MassDOT Rail: Springfield Hub (East-West, NNERI, Berkshires, CT-Valley-VT-Quebec)

Arlington said:
Oh, man the whole of Mass should be in favor of that. Frankly, it makes me want the 89mph version.
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NNEIRI pegged the Alt. with Class 5 track at 1:58 BOS-SPG. It ended up being non-preferred because there was only a 5-minute improvement over the Class 4/79 MPH variant, owing to the relatively small segment (Springfield-Wilbraham) that would take advantage of the 90 MPH speeds. Unfortunately there's not a lot of opportunities to apply superelevation on curves across the B&A to squeeze any more blood from stone because of the heavy freight presence (freight tonnage does not play nice with cant deficiency tricks).
 
cden4 said:
If people want to go from Worcester to NYC today via train, do most people take commuter rail to Boston and then Amtrak from there, or Peter Pan/Greyhound bus to Springfield and Amtrak from there?
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My dad’s go-to was always to drive to 128 and take Amtrak from there to NYC. Did that quite a few times growing up and it took about the same time as the bus in traffic.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
NNEIRI pegged the Alt. with Class 5 track at 1:58 BOS-SPG. It ended up being non-preferred because there was only a 5-minute improvement over the Class 4/79 MPH variant, owing to the relatively small segment (Springfield-Wilbraham) that would take advantage of the 90 MPH speeds. Unfortunately there's not a lot of opportunities to apply superelevation on curves across the B&A to squeeze any more blood from stone because of the heavy freight presence (freight tonnage does not play nice with cant deficiency tricks).
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But you could cant one of the tracks and the freight can go as slow as it wants.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
NNEIRI pegged the Alt. with Class 5 track at 1:58 BOS-SPG. It ended up being non-preferred because there was only a 5-minute improvement over the Class 4/79 MPH variant, owing to the relatively small segment (Springfield-Wilbraham) that would take advantage of the 90 MPH speeds.
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Is the Springfield-Wilbraham segment long enough to be capable of 100 or 110 MPH if those speeds are eventually desired?
 
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Tallguy said:
But you could cant one of the tracks and the freight can go as slow as it wants.
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Neither Amtrak nor CSX would agree to those conditions. CSX is going to reserve the right to run on any track it needs to, as it does have business to tend to on both sides of the ROW. And Amtrak isn't going to risk blown OTP for having a track assignment switched on them on a line where they don't control the dispatching (asynchronous track speed limits and dispatching complications therein already bite them in the butt on a weekly basis on the southern NEC that they do self-dispatch). Plus, remember, the full-build options in the studies maxed out at like 8 round-trips per day. You would be having double-track passenger meets with the fullest-build schedule slates...so it would make no sense to have some trips be randomly slower by track assignment when there happens to be a meet.

Bottom line: nobody is incentivized today or tomorrow by trying to split the baby here.

themissinglink said:
Is the Springfield-Wilbraham segment long enough to be capable of 100 or 110 MPH if those speeds are eventually desired?
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Not really. It's about 13 miles, but there are 2 major S-curves and one minor banking curve chopping it up that would all have some sort of restriction even if the straightaways could rev up. So a fair amount of the tangent running between Springfield Union and Palmer is recovery time off of restricted curves. It'd be chasing diminishing returns on saved travel time for each additional track class sought (at $10's of millions more per class), which is why shooting for the paltry 5 minutes' savings of 90 MPH ended up non-preferred in both the NNEIRI and East-West studies. The only reason it sorta looked tasty on NNEIRI is that the build choice there was for two 90 MPH segments, one on the B&A Wilbraham and one on the Conn River Line south of Deerfield, which would've netted more significant time savings for the Boston-Montreal train. But only the BOS-MTL trip that overlapped both 90 MPH zones; the time savings proved just too small for all other users in the Springfield Hub set of tinker toys who'd only be hitting one of the zones.

EDIT: NNEIRI did model 110 and 125 MPH operations in its preliminary analysis. It found no places on the route that would support 125, and only a small segment Springfield-Wilbraham that would support 110. The cumulative savings for 110 vs. 90 MPH were exactly 2 minutes (or a paltry 7 minutes vs. 79 MPH). So...not worth the cost of the extra track classes.
 
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Considering that neither Amtrak or CSX is willing to pay for a damn thing....
 
Tallguy said:
And CSX wants Uncle to cover other things as well .
I get awfully tired of companies wanting government subsidies but not willing to make concessions.
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And there should never be more than one pax train at a time each way, and can be timed to meet in either a triple tracked section or at a station. Single track lines support at least quarter hour service even here in North America. And significant sections of of the row were triple tracked(or even quad tracked) in the past, and could be again.
And wasn't PAR operating parts of the Western Route as if they were two single track lines?
 
cubalibre said:
www.masslive.com

MassDOT restores $12M east-west rail funding for Palmer, Pittsfield

A report from the legislature’s Western Massachusetts Passenger Rail Commission is due June 30.
www.masslive.com www.masslive.com

Apparently Healey included funding for study and design of stops in Palmer and Pittsfield. The state legislature removed that funding. Now it’s back in.
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And the budget bloat for stations begins. Palmer should xerox the plans from Holyoke and build the station for what the budget expects to spend on study and design
 
^ Do Palmer and Holyoke have the same soil conditions and the same flood conditions? Do they have the same street layout? Do they have the same expected boardings and departures? Do they have the same bus connections? You're making a lot of assumptions when you assert the design can be the same.
 
W-4 said:
^ Do Palmer and Holyoke have the same soil conditions and the same flood conditions? Do they have the same street layout? Do they have the same expected boardings and departures? Do they have the same bus connections? You're making a lot of assumptions when you assert the design can be the same.
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I was using hyperbole to make the point that Holyoke cost 4.5M is today's dollars and that spending more than that on preliminaries for Palmer is obscene bloat and indicative of the MBTAs inability to control costs. People should lose their jobs if that's what it takes, but business as usual has to end.
 
W-4 said:
It's pretty easy to declare things can be done cheaper, but it's a lot harder to be specific about how you will make cuts.
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How more specific can one be than to suggest a station be copied in generalities from one 15 miles away?
PVTA just built a 150 bus garage that's design could be copied for Quincy garage at nearly 1/10th the price. European EMUs can be purchased for half of what they cost here.
The T spends 4x the national average for track installation.
 
Tallguy said:
I was using hyperbole to make the point that Holyoke cost 4.5M is today's dollars and that spending more than that on preliminaries for Palmer is obscene bloat and indicative of the MBTAs inability to control costs. People should lose their jobs if that's what it takes, but business as usual has to end.
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My understanding is the problem with Palmer is that it is still one of the most important and heavily trafficked freight junctions in the state. Yet CSX shot both of its own feet multiple times by reducing every approach accept for the Worcester Main to single track. This means that tracks in the junction are regularly occupied to wait for passing trains and perform various maneuvers at the yard. The station design and construction would involve working with CSX to understand their freight movement schedules and adding extra tracks to make sure Palmer Station operations don't interfere with CSX as the track owners.
Here's a great video timelapse of a typical day of train traffic at Palmer.
Unfortunately, Class I freight strikes again and CSX has final say over how expensive the station could possibly be with the extent of track relocation and station location as well as parking provisions.
 
Except there are three tracks in the likely station area and a five track wide yard just to the east. I'm sure that freight interests were consulted in Holyoke as well
 
Koopzilla24 said:
My understanding is the problem with Palmer is that it is still one of the most important and heavily trafficked freight junctions in the state. Yet CSX shot both of its own feet multiple times by reducing every approach accept for the Worcester Main to single track. This means that tracks in the junction are regularly occupied to wait for passing trains and perform various maneuvers at the yard. The station design and construction would involve working with CSX to understand their freight movement schedules and adding extra tracks to make sure Palmer Station operations don't interfere with CSX as the track owners.
Here's a great video timelapse of a typical day of train traffic at Palmer.
Unfortunately, Class I freight strikes again and CSX has final say over how expensive the station could possibly be with the extent of track relocation and station location as well as parking provisions.
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I get tired of private corps taking public funds and thinking that no conditions attach.
 
Tallguy said:
Except there are three tracks in the likely station area and a five track wide yard just to the east. I'm sure that freight interests were consulted in Holyoke as well
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And NEC has a large yard just south
 
In short, Holyoke was near a light-use small yard for a Class II and III interchange that got bought by the state while Palmer is at the intersection of a Class I, II, and III. One being the busiest freight corridor in the state, another being the only freight railroad between VT and MA, and the third is a railroad to Barre.

For the completion of Holyoke Station, MassDOT purchased the entire CT River Line from the dying Pan Am Southern making any dealings with operation disruption on the line minimal. On top of that the only interference construction of Holyoke had with freight operation was with Sullivan scrapyard directly south. Piggyback Yard on the other side of Appleton St. is a seldom used transfer yard between the Pioneer Valley RR and Pan Am so not much was disrupted during Holyoke's construction due to all the available trackage there. There is a current plan to upgrade that yard now that Pan Am is part of CSX.

The other issue with Palmer is that it is a very weird junction where instead of a wye or tracks joining at one point then splitting a few hundred feet later it's essentially a shallow-angle diamond. In typical freight railroad shenanigans, there is only one track connecting the two railroads making most changes between them require a reversing or switching maneuver. The other consideration is that a Palmer E-W Rail station would have platform(s) to serve 2 tracks as opposed to Holyoke's one.

I'd hope to see MassDOT purchase the trackage WOR-SPG but I don't see that happening since they plan to and a "passenger rail track" for the entire segment hopefully eliminating most freight conflict.
 
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