More Illinois Trains

[Tadman]

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/ ... 2514690E3U" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Amtrak says it's considering expanding its increasingly popular service from Chicago south to Champaign and Carbondale, but it's uncertain how the extra trains would be funded."

[Rockingham Racer]

UIUC and SIU students are targeted here, but what about EIU students? While not on the CN mainline, I'm wondering if any of them use Amtrak.

[EricL]

Oh, they sure do. There isn't the huge following like you have at Champaign, but yes, a fair amount of students travel to/from Mattoon. This station simply has the disadvantage that it isn't "right in town"; Charleston is about another fifteen minutes down the road.

While I'm not aware of any University-sponsored shuttle service, certainly there must be a few enterprising locals who have realized that there is a market for such.

[Station Aficionado]

Here are the FY2013 ridership number for all Illini/Saluki stops south of Chicago (for all stops except Gilman, Rantoul and DuQuoin, these numbers include CONO ridership).

Homewood 46,552
Kankakee 24,067
Gilman 3,257
Rantoul 5,823
Champaign 190,851
Mattoon 44,598
Effingham 29,359
Centralia 27,618
DuQuoin 11,481
Carbondale 135,891

There is on demand and hourly transit service between Mattoon and Charleston, which serves both the Mattoon Amtrak station, and the EIU campus in Charleston. The service appears to operate during the calling times of the Saluki, but not the Illini. Mattoon has very robust ridership for its population (18,555 in 2010), so I’m guessing they already draw heavily from Charleston/EIU.

[byte]

Anyone know how many cars are the usual count for the Champaign/Carbondale trains as of late? When I was riding it to/from school (Champaign) you'd get a standard complement of 3 coaches + 1 cafe/BC, with the exception of busy Fridays (right before Thanksgiving, easter) which would have eight or nine coaches.

[CHTT1]

The Illini/Saluki run with seven to eight coaches, mainly to allow them to operate at full speed over grade crossings. Shorter trains would have to slow down at each grade crossing since CN, unlike every other North American railroad, can't time its gates to accommodate shorter trains.

[jonnhrr]

The Illini/Saluki run with seven to eight coaches, mainly to allow them to operate at full speed over grade crossings. Shorter trains would have to slow down at each grade crossing since CN, unlike every other North American railroad, can't time its gates to accommodate shorter trains.

I don't understand that. The gates should be triggered to lower when the loco or cab car enters the track circuit before the crossing, and raise when the last car clears. Should have nothing to do with train length. Otherwise how would you mix even 7 car Amtraks and 100 car freights?

Jon

[Greg Moore]

The Illini/Saluki run with seven to eight coaches, mainly to allow them to operate at full speed over grade crossings. Shorter trains would have to slow down at each grade crossing since CN, unlike every other North American railroad, can't time its gates to accommodate shorter trains.

I don't understand that. The gates should be triggered to lower when the loco or cab car enters the track circuit before the crossing, and raise when the last car clears. Should have nothing to do with train length. Otherwise how would you mix even 7 car Amtraks and 100 car freights?

Jon

I believe it has to do with speed.

A freight train travelling at say 30 miles an hour that triggers the gate .5 miles away will take 1 minute to get there.
A passenger train travelling at say 60 miles an hour will get to the same gate in 30 seconds.

I think the goal is to get the gate to trigger in a similar amount of train in each case. (otherwise drivers used to freight trains will start to assume they always have the longer time).

So my guess is the axle number is so it can do some math and calculate how fast the train is going and how long to wait (or not wait) before triggering the gates.

[ngotwalt]

I recently read the Memphis has approached Amtrak as well in the hopes of getting another train to Chicago. The article from the Memphis newspaper can be found here:
http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/amt ... id=3722278" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cheers,
Nick

[dowlingm]

Can we please have a thread merge with the Carbondale thread, to cut down on duplication?

[Thunder]

Never heard of that with the short train theory. Funny the Kankakee local can drop the gates just fine with 2 cars But I digress. The gates timing is set by the FRA. If you are going to run x speed those gates have to be down by x time.

[RRCOMM]

Regarding crossing gates, nowadays the time that most gates are dropped is determined by a device known as a "Predictor". It is a computer based machine at the grade crossing that is based on the rate of change of the track circuit shunt impedance. This means it can determine the speed of the train to keep the gate time constant for slow and fast trains. Length of the train does not matter. Where train length does matter is in shunting the track circuit reliably. It appears that CN is concerned with the reliability of shunting (the wheels shorting out the track circuit). If you have more axles than you are going to have a better shunt. Predictors are designed to go in to a fail safe mode if they cannot get a shunt good enough to make a proper calculation, this drops the gates very early and may cause motorists to get impaitent.

Some railroads have had bad experiences with predictors not being able to "see" an short trainset. So they establish draconian rules instead of fixing the problem properly. We had isues like this at the commuter railroad where I worked but with the help of the signal supplier we worked it out fine 10 years ago.