Gilbert B Norman wrote:So far as Philly goes, my remembrances are that they go to the South end of the Jersey Shore; New York, absent being in The Hamptons crowd, go to the North end of such.
This may be an anecdotal observation based on the habits of people I know, but there is a fair contingent of people who head to the Delaware beaches, especially people living in Chester County; a trip from many points in Chester County to the Delaware beaches takes less time than a journey to most destinations "down the Shore."
jp1822 wrote:Even in its heyday as the PRR's backdoor route to Hampton Roads, the line saw a descent amount of trains, particularly during the War period, and was only double tracked but nothing more. Today's it's a single track line with passing sidings (yet more likely needed for the restoration of passenger rail).
The good news about this line is that it's still quite capable of being restored to double track. According to a quick survey of Google Maps, it looks like that short of moving some telephone poles and relocating some grade crossing equipment, a second track could be laid down tomorrow on the Delmarva Secondary from the C&D Canal all the way down to near NASA's Wallops Island facility outside Chincoteague, with only the single-track swing bridge over the Nanticoke River in Seaford preventing the line from being a clear double tracking project. Even most of the stretches of the possible routes north of the C&D Canal lend themselves fairly easily to double tracking.
The bad news is that there is no easy way to Wilmington for this corridor. As it stands right now, there are only two routes to reach the Delmarva Secondary that would make up this corridor. One option is a direct connection between the the Delmarva Secondary and the NEC at Davis Interlocking just east of Newark. The other option is from an
interchange with the NEC at Edgemoor to the Shellpot Secondary, then the New Castle Secondary, and finally the Delmarva Secondary. Neither option provides direct, one-seat service between the Delmarva Peninsula and Wilmington. If the Airo's turn out to be reliable and can run reverse directions, great, but I'm not sure if the Delmarva Corridor's service could even happen without
building a wye at Davis Interlocking so that trains leaving Delmarva could turn towards Wilmington in addition to the existing merge towards Newark or rebuilding the Mill Creek Connection to
link the Shellpot Secondary to the NEC south of Wilmington Amtrak station. There is one more option to connect Delmarva to Wilmington station, which is to
restore the link between the Shellpot Secondary at the NS Edgemoor Yard and the NEC just north of Landlith Interlocking, but I don't imagine that Amtrak would love having trains run on such curvy track through a freight yard that borders Wilmington Shops, not to mention the loss of one-seat rides for any traffic to and from Philadelphia and points north.