RDGAndrew wrote:Good thinking, Hal. Thanks for the link to the engineering docs - a neighbor who lived across the street when I was growing up worked for the PRR and then for Amtrak, in the MOW department. He had big prints of the first two views on that website framed and hanging in his living room. Now he's retired and lives in Maine, but I'm sure he still has them. I used to look at them all the time as a kid without realizing exactly where the location was.
2/3 of a mile might be a little short for entire train storage - how far east is the ROW intact enough for more tracks?
Heading east?
I guess another 2 miles for a total of 3 miles is
possible for a single track.
Once you exit the tunnel the right of way continues in a cut at least out to Broad Street then it rises up and curves north to meet the Reading Viaduct which continues north along 8th to around Girard Ave. The Reading Viaduct would need lots of work to be usable..
Its also a no-no to park a train on a hill, which is what you'd have with one end on an elevated viaduct and the other end in a excavated tunnel.
The right of way in the cut between 21st and 12th is being encroached upon- it's used for parking etc, but I've never walked through it to see whether there are permanant blockages like building foundations...
HEADING WEST-
There's about 1/3 mile from the junction near 31st and Girard to the end of the tunnel, so the ROW and tunnel shoudl have space for 6 sidings 1 mile long.
For comparison, it's about 1 mile from Race Street to South Street.
There was a "day in the life of a container" story about the CSX intermodal yard- I think that mentioned that they did have several trains in the 5,000 foot range.
The general idea is that CSX wants somewhere to store trains for several days or even upto a week- so with 6 tracks at a mile each, even with partial dissasembly, you'd have something workable.
Also, I was just bike riding beside Norfolk Southern's East Allentown Yard-
they've got the EXACT same situation as CSX, at Allentown, you also have people driving cars over an un-signalled, un-gated crossing into Allentown's "Lehigh Canal Park" - and they don't seem to have a problem.
One other idea-
The Norfolk Southern operation in Allentown has a "hump yard"
- a gravity powered switch yard where rail cars roll downhill and are sorted to different several sidings-
I wonder if the combination of an elevated Reading Viaduct and an excavated 6 track wide tunnel might be an advantage for CSX?
Perhaps CSX could use the downhilll gradients of the Pennsylvania Ave Tunnel or City Branch cut for something similar- dis-assemble the trains for storeage, then re-assemble them by gravity?
Hal