Amtrak/LIRR Moynihan Train Hall

rvrrhs wrote:When I sit in the first car (yours), it seems more like the excess passengers are Elizabeth-bound, not SEC

Thats my experience too. The first car is packed till Broad Street, then there might be 5 of us left.

I'm glad to leave you with some elbow room, Don.

Wow, it's a small world after all....

If I didn't have so many courses this semester, I'd come on over myself to ride 3271.

And yes RVRR, Rutgers indeed "roolz."

And back on topic for a moment, Penn Station is confusing enough as it is for most people. I think if anything, whatever they do, they must simplify things. The whole system is getting too complex IMO and it is the complexity of it that causes the problems.

rvrrhs wrote:I'm glad to leave you with some elbow room, Don.

Thanks Alan, I appreciate it! The car was empty tonight, I guess most folks got off at Secaucus!

nick11a wrote:Wow, it's a small world after all....

If I didn't have so many courses this semester, I'd come on over myself to ride 3271.

It surely is a small world Nick. Hey, summer'll be here soon, maybe we'll see you on 3271. Do ya think NJT would reinstate the bar car for us??

Well actually, I'm on Spring Break next week so if I really wanted to make Jt's life miserable, I could stop over for a visit....

Actually, I have not yet riden on 3271. I've just seen Jt working on it as rear brake a few times at Rahway. I have however encountered him on numerous other trains both on the NJCL and NEC. You never know where or when I'll pop up.....

And I'm sure NJT would be opposed to the bar car. But I'm sure JT would be all for it- especially after dealing with some of the passengers.

Yea, the train was nice adn empty tonight, well in teh first car at least, it was packed in teh rest, especially in the back!!! I swear I didn't shoo everyone away!!!

Good to meet you tonight Don.

As a side note, I was thinking tonight, as we were crawling through a speed restriction at Hudson Interlocking going east tonight, about how fragile the NEC is in its current state. It looked to be a damaged frog causing teh slow speeds, which could happen anywhere, to new rail or old rail, etc, but still, one small problem cause delays for just about every eastbound train.

wiht the New Penn Station adn tunnel plans, the NEC would be quad tracked to Rae, right? Those other tracks would have come in handy tonight to keep trains moving, instead of crawling!

It was great to meet you too JT!

I'll hafta do some checking, but as far as I know, the four-tracking will stop around Swift. Not positive though.

See ya at 6:15!

I hope it goes west of Swift to Hudson, because that would leave a two track bottleneck for about a mile bewteen Swift and Hudson, namely on the "sawtooth" bridge over the M&E.

Four main tracks could very easily be built through Hudson Yard, and a simple shifting of the PATH track adjacent to Track 3 to the outside of the catenary poles around the Hudson curve, for probably only about a ¼ of a mile. To continue to have a bottleneck of anything less than 4 tracks after all this is built is ridiculous. Bite the bullet and do it right. With the money saved from NOT building the 34th st. station they could do all these other projects to get the best bang for the buck.

I agree with you 100 percent, but I'm only halfway up the project's food chain, not near enough to the top where all the decision making takes place.

Jtgshu wrote: As a side note, I was thinking tonight, as we were crawling through a speed restriction at Hudson Interlocking going east tonight, about how fragile the NEC is in its current state. It looked to be a damaged frog causing teh slow speeds, which could happen anywhere, to new rail or old rail, etc, but still, one small problem cause delays for just about every eastbound train.

wiht the New Penn Station adn tunnel plans, the NEC would be quad tracked to Rae, right? Those other tracks would have come in handy tonight to keep trains moving, instead of crawling!

There are multiple different set of agencies and projects involved for quad tracking all the way upto Rae - well actually upto the East end of Dock if I have my interlocking and what they control straight. Doesn't Dock control everything West of the Harrison curve?

The THE tunnel project is upto Portal Interlocking, and actually 5 tracks through Secaucus Jct station.

Then Amtrak has a plan to build a quad track high level bridge replacing Portal draw, but that project has not even moved to DEIS yet AFAIK.

Amtrak and NJT would be involved in quad tracking Swift (West end of the Portal bridge ramp to East end of Hudson - roughly speaking. Don't know what state that is in. I have heard that tracks 1 and 4 will be outside the NJT incline so the NJ connection will essentially become duck-unders between 1 - 2 for the Eastbound and 3 - 4 for the Westbound, but this is at present hearsay at best.

Then between Hudson and Rae would be basically Amtrak and NJT taking into consideration the Hudson pocket track that itself is yet to be built. Rae to Dock would involve Amtrak and PATH since the PATH Eastbound would have to be moved over onto a trestle along the Harrison curve to make room for track 4.

One thing is clear...... it will be quite a while before all this happens.

/J

Then between Hudson and Rae would be basically Amtrak and NJT taking into consideration the Hudson pocket track that itself is yet to be built. Rae to Dock would involve Amtrak and PATH since the PATH Eastbound would have to be moved over onto a trestle along the Harrison curve to make room for track 4.

Why move PATH eastbound? There is plenty of open land where Manhattan Transfer used to be to move PATH westbound outside the cat. The only sqeeze would be just west of the existing PATH station, as there is a building there that is pretty close to the NEC. But isn't there empty space from the old NEC tracks that were reconfigured?

Why move PATH eastbound? There is plenty of open land where Manhattan Transfer used to be to move PATH westbound outside the cat. The only sqeeze would be just west of the existing PATH station, as there is a building there that is pretty close to the NEC. But isn't there empty space from the old NEC tracks that were reconfigured?

You're right of course. My dyslexic typing fingers. I meant to say Westbound of course.

/J

there is only about three catpoles worth of PATH railroad that would need to be shifted - its only on teh curve itself that the path would need to be bumped out to the other side of the cat poles. It would be a tight squeeze but there is plenty of room to put the Path on a trestle on the outside of the Harrison curve. At this point, on the curve, the PATH westbound track actually has catenary over it!

It would just make sense to make all these improvements all in one major capital project, (as if the tunnel isn't enough)

Jishnu, Thanks for the link to the ARC site, I actually signed up for the committee thing whatever it is called.

Jtgshu wrote:there is only about three catpoles worth of PATH railroad that would need to be shifted - its only on teh curve itself that the path would need to be bumped out to the other side of the cat poles. It would be a tight squeeze but there is plenty of room to put the Path on a trestle on the outside of the Harrison curve. At this point, on the curve, the PATH westbound track actually has catenary over it!

While we are at it this trestle should be made high enough and long anough to run the Westbound half of the Waterfront connection from M&E to NEC under PATH so that the connection can join Rae near the West end of Rae.

It would just make sense to make all these improvements all in one major capital project, (as if the tunnel isn't enough)

That makes way too much sense for it to actually happen that way.

Jishnu, Thanks for the link to the ARC site, I actually signed up for the committee thing whatever it is called.

JT, you're welcome. Be warned though that the next RCLC meeting is scheduled for immediately after the DEIS is completed. The DEIS is supposed to be completed by April, with the RCLC in May I think. That migh be too late to bring some of these issues up for discussion. The ARC folks do accept Email comments. You might want to consider that, even though it is kind of late in the current DEIS process. You can also read the posted documents to understand where theya re coming from. Good to know that whether one agrees with their reasoning for the decisions that they have taken or not.

/J

I am actually amazed things run as well as they do now in the system.

I arrived in Penn Station New York at around 5:35 tonight from New Brunswick, went upstairs to the concourse below the Big Board councourse and in 5 minutes was back down stairs on the same trainset now bound for Gladstone (5:47.) To me, having a 9-car train turned around (seats signs and all) in under 5 minutes and on its way not too long after that is pretty darn good.

To me, they need 4 tracks in and out and they need one station that can handle all of the trains and then some so turn arounds don't have to be done in 3 minutes during rush hour and at other times.