MBTA F40PH-2C 1050 wrote:Also of note, MassDOT is planning for a massive Tie replacement job on the Middleboro Secondary between Attleboro and Middleboro scheduled to start this fall. This line is planned on getting the works, new ties and stone, to upgrade it to decent speeds...the current numbers are planed on replacing roughly 1300 ties a mile
This goes hand-in-hand with the Framingham Sec. upgrades. CSX is getting 286K loading weight extended from Medfield Jct., where it currently ends, to Mansfield Jct. That's good enough for heavier carloads on the NEC local that trawls the industrial spur a little bit north of Mansfield Jct. to South Attleboro, since the NEC Shoreline got rated 286 pretty much all spots where the extant freight jobs roam when Amtrak did the Acela/electrification rebuild 15 years ago. But CSX doesn't really gain any revenue increase from the uprate unless the Middleboro Sec. gets upgraded to Taunton where it can eventually accept 286K loads out of Fall River and New Bedford when those lines get the last of their (NON- South Coast FAIL -related) repairs. MassDOT has settled on a default Class 2 maintenance standard for any such secondaries or branches prioritized for this scope of freight investment, with the freight carriers obligated to pay to keep it that way for any self-contributed costs for wear and tear their trains put on the state's infrastructure.
It's all itemized in the MA State Rail Plan filed with the FRA, so all of this work has been ID'd as a freight priority for years now. Nothing surprising...and it is a MassDOT, not MBTA, budget that's paying for this. These would just be the first couple installments of that long-anticipated work finally grinding into gear. With later installments to come when they do more freight-only work on the South Coast branches. The only immediate passenger relevance for this is that by speccing a Class 2 maint standard it becomes way easier to reach for Class 3 or 4 when it's time to enact commuter rail to Foxboro, a Providence-flank Cape Flyer funded by RIDOT, or a fond return of the Amtrak Cape Codder. If the rail replacement is done and the bridges are brought up to state-of-repair for 286K weight, then the difference between Class 2 and the next two speed tiers is simply the ratio of good ties to bad for every several dozen ties on a tangent or curved stretch of track. Meaning, further uprates are mostly self-contained in additional funding rounds of tie replacement to increase the "good" tie ratio to what's required of the higher track class (and obviously signalization if you want Class 4 instead of the Class 3 ceiling for dark territory).
