Recent content by F-Line to Dudley

Boston-Newport locals used to take 2:05 via the Stoughton route in the NYNH&H days, with Fall River-Newport itself taking nearly 40 minutes. That's considerably longer than the 1:45 it takes to do Boston-Wickford, and considerably longer than the 1:30 or so it would take to do Wickford under...

Gloucester Draw has 2 bascules, one for each track. Sakonnet would only have one track and one bascule, so it's half the overall complexity. The bridges are similar overall length with approach spans. Gloucester also attempted, before the condition of the old bridge was deemed too severe to...

I don't think the TGV cars tilt, though the Aveila Horizon design is modular enough that tilt options are available for purchase. The Amtrak carriages are based on the older single-level Alstom AGV family, married to the power cars from the TGV Aveilas. So it's a little bit of a mongrel...

SCNF in France ordered a bi-level variation of the Aveila Liberty too, known as Aveila Horizon, for TGV. It uses the same power cars as the American version, just with a more pronounced roof hump to meet up with the slightly taller carriages. That one has a smooth transition between the power...

It was double-tracked in the past, and the '09 feasibility study proposed double-tracking everything from Valley Falls freight yard through the Cumberland Station. I checked the study...they did indeed consider an alternate Cumberland station location right at the Ann & Hope site, contingent on...

The P&W mainline is planned long-term for Woonsocket-Pawtucket-Providence commuter rail per a feasibility study done about 15 years ago that's still highly rated by RIDOT despite their slow overall progress on implementing overall intrastate commuter rail. That study earmarked a Cumberland...

CSX blitzing more construction upgrades to the Worcester-Ayer mainline now that the ground has thawed for Spring. . . They're doing double-stack clearance improvements for the introduction later this year of a single Norfolk Southern stacked intermodal train to Ayer. Clearing of the second...

It definitely influenced the selection of a lift instead of a bascule or another swing. Lifts can have much thinner decks than the other types of movable bridges. The render a few posts up shows the lift span having significantly thinner deck than even the approach spans.

Most of WALK's openings are barge traffic for the cement plant just north of downtown. The big marinas are mostly south of the bridge, with the few docks to the north mostly taking small boats. If the cement barges can slip under the closed bridge, it would hardly ever need to open anymore.

The 295 bypass didn't have a chance so long as the state was looking at it as passenger-only (or passenger + an extremely occasional baked beans delivery by SLR). It needed to be pitched as a multimodal bypass of the grade crossings for both passenger service AND all bigtime thru Pan Am...

No. Virtually all rolling stock on the system is a veritable United Nations of subcomponents, including the Canadian-built Bombardier 01800's. We'll get hit with tariffs any which way, including fabbing replacement components for the 31-year-old Bombers. The CRRC's are mostly Japanese...

As I've said before, I don't think Newport has the demand to move the needle on Phase 2. It's a long way away from Boston in another state, with not a huge commuting population at stake. RIDOT's certainly not going to consider the shuttle--as much as it remains a long-term wishlist item--as...

That straight, fat power line ROW was considered in the 1970's for an extension of the MA 25 expressway to the Route 6 expressway, but that would've entailed a third interstate-spec crossing rather than a decomissioning of the existing bridges. It died when the final S-curve alignment of 25...

NETransit updated. . . 134 active Orange cars, 30 active Red cars. Theoretically they now have a 5th active set for Red, though that's not been the practice lately likely due to pairs being down for warranty mods. 4 Orange cars in-testing, 8 Red cars in-testing. Orange deliveries have still...