What year did the B&M (or Guilford) remove the parallel track --- the original Troy & Boston, if I'm not mistaken --- between Hoosick, NY and North Pownal, VT? I remember it being there at least in the 1970s, but I think it was defunct by then.
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Between Hoosick and North Pownal
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It was removed piecemeal; there was a Bulletin article which gives all the dates but the on-line Index doesn't give enough detail to pick out the issue. IIRC, the process had started by 1970 and was complete by 1980.
I read somewhere that the last part was eliminated as part of the 4R project.
I believe so; several of us undergrads from the MIT Center for Transportation Studies worked on traffic simulations for the 4R proposal. For loosely scheduled freights, double track was much more important on grades and near yards.
I think that you posted about the MIT study on the B&M Yahoo Group. There was a post about shot fast trains being more advantageous than long heavy ones, as opposed to Hunter Harrison’s views?
One long, heavy train with one crew is advantageous to several short fast, trains with multiple crews from a shareholder value view, which is all that mattered to Hunter.
Why do we drive on parkways and park in driveways?
Long trains are less reliable - more cars and more intense dynamic forces in the train to cause equipment problems. And long trains are a lot slower to handle in yards without large investments in long arrival/departure tracks. With loosely scheduled freight trains, 2 short trains/day produce much more predictable origin-to-destination trip times for freight shipments than 1 long, which is what customers care about.
Hunter's innovation was to finally get RR operating departments to run freight to schedule. If freights are on time, meets can be planned for a few double-track segments or lengthened sidings, and time/space to double or triple a train out of the yard that can't be enlarged can be allowed for. Cars will tend to sit longer in yards waiting for infrequent trains, but longer trips times are less important than predictability to customers the RRs have kept through the 1970s, 80s and 90s. And RRs have had crew costs first on the list of places to cut since long before I was born.
Hunter's innovation was to finally get RR operating departments to run freight to schedule. If freights are on time, meets can be planned for a few double-track segments or lengthened sidings, and time/space to double or triple a train out of the yard that can't be enlarged can be allowed for. Cars will tend to sit longer in yards waiting for infrequent trains, but longer trips times are less important than predictability to customers the RRs have kept through the 1970s, 80s and 90s. And RRs have had crew costs first on the list of places to cut since long before I was born.
jbvb wrote:It was removed piecemeal; there was a Bulletin article which gives all the dates but the on-line Index doesn't give enough detail to pick out the issue. IIRC, the process had started by 1970 and was complete by 1980.I believe it was the "West End" article in the XVI (1988) Volume 1 issue.