PL-1 Job Central Connecticut PAS Pan Am Southern

Welcome to Connecticut! Based on how they've been handling the Amtrak Springfield line upgrade, I bet a lot of that money would be for BS environmental impact studies and other pre-build stuff like that.

That's upgrading one track, they could be talking about upgrading one and adding another, as well as building other related infrastructure (stations, parking, groundwork, bridges, ect)

True, but that doesn't explain their estimate regarding a 25mph freight-only rehab:

"Just restoring the privately owned 24-mile rail line to good condition for moderate-speed freight trains will cost more than $100 million, the DOT said."

Even if they're actually talking about 40mph freight speeds with passing sidings and a brand new signal system with all the bells and whistles (in other words, passenger quality track but without stations/platforms), it's still hard to imagine that costing $100 million for only 24 miles. Railroad bridge rehabs are often surprisingly inexpensive unless you're talking about a complete bridge replacement, which is very rare. The 2001 Plaistow-Portland rehab was only $60 million and that included welded rail, bridge rehab, all new crossings, and new signals. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $84 million in 2016 dollars. So I just don't understand how they're coming up with $100 million for a 24-mile freight rehab.

The entire line had been upgraded to 25mph in the late 1980s. It was a shame to see Guilford speed summaries where more and more of the line was slow ordered to 10mph.

The line was still good for 25mph (a little bit more where applicable) in the early 1990's too and the Naugy was good for 59mph as well. Watched the speedo at that time.

It was fun hitting a propane tank (BBQ size) in Bristol at speed, you could smell the gas in the cab.

Then again, they were getting salt deliveries in the lower Waterbury yard, Peter Paul corn sugar, Yankee Gas propane, newsprint for Republican-American, lumber deliveries & a few other customers in that area.

I had a day off today so I went down to Plainville in the morning. Caught up with PL-1 returning light from Waterbury with no cars and engine 351, I think they brought some more high side gondolas down earlier for interchange with Naugatuck. At the Inland Fuel terminal in Terryville was a bunch of tanks and a solid blue B&M boxcar (spacer).

Tonight's EDPL brough down one more IFRX gon for Waterbury in the train.

What happened to Hubbard hall in Waterbury? I haven't seen a short tank car go by on EDPL for a few years now, am I just missing them or are they not getting service?

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Arson fire in the Terryville Tunnel yesterday. Unclear if the scheduled Friday PL-# local had to be postponed.

“Apparently they took all the railroad ties, either new ones or the ones that have been torn out over the years, and they piled them all up about 600 feet into the tunnel. Then somebody had to have lit them on fire,” Sekorski.

It was “absolutely” deliberate, he added. “It must have been burning for a while, probably in the wee hours of the morning. We had to stretch about 800 feet of hose down the cliffs and then into the tunnel.”

Unfortunately not a rare event here. Miscreants have long targeted the tunnel for crap like this, and inevitably Plymouth and Bristol FD get called down once every couple of years to knock out somebody's small bonfire.

I guess traffic has really increased to the point where there is a need for night trains through Bristol. Residents don't appear to be happy about it. Does anyone know if the night trains are still considered PL-1
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There's both a PL-1 and a PL-2 now.

Plainvilletrainbuff wrote:I guess traffic has really increased to the point where there is a need for night trains through Bristol. Residents don't appear to be happy about it. Does anyone know if the night trains are still considered PL-1
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Oh, those poor fragile flowers. And to think it was not 22 years ago I used to go to sleep with the soothing sound of horns-by-night on the Canal Line from a half-mile up the hill of Town Line Rd. This is pretty weak sauce even by NIMBY standards. The oldest and longest-tenured population swaths in the whole city are downtown and in Forestville closest to the tracks; the new sprawly McMansion subdivisions and gentrification are miles out in the hills. It's like a time warp every time I go back home to visit and drive up Main St. These very same people complaining are the ones who were still living in those same exact houses the last time business on the PL-#'s was good enough to run more than half the days of the week at more than one time slot. These same homebodies have been there from the same backyards through the whole alpha and omega of Big G on the Highland.

I thought getting old meant one's hearing gets less sensitive with age?

There was a post on a FB page Plainville Talks about the locals being woken by the horns. Someone asked if they could have a quiet zone. I explained the whistle rules, and suggested that they look up the CFR on railroad regulations. I also pointed out that a quiet zone requires an upgrade of crossing protection, which the town would likely be liable to pay for, since the railroad is fine with the present apparatus. Then someone posted about a train curfew ordinance. I again explained that the federal jurisdiction would likely make it so the railroad could tell Plainville to stick it.

Passenger service and its related upgrades between Waterbury and Hartford would bring those crossings up to snuff for a quiet zone.

I live 500 feet from a crossing on a busy line in CT. After the first few months or so of living there the trains at night stopped waking me up. Maybe those people should just be happy there's more commerce in their town now?

Also, I wonder if the stop poles at all the crossings in Plainville/Bristol will be taken out because of the increased traffic. I thought the reason they went in a few years ago was because the rails got too rusty due to the infrequent trains.

Some of them already have because of crossing protection upgrades and minor trackwork. The last un-gated crossings on the Highland are Emmett St. (flashers), Center St. (gantry flashers), and Farrell Ave. (stop sign) in Bristol. Central St. in Forestville Center got done over in a big to-do couple years ago, Federal St. in downtown a few years before that. Emmett is long overdue for an upgrade because it's too wide for its poor-visibility side flashers and the Route 72 upgrade to Pine St. has sharply increased traffic volumes here. I bet dollars-to-donuts that's the very next one addressed with-haste. Center has pretty low volumes but is on a very steep hill and probably could use some kitchen-sink upgrades. Farrell is a desolate back driveway to Rockwell Park. The city has been debating a realignment at the crossing for ages because the road itself is dangerous for reasons that don't have much to do with the crossing. Probably will never need more than flashers here unless this by some funding miracle becomes Class 4 passenger track.


As for the Canal, it always perplexed me that the W. Main St. crossing remains crossbucks-only given that it's state highway 372 and in such a traffic-dense segment of town. By all logic CDOT should've taken the initiative on that one ages ago, like when it sprung for the pricey gantry flashers on CT 177 next to Forestville Lumber/Amerigas and the side flashers on 'secret number' state road Birch St. in the early-90's. I may be misremembering, but Broad St. Plainville may have had some very old flashers that lasted until the mid-80's before being disrupted by the gas pipeline that was dug along the ROW mid-decade.