 44 and 121 already have direct routes into Center City, use Transpasses and will not make a transfer to the train (never mind Regional Rail fares being higher anyway). Riders on Route 65 that go to Center City usually are either travelling from Germantown and change to the 9 or 27 at Wissahickon, and people at the other end of the line in Overbrook usually ride the 10, or the 65 into 69th Street Terminal to catch the El. Most City Avenue ridership on that line is destined to City Avenue points, hence the train does not serve them. Meanwhile, at Wynnefield station, people have Route 40 as an option, though few use that bus there anyway.

4. Remember the service outages that occured after the "as-yet-never-solved" fire that wiped out JEFF interlocking? That helped to drive what was left of the ridership away.

For the ridership that the Cynwyd line currently has, the current service levels are, sadly, adequate.

By the way....I often see a single Silverliner IV on the runs. I wouldn't mind seeing Silverliner II's or III's on there more often....the ride quality is better anyway!

Joe

jfrey40535 wrote:WHy did SEPTA stop service at Cynwyd instead of Barmouth?

Barmouth is nestled in between Westminister and West Laurel Hill cemeteries. It can only be accessed from West Laurel Hill, so it is not particularly convenient. It is below grade, and a walk-to at best. Frankly, I'm surprised it lasted into the SEPTA era.

The construction crews who work on the Manayunk Viaduct rehab project now occupy the station area with trucks. The tracks are buried deep in the ground.

Barmouth is nestled in between Westminister and West Laurel Hill cemeteries. It can only be accessed from West Laurel Hill, so it is not particularly convenient. It is below grade, and a walk-to at best. Frankly, I'm surprised it lasted into the SEPTA era.

The construction crews who work on the Manayunk Viaduct rehab project now occupy the station area with trucks. The tracks are buried deep in the ground.

I was there today. It seems to me that Barmouth would make a nice little station. When you consider that it's already only a three station line, it's not like it would add unreasonable time to the trip. There's a light at its access road (Levering Mill Rd), and it looked like there was room for a small parking lot down there. I suspect part of the problem is not many people know it's there, as it wasn't exactly easy or obvious to find.

It always seemed to me that SEPTA went specifically out of their way to make the R6 Cynwyd branch a single car operations. If I remember correctly they had to get special dispensation from Amtrak to run the single car R6 trains because the cab signaling system might not 'see' a single car. If I didn't know better I'd say SEPTA was conducting a psychological war against the Cynwyd riders. They give them a single car, which is very notable pulling up into 30th St or Suburban Station when a 6 car Silverliner IV set just left on the R5. I'd almost say it's demoralizing, especially when you see every seat occupied as the R6 Cynwyd train departs 30th St Station, yet R2 Warminster and R8 Fox Chase trains leave Temple station with a few seats open.

Perhaps the worst thing that could be done would be to make it a trolley line. You'd face a long ride into the city down the 10 unless some other ROW were found. We'd sacrifice the one easy path we have to get a diesel train from Reading to near center city, and we'd sacrifice what should be the fastest route into Center City from that area.

Lets just kill the 44, as well as the 9, 27, 61x, 123, 124, and 125 buses while we're at it. Or at least eliminate their wasteful 'express' runs on the Schuylkill Expressway. Like Jfrey says, make Bala (and probably Cynwyd too) a zone one station, have the "R8 to Center City" announced on buses that cross the line. Sure you'll lose revenue if no newrider for the Cynwyd branch materialize, but if you gain more riders then at some point your attraction of more riders and the revenue they bring will outweigh the lost money from zone two transpasses. Additionally, since you're taking people off those 60pax max D40LFs and NABI 416s on the 44 and sticking them on two car Silverliner trains where each car can handle double that number of riders with electric power and cheaper maitenance, there would be a net savings in cost of moving the same number of people downtown between the current (likely) modal mix of 75% bus (Rt44), vs 25% train (R6). The 44 comes into 30th St packed every morning, and leaves every night similarly packed. Not all of those trips are going out to Ardmore or Narberth, some are the short runs to 54th and City Line Ave, mere blocks from the Cynwyd Branch's stop at Bala, each of those passengers could get home faster, quieter, smoother, and cheaper (while saving SEPTA money in the long run) if the Cynwyd branch was operated on the same level as the other regional rail branches.

Finally, is it REALLY that hard to just lay track on the bridge, rebuild some cat, knock Ivy Ridge and Manayunk stations into shape, re-doubletrack the whole line, and get the signals working again? Join it up with the R8 Fox Chase and send the current CHE train to Norristown. Those lines have relatively balanced riderships and headways, and it'd certainly solve the current problems of interlining, where an R6 Norristown train could be almost anything coming off the Pennsy side of 30th St Station. This project (as well as the Rt100 to KOP) needs to be fully separated from the Schuylkill Valley Metro debacle and be applied for with independent funding. Two trains stopping at Manayunk and Ivy Ridge would be a boon to that entire area. Even better would be if we could get the two branches connected, for diesel operation into 30th St Lower Level from Reading and Quakertown.

But one step at a time, make the Cynwyd branch a real line first, encourage it's usage, rebuild it to something like it used to be, run it to Ivy Ridge, THEN we can worry about servicing those far off communities.

Well said. I don't think there will be too many arguments here. We should mail some of these forums to someone at 1234 that gives a rats @ss.

I would say skip the trolley idea though, the line is great as it is. In its current form, single track should be fine. Single tracking only starts after the line diverges from the main line.

The buses do currently announce the R6 station, but it looks so desolate down there from the street.

Plus****here's one for a conspiracy theory--->Notice how hard it is to find a timetable for the R6 Cynwyd? Only place you get get it is at Suburban Station. It is found no where else. If that isn't encouraging people to forget about it I don't know what is.

They should experiment for 6 months with the fare reduction. Have big signs posted saying "Transpasses accepted on all trips" or something to that effect, run 2-3 cars for the boatloads of people and maybe we can reduce the number of buses we need on the street!

Actually believe it or not there are Cynwyd timetables at NTC for some reason.

Anywho I went ahead on Thursday and took my own round trip excursion of the Cynwyd branch to see for myself if this line has a prayer of survival. I took the oasis off peak run that leaves Suburban at 12:20PM. The car had a pretty sizeable loadout of Suburban.

When we got out on the Main Line, the Cynwyd cars run get to run on the inner express tracks to 52nd St Jct and we got up to pretty good speed. Going up the roller coaster to the end of double trackwas pretty slow but after the train once again got to open up. Wynnefield got the most patronage with most of the passengers getting off there. Bala got nothing. At the end trip, I walked the ROW up to Barmouth and out of Cynwyd I saw that the track splits back up into 2 into Barmouth and they disapear after that. So in theory they could have a small layup yard up tere if they ever would get their heads out of their patoots.

Now the return trip was very interesting. We got about 4 riders at Cynwyd 1 one at Bala and a car packing load at Wynnefield to head back into the city.So this line has no problem with riders it's just that SEPTA doesn't see it and really doesn't care about it.

Of course! To SEPTA its a burden. Heaven forbid they add a second car to add to passenger's comfort, although it is a short ride.

I'm actually surprised that discontinuing service wasn't on the agenda as part of the service cutbacks.

This is the depressing part, its obvious people do prefer rail over bus, yet SEPTA insists on busizing everything.

LRV, can you in general terms tell me the average profile of the riders on your daytrip? If they fall into the category of the standard bus rider in this city that would be great news.

The Wynnefield riders looked like your avgerage bus rider. The the Cynwyders that got on looked a bit upper crustish though. I'm still floored that Bala got no patronage what so ever in either direction.

That is interesting that Bala received no patronage. You would think someone who uses the 65 to either 69th St or Wisssahickon TC would be heading towards CC. But I'm sure most bus riders that use the 65 wouldn't even think to consult a R6 timetable if they could find one....By the way, why do they have timetables for the Cynwyd all the way out at NTC, but not at Market East or 69th Street? I Think they're sparse at 30th Street too.

jfrey40535 wrote:WHy did SEPTA stop service at Cynwyd instead of Barmouth?

Barmouth ridership (daily boardings) was in single digits before the closure (down from 40 or 50 at best in the late 70s-early 80s)

I've ridden the R6 to Cynwyd and it's a fun ride. I like the ascent up the flyover at 52d Street. Last time I saw it, it departed Suburban Station on one of the stub tracks, 6 I think, and I'd like to catch it there. The two trains I saw were both one car and barely half full. As someone mentioned, I too am a little surprised it still survives -but I guess as long as they do run it they probably should have at least 'every two hours' service during the day and early evening. It would only be a handful of runs.

A couple years ago I rode on the day after the last fare hike. The ticket machines hadn't been reprogrammed and I had to buy my ticket at the counter in Suburban. When I told the lady "Sin-wid" she looked blank. Where, she said? It's the R6, I said, up near City Line Avenue. She looked very disgusted and replied, "Do you mean 'Kin-wood'?" I said, "Is that how you pronounce it?" LOL (Actually I felt sorry for her, with new fares and the ticket machines out-of-service she was having a 'bad day'.)

Once I took the train up to Cynwyd and then walked a block or two down to Greenwood Avenue. About a 20 minute walk along Greenwood brings you out to Merion on the R5. Wow, you should see some of the homes along there. They're not even homes, they're mansions! Like something out of a Hollwood movie. Really gorgeous.

Tommy Meehan

Welcome to the Main Line!

Try your Welsh pronunciation on Llanerch and Uwchlan. Roughly, LAN-erk and somewhere between OOKlan and UCKlan (I think)

Still a whole lot easier than the famous station sign on the other side of the pond:

http://llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrn ... och.co.uk/

LAN-erk

It'd be more like "Klan-Erhh"...at least that's how the sound of the double-L in Welsh sounds to my ears...

Yup, that's pretty close to the actual sound, at least based on some coaching I received from a former co-worker who grew up in Wales. The "ll" is apparently something like a "th" but with an aspirated "h" overtone; hence the almost-K sound you noted. But I was trying to approximate the way the towns' names are pronounced locally, having been Americanized over the last few centuries.

Despite having been a language minor in college, I'm finding that it is almost impossible to convince anyone who does not speak a particular language to make even the most minimal effort to mimic the actual sounds when a word hasn't been fully assimilated. Hence all you hear are references to the "kuh-VER-nurr" shipyards, the "beck-finn" restaurant, and so on. I'm even starting to hear "entrepreneur" pronounced as "enntruprennooer" ... something like the old Appalachian "revenooer", I guess ...