Haverhill Line Upgrades (Western Route)

Rockingham Racer wrote:Is the plan to have universal crossovers at LJ?

It was explained to me that the interlocking VALE is the crossover from the two track to the one track for LJ since there is no room for that crossover at LJ.

Perhaps this was answered earlier in this topic.

Are both tracks over the Haverhill Merrimac River Bridge in Service?
Is the bridge rebuild project complete or will there be more closures
in the Spring? Thanks...

The bridge is not fully in service yet. More closures are possible on weekends in May.

sery2831 wrote:

Rockingham Racer wrote:Is the plan to have universal crossovers at LJ?

It was explained to me that the interlocking VALE is the crossover from the two track to the one track for LJ since there is no room for that crossover at LJ.

Sort of correct. That is in effect the freight crossover for Lowell Jct. The universal crossovers at Lowell Jct will be useless for the Freight Main Line, as they will be west of the Freight Main Line switch -- between that switch and Lowell Jct Rd. They could have fit in a crossover for the Freight Mainline between the FML switch and the Shawsheen River Bridge if they went with a medium speed one, but apparently that was unacceptable. They also could have just put in a crossover east of the Shawsheen River Bridge, but it would have been on a curve, and the MBTA seems to have an aversion to special work and anything other than off-the-shelf straightaway crossovers -- just take a look at how all of the interlockings have been done. They even managed to finagle CPF 330 to have switches on brief segments of fairly straight track.

Rockingham Racer wrote:It's pretty evident that this project wasn't well figured out; or laid out piecemeal.

Well, Amtrak secured the funding for Wilmington Jct to Lowell Jct, and the MBTA secured the funding for Vale to Andover St. I believe the Amtrak-secured funding was a leap at a TIGER grant or something else where they had to say, "we'll figure the rest out later."

Rockingham Racer wrote:Are they still running at restricted speed between Frost and Bradford?

On the 'dead' No. 1 Track, yes. Going westbound, it is fine, though. It is a repeat of the situation when the No. 2 Track was the 'dead' track.

They need to secure the funding to finish the two station stops, Ballardville and Andover on the eastern route side. Why not open the old Andover station thats located just before Exsess St? At Ballardville on western route side across from the High platform there is plenty of room to install a platform to make stops for passengers heading in. It can be just like Melrose Highlands stop. This should be a no brainer to do.

Back in the 70's and before when a real railroad B&M owned ROW this line was double tracted to Boston and Haverhill. We have 3 companies fighting for track space.
This line today is the worst line in the system for on time performance!! Constant delays, break downs, etc , etc.............

Now they want to shut down the whole line on weekends starting in May. Yeah that will help get people to ride more. I just hope the work thats going on today has the built-in designs mandated by the FEDS for positive train control technology!!

Old Andover station is privately-owned, so that's not an option. The town DPW relocation is what's paving the way for the second platform, so the agreements are already in-place in principle for filling in the missing half at the current site. If the town really felt that strongly about the old station they'd be the ones taking the lead on property acquisition at the depot and any surrounding strips to ensure full-size platforms could be built on both sides. They haven't. It's not really the T's purview to try to force it on them when there's nothing wrong with the current site and the land for the northbound platform is already pending.

Opposite the current platform is the best location for a new eastbound platform at Andover. The old station platform is on a curve, and the area adjacent to the depot is at best 300' before you hit the next property owner to the (railroad) west. Once the DPW yard situation is straight, plenty of space on tangent track for that new platform.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Old Andover station is privately-owned, so that's not an option. The town DPW relocation is what's paving the way for the second platform, so the agreements are already in-place in principle for filling in the missing half at the current site. If the town really felt that strongly about the old station they'd be the ones taking the lead on property acquisition at the depot and any surrounding strips to ensure full-size platforms could be built on both sides. They haven't. It's not really the T's purview to try to force it on them when there's nothing wrong with the current site and the land for the northbound platform is already pending.

All good points, especially about the town not pushing their DPW to move a little faster.

The town DPW relocation isn't delayed due to the town administration, I think they would have moved a long time ago. My understanding is that residents dragged things out in town meeting a few times over multiple issues, which set the whole process back several years.

New signals have been installed west of Ash Street and labeled "Location B". New signals have also been installed east of Woburn Street and labeled "Reading Highlands". A new radio antenna has been installed east of Woburn Street. Also, there is a lot of material on the ground west of Ash street possibly to replace the existing switch.

The radio at reading highlands as been in since mid December, and the radio at Salem st has been since late November/early December.

They're been working on the railroad!!!!

wanted to add another picture of work going on at the wild cat junction

let's try this again...............

Wow, look at all that extra ROW. How many tracks were there historically?

After the last eight years, this is just mind blowing.