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The grades at the portals were absolute crap. 5.6% for the Tremont portal, 6% for Columbus (I'm not even sure why that one is so steep given the straight runup space). They were totally flailing by this point, and that's where the project started slowly coming unglued to its ultimate demise...

...and under the GL tunnel from Boylston Station to Charles St. South. Here's a render of what Chinatown Under station would've looked like: ...and Boylston Under Loop (old render...from when the South End tunnel was going to underpin the abandoned Tremont trolley tunnel): EDIT: BTW, here's...

The PAS grant was for stabilizing the current Class 2 speeds. Pan Am, despite its post-2008 reinvestment in the Patriot Corridor, still left lots of deferred maintenance to patch. PAS has had to play whack-a-mole with constantly popping-up 10 MPH speed restrictions for years. An uprate to...

$46M for 1.5 miles on a ROW with pre-existing bridges used in the last 20 years? Yikes that's a tough swallow. They should seriously consider a VE'd rebid, because that's just not responsible spending for what they're getting.

Garbage in, garbage out. Engineering firms like that need to be carefully managed to produce the desired results, but public agencies have generally lost the ability to provide adequate oversight to contractors. So if you don't provide coherent specs like "Platform needs to provide level...

Yes...instead of using the Fitchburg Line all the way to Greenfield Station and making only only one intermediate stop the whole way in Fitchburg, the Z-shaped route would run out of South Station on the Inland Route to Springfield with stops at Framingham, Worcester, Palmer, and...

That's going to be a tough one to implement. There's a Superfund site halfway down the Franklin Industrial Track, and the chemical contamination has spread to the trackbed. And there's no funding to remediate it yet, with Fed funding now being more unstable than ever. That's why the spur was...

Mini-highs are 1-car only with flippable edges for high-and-wide freights, and then the rest of the platform is low-level for as many cars as you need so at least all doors in the consist can open for step-up boarding/alighting. Same as every DE stop from Haverhill to Old Orchard Beach. This...

You know who doesn't nuke the dwells to uselessness with 2-car platforms? Meriden, CT. They're built for 6 cars. Maybe this "possible station configuration" should be more similar to Meriden than it is.

It's a scandal. The 2016-exercised supplemental order of Kawasaki M8's, which was supposed to inoculate for Penn Station Access fleet increases, was for $3.85M per car. Assuming they really are still hard-up for cars, taken with inflation another supplemental order of M8's is still going to be...

Jesus Christ....a 2-car platform??? Are they trying to murder dwell times? Downeaster runs 5 cars every time. Ergo, you must have at least a 5-car platform at all stops but ESPECIALLY IN FREAKING PORTLAND.

The sooner the better. Per the same Amtrak/NEC employees on RR.net, the Acela 1's have such poor uptime right now that the service has gotten very cancellation-prone when working trainsets are simply not available. They're down to no reserves, as several trainsets are in storage completely...

GLTPS Phase I better leave a paper trail for which operators get warned and how frequently, or else it's going to do almost nothing to curb the endemic misbehavior. When you're blowing multiple speed zones and full-stop red lights, a buzzer and a flashing light in the cabin is wholly inadequate...

"...through Springfield or through Greenfield"??? Does that mean they're finally willing to look at the (far better) Z-shaped option to North Adams? The Fitchburg route was pretty much garbage on ridership given that Fitchburg was the literal only stop ID'd on the preferred service plan for the...

Jesus Christ...who is hiring and evaluating these operators? So many multi-level fuckups.

Has anyone else even hinted at interest in jumping into the race? Kraft's missteps so far are so pathetic it doesn't seem like there's any way he'll ever gain any traction the way this is going. And it would suck to have an election that's pretty much over before the start of Spring. Even...

The Amtrak employees on RR.net have been saying a tentative mid-to-late April for start of first revenue service if the FRA signoff happens on-time.

There used to be (and probably still is) a fairly sizeable homeless encampment behind the back of CSX/Pan Am Nashua freight yard. You would think the Alderman would be all for commuter rail with the layover yard and its 24/7 onsite security cleaning that up.

It's operationally easiest to have it nearest to Reading Station so the turnbacks can be staged quickly around adjoining thru-Haverhill slots and occasional Downeasters that get as-needed re-routed to the Reading Line. They're basically shooting for an identical setup to what exists with the...

Doubly dubious because they said they were OK with at-grade through Pine Swamp. Well...if the embankment roadbed is already double-track width what frigging difference does single-track make anyway? There's no clearance envelope constrictions, and animal species that were duly determined to...