I wish I could spell and had permissions to fix the topic name that I screwed up last year.
Anyway, after replacing the wooden block ties on track 5 last fall / early winter, they laid 40 foot sections of track bolted together to get through the winter. A couple of months ago they dropped welded rail in between tracks 4 and 5, I'm guessing to replace the short pieces when the temperature is somewhere in the middle of the usage range.
Then they dropped a bunch of welded rail for track 4 and track A and 1. Last Monday May 20, the platform for track 1 was shut down indefinitely to do the block tie replacement there. I found a quick bit of information about this on the Amtrak site.
https://media.amtrak.com/2019/05/amtrak ... nvestment/
Fair use bit:
Newark Penn Station – Beginning May 20, Amtrak crews will begin a block tie replacement program on tracks 1 and 4 at Newark Penn Station. This includes the total replacement of 95 feet of ties on track 1 and 1,100 feet of ties on track 4. The condition of the existing wooden ties has deteriorated and will be replaced by concrete ties.
It looks like they are doing a lot more than 95 feet of block ties on track 1 as most of them are old and wood like what was on track 5 and still is on track 4. Plus they have stripped back the platform edge on the track 1 platform (platform B?) which you can see clearly from the track A platform and it looks to be in terrible shape so I don't know how much work they will do on that but NJ Transit did all the new platform E / track 5 work so I would think that this platform is also their responsibility.
I can't find any information about platform work on the NJ Transit site so if anyone finds anything I would like to know.
Mods: I kept this in the NJ Transit forum as I haven't seen this work come up in the Amtrak forum but move it if you think it should go.