Station Developments

Where does the train wye at in Newport News? And what is the address or area of the soon to be built station? I am familiar with the area.

New station is on Bland Boulevard right next to 64.

frequentflyer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:07 pm Where does the train wye at in Newport News? And what is the address or area of the soon to be built station? I am familiar with the area.

The current turn is, I think, the eastern wye at 39th Street. The Va. DRPT says it enters "a CSX coal yard for turning and servicing," which more or less describes that area.

The new station is in the southwestern (really southern) quadrant of I-64 and Bland Blvd. The train will get serviced and turned there without going further south. You can see a plan of a new wye in a grumpy article about delays, before the city later broke ground, likely using the same plan: https://wydaily.com/local-news/2019/01/ ... heres-why/

An enlargement of the overhead plan in the article: https://wydaily.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... .35-PM.png The new wye starts under the Bland Blvd. overpass. The horizontal line at the top is existing track, or a new siding.

Roadgeek Adam wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:46 pm New station is on Bland Boulevard right next to 64.

I'm guessing this station's new location has to do with it being next to an airport?

Pensyfan19 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 6:26 pm

Roadgeek Adam wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:46 pm New station is on Bland Boulevard right next to 64.

I'm guessing this station's new location has to do with it being next to an airport?

Airport, and general prosperity going on there. Everything's spread out, so it's a half hour walk at least to the museums, university, parks and new "city center" development. Home Depot and Lowes are closer. It will be multimodal, in that it will have buses and an airport shuttle. But I'd guess its location was largely due to the statewide negotiation with NS and CSX. That might also explain the delay breaking ground.

Glum fact: currently neither Hampton Roads airport has public transit.

Correction to my first post: the new Amtrak station is about 7.7 miles up from the current one, not 6.

There is a waterfront park in downtown Newport News, with an Arc de Triomphe. It took from the end of the First World War till 1962 to complete it. There are some residential areas nearby, in addition to industry and highways. Old descriptions of the original train station emphasize the smoke and coal dust (William Styron). CSX stages coal by the docks in large tips, like it does in Maryland; NS uses vast acres of coal cars instead. Dust is much reduced these days.

kitchin wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:11 pm The new station is in the southwestern (really southern) quadrant of I-64 and Bland Blvd. The train will get serviced and turned there without going further south. You can see a plan of a new wye in a grumpy article about delays, before the city later broke ground, likely using the same plan: https://wydaily.com/local-news/2019/01/ ... heres-why/

An enlargement of the overhead plan in the article: https://wydaily.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... .35-PM.png The new wye starts under the Bland Blvd. overpass. The horizontal line at the top is existing track, or a new siding.

Any idea on if there's going to be a yard attached to the wye or south of the station? I would think they'd be a servicing platform, unless the frequency to Newport News isn't that frequent.

kitchin wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:11 pm

frequentflyer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:07 pm Where does the train wye at in Newport News? And what is the address or area of the soon to be built station? I am familiar with the area.

The current turn is, I think, the eastern wye at 39th Street. The Va. DRPT says it enters "a CSX coal yard for turning and servicing," which more or less describes that area.

The new station is in the southwestern (really southern) quadrant of I-64 and Bland Blvd. The train will get serviced and turned there without going further south. You can see a plan of a new wye in a grumpy article about delays, before the city later broke ground, likely using the same plan: https://wydaily.com/local-news/2019/01/ ... heres-why/

An enlargement of the overhead plan in the article: https://wydaily.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... .35-PM.png The new wye starts under the Bland Blvd. overpass. The horizontal line at the top is existing track, or a new siding.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Newpo ... 76.4518617

Thank you for the linke. Must going to be short consists because I do not see room for a wye.

Is there going to be a second track, for passenger trains? it's single track, now, and it looks like level boarding in in the plan. I assume the Y is going to start, past the Bland Blvd Bridge.
It's kinda a shame a pedestrian bridge over tracks and 64 isn't in plan, for better connectivity,

One thing I see about the proposed Newport News station is the length of the tail track between the wye switch and the end of track at Campbell Road. I'm guessing this will limit trains to one locomotive and maybe five cars. While this won't represent a capacity problem to Newport News it will on the fast growing Washington to Richmond segment. Since CSXT doesn't want an Amtrak train sitting on the main it's probably safe to assume the station will be on a siding track with a powered switch at the west-end. This will probably mean two sets could be stored overnight, one at the platform and one on the tail track. Very little if any room for future growth and expansion.

As for the lack of a pedestrian bridge over I-64 and the tracks just what is over there to walk to? All I see on Google maps is the typical suburban sprawl with strip malls and home improvement stores. Heck, I don't even see a hotel nearby considering there's an "international" airport nearby. Surprisingly there are sidewalks along Bland Blvd. The plans linked above do show a sidewalk along the road leading to the station so I guess you could walk that way and then along side Bland Blvd.

The Bland Blvd. bridge over CSX and I-64 isn't too bad. I'm going to walk or bike up there on the sidewalk and take another photo of the under-construction (not proposed) station location at some point.

Plenty of 3-star and lower hotels hover around the airport. The new Amtrak NPN is one mile to the closest 3-star, in the Home Depot direction over the bridge, and it's the same direction and distance from NPN to PHF Airport. I misstated how close the new station is to the fancier area in the other direction, around "City Center" and CNU and the parks and museums. A station there would have been three miles down the line, almost halfway to the current station. Judging by hotels, and leaving out Williamsburg, there are two 4-star hotels on the Peninsula, one at City Center and one in Hampton.

Maybe some day the city will build walking/biking trails, as other cities in the area have done. Or streetcar/light rail.

https://www.effinghamdailynews.com/news ... 8d15d.html

EFFINGHAM — Amtrak has agreed to fix its Effingham station and others that aren’t up to federal accessibility standards and pay out $2.25 million to those who have been harmed by their failure to do so over the past eight years. The federal government sued the passenger service in December.

The United States Department of Justice alleged that Amtrak was and is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act because 78 stations around the country have platforms and other amenities that are inaccessible to people with disabilities.

The Effingham station and several others on the Illini/Saluki line are on the list of stations with accessibility issues. Others are Rantoul, Mattoon and Centralia.
...

https://www.cleveland.com/travel/2021/0 ... -city.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio — All Aboard Ohio, a passenger-rail advocacy group, voted this week to recommend moving Cleveland’s Amtrak station back to Tower City Center, in anticipation of a dramatic increase in train service in the coming years.

Ken Prendergast, public affairs director for All Aboard Ohio, said the Tower City location is more centrally located, offers more connectivity to RTA trains and buses, and is closer to downtown hotels, businesses and tourism sites.
...
For decades, passenger trains used what was then known as Cleveland Union Terminal, built in 1929 on Public Square. Amtrak hasn’t used the building since the 1970s, when it left because of high costs. In 1977, Amtrak opened the new station, a modest, hard-to-find facility that is in need of significant upgrades.
...
He added that Amtrak favors stations that are intermodal – where trains can easily connect with public transit and buses.
...

kitchin wrote: ↑Fri Apr 16, 2021 5:41 am The Bland Blvd. bridge over CSX and I-64 isn't too bad. I'm going to walk or bike up there on the sidewalk and take another photo of the under-construction (not proposed) station location at some point.

Plenty of 3-star and lower hotels hover around the airport. The new Amtrak NPN is one mile to the closest 3-star, in the Home Depot direction over the bridge, and it's the same direction and distance from NPN to PHF Airport. I misstated how close the new station is to the fancier area in the other direction, around "City Center" and CNU and the parks and museums. A station there would have been three miles down the line, almost halfway to the current station. Judging by hotels, and leaving out Williamsburg, there are two 4-star hotels on the Peninsula, one at City Center and one in Hampton.
Maybe some day the city will build walking/biking trails, as other cities in the area have done. Or streetcar/light rail.

I'm kinda surprised Newport News doesn't have shuttle/circulator service, like Williamsburg does.

scratchyX1 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:11 am I'm kinda surprised Newport News doesn't have shuttle/circulator service, like Williamsburg does.

Those two places couldn't be more different. I happened to visit Williamsburg this week. It's a pleasant, well-integrated station near the historic and college area. Pictures of Ike and Churchill coming off an RF&P train hang on the wall. Great American Stations says it was built in 1936, in the C&O style, and renovated in 2002. There's a paved trackbed where a siding or double-track could be rebuilt.

Newport News is a big, spread out place, with the new station across I-64 from big box stores. It will be multimodal: buses and an airport shuttle. A circulator would have to travel almost ten miles one-way to encompass just the station, university, museums, "City Center," parks, a shipyard with 26,000 workers, and downtown. There's room to add pedestrian/bicycle/BRT/light-rail on some of the corridors in Newport News. Currently it's all buses, within a big system that covers six cities and neither airport.