Southcoast Rail

Again, like I have stated before and I will state it again, it will never ever happen that way! The way that the rules are now for those moves to happen would be very costly and time consuming. It’s easier to keep the sets the way that they are and extend the current schedule runs. That way everyone can have the capacity that they need without the unnecessary coupling movements.

It's as if people don't know anything about the system or haven't read one page of this thread when they make asinine suggestions like uncoupling sets mid trip or having the T just shove extra trains through single track zones in Quincy because someone wants an express train.

The best way to provide "more" service to the South Coast would probably be to run all the through trains to New Bedford, and run a dinky between Fall River and Taunton, with a guaranteed cross-platform transfer at the latter.

The dinky would probably be a good service to trial battery-EMUs on, as there would be a lengthy layover at Taunton that they could be charged during.

I agree, and I suspect that some variety of shuttle train to East Taunton will be what actually happens. However, neither city would be happy if all they had were shuttle trains while the other city gets through trains. More likely they'll alternate, or something like one city getting morning through trains and the other afternoon.

Three hours on a train everyday, 8 1/2 hours working, 1 hour to get back and forth to your job from South Station, 1 hour to get back and forth between your house and a station, 8 hours to sleep overnight . . . . leaves you about 2.5 hours to live your life each day. Maybe better to move to Boston or find a job in New Bedford/Fall River?

Not for me but I know I'm being unfair over cynical. I guess the question is how long does it take to drive the route and how many people do it on a daily basis?

Commuterrail1050 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2024 7:08 pm Again, like I have stated before and I will state it again, it will never ever happen that way! The way that the rules are now for those moves to happen would be very costly and time consuming.

What rules?

Yes, please. What rules? The only applicable rules I can find in the ETT state 1) coupling/switching with Rotem cars must be done on a tangent track, at no more than 3MPH with a safety stop made between 50-100 feet away, and 2) that if mechanical forces aren't available. brake tests must be done by T&E crews. There's nothing I can find that states that a train with passengers can't be coupled to or disconnected from anything. While there may be union agreements in place covering what work should be done by what type of employees, I suspect that with some additional pay incentives, it might be possible to get some flexibility on this.

bostontrainguy wrote: ↑Thu Jul 04, 2024 8:26 am Three hours on a train everyday, 8 1/2 hours working, 1 hour to get back and forth to your job from South Station, 1 hour to get back and forth between your house and a station, 8 hours to sleep overnight . . . . leaves you about 2.5 hours to live your life each day. Maybe better to move to Boston or find a job in New Bedford/Fall River?

Not for me but I know I'm being unfair over cynical. I guess the question is how long does it take to drive the route and how many people do it on a daily basis?

Probably takes a minimum of 90 minutes during peak, closer to two hours. Off-peak, you can drive from Boston to NB/FR in about an hour. Those are similar numbers to a Worcester-Boston commute.

Regardless of whether rules on splitting/joining en route trains allow it today (which I assume is yes), why would anyone seriously propose doing this? The running times proposed for SCR phase 1 are already bad enough. It took the New Haven about 10 minutes dwell time to split/join trains at Buzzards Bay for Woods Hole and Hyannis 60+ years ago. Does anyone think that time penalty would be significantly less today?

I'm no fan of dinkies, but given there's no signs the Quincy/Savin Hill Old Colony main bottleneck will be addressed or SCR phase 2 will be built, the use of alternating tightly timed connections at East Taunton makes the most sense in a bad situation. If we're going to do that, then sure, let's do the same for Buzzards Bay. Build the missing platform at the new Middleborough station and run dinky service between Buzzards Bay and Middleborough.

There’s just no way that the trains will uncouple in Braintree just to have 4 doubles for Kingston folks and 4 doubles for everyone else. They won’t run football or concert at Gillette event size trains regularly, only to have to decouple and do brake tests all over again. That all takes at least 10 mins of dwell time. Like I have already said, it’s easier to keep the sets the way that they are and run them for the full trip. That’s the only way that they can run without having too much travel time. Especially for 90 mins per branch as they advertise. Looking at today’s middleboro schedule, having a train alternate for each branch would get a train every hour and a half to two hours. At least roughly during the week. On the weekend, idk if they would do each branch hourly or every two hours.

OldColony wrote: ↑Thu Jul 04, 2024 6:07 pm It took the New Haven about 10 minutes dwell time to split/join trains at Buzzards Bay for Woods Hole and Hyannis 60+ years ago. Does anyone think that time penalty would be significantly less today?

I can't believe in this day and age that technologies don't exist to facilitate joining and separating trains in a reasonable amount of time. The San Francisco MUNI was doing it with Boeing LRVs in 1985.

It was a disaster for Muni for several reasons:

• Modern rail vehicles have a large number of data/communications/etc connections that must be made. (Back in the day, it was just steam or HEP). All of those are generally in one big connector; if any of them don't link properly, troubleshooting is required. That's no big deal for a one-a-day Amtrak train with an hour scheduled; it's a big problem for commuter rail or light rail that will be significantly delayed by even a few extra minutes. Muni had a lot of issues with improperly connected trains sitting at stations blocking all traffic.
• Just as with a timed transfer, merging trains requires them to arrive at the same station at almost exactly the same time (or wait for the connection). That probably wouldn't be an issue for commuter rail, but it was a disaster for light rail trains trying to fight their way through traffic. Often, one train would be sent into the subway alone because its mate was stuck blocks away.
• For outbound trains, you have to get the right passengers to sit in the right cars, or else you have chaos at the station where you split. "Use this car for destination A, that car for destination B, and either for stops between here and C" is difficult to communicate to passengers who are half-listening at best. Again, doable for Amtrak with longer times between stops, difficult at best for commuter rail and light rail.

No to mention at interlockings, permission to pass stop signals to get to the other set which will add to that "10" minutes. Also finding a way PTC
won't slow down moves like that further. And what about the dead of winter!

The EGE wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 11:46 am Doable for Amtrak with longer times between stops, difficult at best for commuter rail and light rail.

The only examples on commuter rail in the USA other than Boston and Philadelphia area (RDG/PRSL) RDCs would
been the Lackawanna Railroad electric MUs at Summit until 1984, with separate Dover and Gladstone trains.

Join/split wouldn't make any sense anyways without xMUs - if you have to have two locos in a push-pull trainset, what is the advantage to join/split vs. running independently?