Railway Age Article on Penn Station

[Ridgefielder]

I was just on a high-profile job site for the first time today for my new employer. We had a long safety orientation, during which our site safety officer (from a well-known international contracting company) informed us that the site had a terrible safety record - our last reportable incident was only 19 days ago which is quite bad by industry standards.

From what others have said elsewhere in this forum, Amtrak has a similar safety record. It must not and will not make faster turns until it can reliably get its incident and accident rate under control. Incident means cut brake hoses, damaged couplers, and destroyed luggage through human error or faulty equipment & infrastructure, not just accidents involving trips, falls, cuts and bruises.

I don't think the issue is with the time Amtrak takes to turn trains; my impression is that the issue is with how long it takes NJT to make the turn.

I'm pretty sure all the Amtrak trains that terminate at NYP go through to Sunnyside Yard to turn.

[jlr3266]

During the evening rush, several trains come in to NYP and discharge passengers off with minutes to spare before passengers heading west are given the gate assignment. Many of these run on a common line known as "Standby".

[EuroStar]

I'm pretty sure all the Amtrak trains that terminate at NYP go through to Sunnyside Yard to turn.

There are some rare exceptions to that. On occasion a Keystone has been turned in Penn -- they are the only ones that do not need to be looped around in Sunnyside as they have cabs on the end opposite of the engine.

During the evening rush, several trains come in to NYP and discharge passengers off with minutes to spare before passengers heading west are given the gate assignment. Many of these run on a common line known as "Standby".

This occur regularly because sets/crews are late getting into Penn from the road or Sunnyside. It is not meant to occur if everything is running as scheduled without delays to any incoming or outgoing trains on all three railroads using the station. For example, even minor delays on the LIRR east of Penn can cause NJ trainsets coming from Sunnyside to be delayed. There is no doubt though that most of the delays are of NJT and Amtrak's doing west of Penn though.