Recent content by F-Line to Dudley

Jointed rail doesn't affect track class. You can run 90 MPH on jointed rail if it's maintained well enough, though it would obviously be a rougher ride than if you did the same on welded rail. Track classes have more to do with how many ties per X feet of track are allowed to be decayed, how...

P&W's old colors (before they got neutered into Genessee & Wyoming's hideous corporate scheme) were actually chocolate brown, red, and white...not red/black/white like the NYNH&H, so there's no direct relation. There's still a bunch of their locos painted in that scheme that have escaped the G&W...

Probably not. Berkshire Flyer lives within its very meager margins because it's just a 1-stop/few-dozen mile extension of a bog-standard NYC-ALB short-turn slot with same crew that already runs with push-pull equipment. There are basically no ops numbers to square with it other than a few...

Scuttlebutt from an Amtrak employee on RR.net that the LSL Boston section might not resume until October because the soil subsidence on the Post Road Branch is going to be that hard to fix. The Berkshire Flyer's entire 2025 season will be a shuttle bus, which might doom its chances of having...

Metrolinx has finally detailed how much "worse" it's going to be: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/go-transit-electrification-metrolinx.20729/page-250#post-2244282 Pretty freaking worse. And electrification won't go into effect--on 3 lines only--until 2035-38, which is absolutely insane...

Schedules that are closer to clock-facing. Right now the Worcester arrivals and departures are very oddly-spaced because of the platform-occupancy problem. It's one of the most irregular schedules on the system, and they haven't been able to sync it to closer to clock-facing like a lot of...

The same article quotes a T source confirming that Springfield has enough China-delivered shells and parts onhand to continue the production line and deliveries for at least the rest of the year (longer than that, in fact, given that the article also says that there are at least 22 Red cars in...

SEPTA is and always has been an absolute dumpster-fire run agency. This austerity budget is merely the nth time in history they've over-the-top threatened their own customers with draconian cuts and fare increases if the state did not pay up, in lieu of expending actual political capital trying...

You really wouldn't need to have grades too severe for rail to do those Grand Junction grade separations. There's an abundance of runup space everywhere except the Main St. crossing which has the overhang above and the Red Line tunnel (and floodproofing concerns therein) below. Maintenance...

It's almost July, and this is still a campaign almost entirely about bike lanes and White Stadium. Does he not even realize he's got a 30-point polling deficit to make up with some issues/any issues that actually resonate with the public, or does he just think cashing SuperPAC donations is...

Do you want to gander on an incredibly long-term dysfunctional federal government even paying mind to bureaucratically changing the clearance for one isolated case on somewhat invented cost control grounds for a transit line that hasn't even been subject to a single feasibility study yet...

Daily Chelsea St. bridge raisings are disruptive to SL3's schedule, so probably. Plus you'd make the bridge more than a billion dollars more expensive by adding a third deck, and a movable one at that. And the fact that you'd still have to maintain 135 foot maximum clearance means that the...

The specific issue is steel-wheel braking performance on slippery rail, which is a function of how many axles and how much weight the train has. The feds go with generic reference cases for their recommended standards, the T goes with its actual maximum car counts running empty consists but...

The apt comparison there is Iowa Pacific, Inc., which bid--and won--the right to run the Chicago-Indianapolis 1 round-trip Amtrak Hoosier State in 2015 on a 4-year contract...then begged Indiana to be let out of the contract early after only 1-1/2 years of service with Amtrak being brought back...

Not much steeper. Up to 6% for 2500 ft., 4% at unlimited length per the GLX Design Criteria Manual. That's compared to 4-5.6% at very restricted length under HRT. The problem is that the current Tobin's grades exceed that...both the maximum grade and the sustained grade. You're not likely to get...