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

[F-Line to Dudley]

Small batteries usually cover instances of gapping. The problem is simply the failure modes introduced by attempting that too many times in one trip. Have a lengthy cutout at every single bridge every single trip, and one of these days the power's not going to cycle back on properly because of an onboard switching failure back from battery and you have a fault stopping the train dead. Even BEMU's are only built to cycle on/off battery a few discrete times per trip. So you can't look at a corridor like the B&A with 35 maxed-out bridges Worcester-Springfield and say "Oh, duh...35 separate cutouts and you're golden." That's quite a lot many more than the NEC has with its movable bridge and phase change cutouts. Cutout hardware also costs money, and some of the bridges are so maxed out there isn't physical room for *any* contact wire above the roof of a double-stacked freight train...not even a de-energized dummy wire to maintain pantograph contact through the gap. So it's quickly chasing diminishing returns to just lean full-force into the cutouts kludge corridor-wide. It's supposed to be a last resort for the hardest-to-raise bridges, not a get-out-of-jail-free card from touching any of them.

Any way you slice it, the B&A is a shitload of bridge mods. And that's not going to pay back its costs with only 8-10 projected daily round-trips. You need a significantly denser schedule than that to amortize, and that's not going to happen immediately in any universe.

 

[Tallguy]

The Pike doesn't go anywhere near Spencer. The only place the B&A crosses the Pike is just east of Palmer, and the only other place it's even near the Pike is some particularly empty areas of Rochdale and Charlton.

On an intercity-oriented schedule, the only intermediates would be Palmer and maybe one of the Brookfields. For trips serving as supercommuter trips, I could plausibly see Ludlow, Warren, and maaaybe something near Rochdale to grab traffic off 20. No way you're putting something in western Worcester - it would be no more than 2-3 miles from Union Station.

It might technically be Charlton there. The track and like are 500ft apart. Just west of Rochdale.

 

[Tallguy]

Small batteries usually cover instances of gapping. The problem is simply the failure modes introduced by attempting that too many times in one trip. Have a lengthy cutout at every single bridge every single trip, and one of these days the power's not going to cycle back on properly because of an onboard switching failure back from battery and you have a fault stopping the train dead. Even BEMU's are only built to cycle on/off battery a few discrete times per trip. So you can't look at a corridor like the B&A with 35 maxed-out bridges Worcester-Springfield and say "Oh, duh...35 separate cutouts and you're golden." That's quite a lot many more than the NEC has with its movable bridge and phase change cutouts. Cutout hardware also costs money, and some of the bridges are so maxed out there isn't physical room for *any* contact wire above the roof of a double-stacked freight train...not even a de-energized dummy wire to maintain pantograph contact through the gap. So it's quickly chasing diminishing returns to just lean full-force into the cutouts kludge corridor-wide. It's supposed to be a last resort for the hardest-to-raise bridges, not a get-out-of-jail-free card from touching any of them.

Any way you slice it, the B&A is a shitload of bridge mods. And that's not going to pay back its costs with only 8-10 projected daily round-trips. You need a significantly denser schedule than that to amortize, and that's not going to happen immediately in any universe.

And how many drawbridges are there on NEC? And not all the 35 bridges are centered and undercut. Many of the Springfield area bridges are higher. I have the data somewhere, but would need to find it