Fitchburg Line Upgrade Discussion

Updates form Friday 8/19/16:

Looks like station track may be connected into CPF-333? Main two is still a couple of rails short from being connected. Speed swing and ballast cars should be ballasting the station track soon. And here comes the PAR OCS with its newly refurbed dome car on main one through the work zone.

CPF 330/Bike Shop to go live soon. Should be the first interlocking fully running.

Getting close to crunch time here. When must service start? In a month or so?

What else is left between Fitchburg and Wachusett besides this turnout?

Bridge work for PAS...done? Fitchburg station turnout...hooked back into mainline? All other interlockings...live? Wachusett platform...fully-outfitted with shelters, railings, lights? Wachusett driveway/sidewalks and platform access...close enough that it can open fully accessible (if still an overall work-in-progress)?

Wachusett station this afternoon:

RCC ballast car at CPF-333 - I'm guessing the stone comes out the "shoot". Like the stylized E unit logo!

Progress is being made at the west end of Wachusett station connecting station track to main two. Hopefully, MBTA replaces the old stick rail on main two with new CWR.

Looking west at CPF-335, the ramp to the Westminster layover yard is now connected to the interlocking. Interestingly, the yard connecting track can only access main one at CPF-335. I'm guessing MBTA continued the connecting track west through the layover yard to connect to the PAS main 1 with a manual switch so that if something went awry on main 2 east of CPF-335, train sets could get into or out of the layover yard via main 1.

Fitchburg line inbound T train caught at 75mph between Littleton and S Acton.

Looks like Wachusett extension / station work is on the home stretch...

As of Friday 9/16/16, track at CPF-333 and east side of station looks fabulous. And looks like signal work is all that remains to be completed at CPF-334

And in Ayer on Friday 9/16/16, MBTA MoW crew were installing a few lengths of CWR between the T station and CPF-AY.

Aside from remaining signal work (and any additional punch list items), is there anything else of significance remaining (other than the obvious crew qualifications) before service can begin? Can we likely expect service to start before the end of the year?

I see nothing about Wachusett station start up date on the MBTA web site but multiple news articles from July indicated that Massachusetts Transportation Dept elected to spend another $19M in order to achieve September 30, 2016 service start-up date to avoid federal reimbursement penalties.

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/ ... rojec.html

MBTA crew qualification has begun per David Hutchinson's photos posted on nerail:
http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?photo ... rder=new99

Today is the day that Fitchburg station track becomes a controlled siding & CPF 330 comes online ...

Just a side note, per the MBTA Service alert below, some T trains will be bustituted between N Leominster and Fitchburg for the next two days:

Shuttle buses will replace Fitchburg Line service (select trains) between North Leominster and Fitchburg Stations on Thursday, September 22, and Friday, September 23, due to signal work.

And it all has gone very badly. The maintenance has thrown the whole signal infrastructure South acton and points west into a tailspin. Multiple stop signals with Form-D overrides yesterday combined with several stop and procede's and the crossovers were also impacted heavily.

This lead the MBTA to issue delays last night for all trains this morning and bussing from Fitchburg to North Leominster. They beat their "delay expectations" this morning but all in all, this was handled HORRIBLY by the MBTA, Keolis, PAR, and their contractors. They should have done this work on a weekend when the impact is less and if it went sideways, as it has so far, they had less trains to contend with and impact.

Bus outage was planned and there was expected delays.

tvachon wrote:This lead the MBTA to issue delays last night for all trains this morning and bussing from Fitchburg to North Leominster. They beat their "delay expectations" this morning but all in all, this was handled HORRIBLY by the MBTA, Keolis, PAR, and their contractors. They should have done this work on a weekend when the impact is less and if it went sideways, as it has so far, they had less trains to contend with and impact.

It's hard to get people to come in and work weekend after weekend after weekend when there is no mechanism to force it - and its all on overtime. Signal work is very specialized work, and if they screw it up trains run into each other. They're up against a September 30th deadline for money. Would you rather they paid the Feds back some $50 million? Sometimes things just need to get done.

As Sery2831 noted, this was planned for two days of work, the only "addition" was the morning trains today.