Pensyfan19 wrote: ↑Fri May 15, 2020 5:37 pm
Will this catenary be extended to Danbury eventually?
Nope. Not a chance. And God be praised for that. It would be a tremendous waste of money. The quality and frequency of service on the branch has never been higher (pre-COVID obviously). When the line was electrified from 1925-1961 the levels of service were at best.. what, half of what it is now on weekdays? (Someone correct me if I'm wrong). Replace the fleet with new dual modes and coaches + enough extras for added service and that'll do far more for less $$$ than electrification would. Not that electrification of the branch and EMUs as a general rule is a bad idea on paper. In operation EMUs would be better suited to branch service *in theory* than dual modes and coaches esp. on grades, etc.
Unfortunately the upfront costs of just installing the cat poles and wires plus the necessary tree trimming/cutting down of trees along the ROW which wouldn't prevent another tree not on RR property from fouling up the wires in the event of a wind/thunder/snow/ice storm make electrification *in reality* a non-starter. It's bad enough when the New Canaan Branch is fouled up and that's only 8 miles long. The Danbury Branch is triple the length and therefore the risk of a foul-up is greater. Even if service was increased to 20 round trips and were all through trains into and out of GCT it would still be far more economically and logistically feasible to run dual modes and coaches.
hcobin wrote: ↑Fri May 15, 2020 6:26 pm
There has been discussion of extending the catenary to the Merritt 7 station in Norwalk so M8s could be used to run shuttles from the office park to South Norwalk.
If they did do that extended some Stamford runs to Merrit 7 and moved the transfer point there to have the shuttles terminate/start their runs there instead of South Norwalk that would make for a truly seemless transfer between trains. But there won't be nor should be any electrification beyond where it is currently being re-installed to turn around main line trains.