Metro-North New Haven Line Penn Station Access

no place Amtrak can add trains, other than Empire service, the shoreline is at capacity due to bridge restrictions.

The only thing Amtrak might gain could be a little bit of leverage on opposite sides of New Rochelle; e.g., "You give our trains a good move and we'll give your trains a good move. Otherwise...,"

Don't tell me; you mean to say it's not done like that already!!!!!???

There is no way Amtrak can get better moves, if they show up at scheduled times they run on whatever time the schedule is.
If they show up late, they get pot luck , No Metro North Dispatcher is going to hold a MN train with twice the passengers for a guest carrier.
And specially a Guest Carrier that gets charged very very little.

What is the timeline for the DEIS? (DEIS=Draft Environmental Impact Study) Is Cuomo applying the same pressure as what he is doing for the LIRR third track? That DEIS came out quite quickly. They are supposed to have the Final EIS middle of next year.

Rockingham Racer wrote:In the latest NEC plan, the bridge at Pelham Bay is going to be replaced, and the curve straightened out. When and if there's money, of course.

How are they going to straighten out the curve? Co-op City is in the way on one side of the bay, and there's a city park on the other.

Not exactly sure. But I don't think CoOp City is in the way either. IIRC, there's a little room there to do the straightening. I think there's some residences there, though, that might be in the way.

How has nobody brought up the fact that LIRR has an M8 at Hillside for third rail testing? o_O

I believe it's on the way back very soon...but it was sent there earlier in the week.

There's a thread in the LIRR forum. Dutch has needed to keep explaining to other posters why they WON'T fit into ESA

Oh boy, looks like I found some lunchtime entertainment

DutchRailnut wrote:Pelham bay drawbridge is over a navigable waterway , the coast guard would not allow a fixed bridge.

He didn't say it had to be on the same vertical alignment.

DutchRailnut wrote:MN does not serve Queens

So? MN doesn't serve Midtown West either. But that's not stopping them. So is there more to it?

DutchRailnut wrote:and putting up a station in area would severely hinder the amount of trains that could use the tracks.

Why would putting up a station in the area necessarily "severely hinder" the amount of trains that could use the tracks? Stations are added to existing routes all the time and they figure out how to correctly not "severely hinder" service. Why couldn't they figure it out here too if they wanted to?

DutchRailnut wrote:as for pelham bridge the USCG requires unrestricted access , so that bridge would need to be higher than for example a crane barge to fix other bridges up river.

The Thruway bridge is a fixed bridge. How high is that one?

Damn, you even scared the CEO!

To answer questions previously answered "up-thread", there was an idea of putting a station near Sunnyside. The idea was scuttled early on in the process. They're already adding four stations. Even with a "station" track off the main line, trains entering and leaving stations are going to affect capacity. I doubt the viaduct near LGA in Astoria could accommodate a station although it sure would be great, and you'd still have to transfer to a shuttle bus for the airport. Not sure about Woodbridge. I think extending the Astoria line is a better idea, but that was scuttled by, well, Astoria.

The area in Queens is where they really don't have a lot of wiggle room, and the complex nature and number of train movements heading into Sunnyside (to be simplified for ESA to be sure) really argues against adding a station on what could only be two tracks, i.e. no "station siding". The map up-thread shows a third track being added in a good bit of the Bronx, so those four stations really don't impinge on Amtrak's current two NEC tracks.

Someone mentioned connecting to Jamaica station. It's a really nice idea. However, the Bay Ridge branch does not have a connection to the LIRR Main Line; I believe it's at a different grade, and there's not much room to make a connecting track.

Scalziand wrote:The Thruway bridge is a fixed bridge. How high is that one?

That's a fairly new bridge; it replaced a draw bridge, in the 1980's at some point. It's relatively high, which was made easier by the fact that the Westchester side of the bridge is already up on a bluff. I would think it would be a major engineering task to raise the NEC bridge to a sufficient height; it's a busy ROW, and flat terrain requiring long approaches. And it's in wet lands.