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

Koopzilla24 said:
How out there of an idea would it be to do like the Lake Shore Limited or some medium-long distance trains in Europe and run two separate trains from Vermont and Worcester that then meet in Springfield to combine to DC? Opposite in the reverse direction. Working it off the current Vermonter schedule it’d depart Worcester at ~1:20pm. There’s already a 15min stop in Springfield anyway so the schedule adjustment to accommodate coupling another train shouldn’t be too much.

EDIT: I feel like the fact that the Vermonter needs to turn the train around in the wye anyway would facilitate this. Maybe schedule the Worcester train to arrive earlier than the Vermonter connects up to the front of it.
Also I say from Worcester rather than Boston only because if I’m basing it off the current Vermonter schedule it’d depart Worcester only 45min before the Lake Shore Limited which wouldn’t really offer anything new for BOS<->SPG
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That would be tricky because Springfield is not set up like Albany is for easily swapping out locomotives with switching moves. There's no adjacent maintenance facility for them to do those kinds of assists during a station layover. Therefore you'd end up with an inert locomotive of the Boston train coupled to the back of the leading southbound Vermonter, and two crews segregated from each other on the combined run by the locomotive in the middle at harm to the cost operating ratio of the whole train. Maybe the new Airo push-pull sets can wring some sort of compromise out of this, but in all design renders circulated thus far there's no pass-thru doors between cab ends so you'd still be carrying very awkward duplicate staffing assignments who can't intermingle on the halves of the combined train.

It's probably not worth it. The NNEIRI study simply suggested coordinating a stock Inland Route slot with a stock Vermonter slot (and a stock Inland slot with a stock BOS-MTL slot) so a cross-ticketed cross-platform transfer essentially doubled the total number of slots available to each audience. That's probably a good-enough service multiplier for Springfield Hub if applied to the lesser members of the service pie like the Vermont slots and LSL. Alon Levy was simply being very rigidly strict-constructionist about timed transfers mandatorily extending to the Springfield Regionals when (per discussion here) there's not a lot of logic behind why those can't be extended to Boston.
 
How much utility is there in having the inland route as a backup for the shoreline route, to ease issues with maintenance? For example, simply having the option to route a few trains per day along there, when work is to be done on the tracks?
 
DominusNovus said:
How much utility is there in having the inland route as a backup for the shoreline route, to ease issues with maintenance? For example, simply having the option to route a few trains per day along there, when work is to be done on the tracks?
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Very little. Amtrak manages to maintain the Shoreline to top condition right now without any service disruptions, so it doesn't make things any easier for anyone to divert. They already have rights to use the Inland Route in the event of some catastrophic service outage, but that only happens about once a decade.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Very little. Amtrak manages to maintain the Shoreline to top condition right now without any service disruptions, so it doesn't make things any easier for anyone to divert. They already have rights to use the Inland Route in the event of some catastrophic service outage, but that only happens about once a decade.
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But they are maxed out on capacity due to limits on bridge raising. Well, frequency, maybe not capacity
 
So, apparently we missed the fact (or at least I missed it) that since June 3 Amtrak & CTDOT/MNRR have been running SPG-NYP through service in slots previously used by an MNRR and a Shuttle.
I reformatted and bolded the Amtrak May 22 press release Amtrak Adds More Northeast Regional Service to Springfield Beginning June 5

The hard "slot" to pry from the hands of MNRR commuters is obviously the one that gets into NYP at 8:10am.
I'm pretty sure the evening ones didn't need a rush hour slot re-allocated (and someplace else I saw MNRR explicitly saying "we contributed a prime slot"

Amtrak Northeast Regional trains offer single seat ride options from Springfield and Hartford to Moynihan Train Hall at New York Penn Station. Customers can depart
Springfield at 4:45 a.m. or
Hartford Union Station at 5:26 a.m.
arrive at Moynihan Train Hall at New York Penn Station at 8:10 a.m.
or
leave Springfield at 7:50 a.m.
Hartford at 8:35 a.m. and
arrive in New York at 11:21 a.m.

Heading north riders can depart
New York at 6:59 p.m. and get into
Hartford at 9:51 p.m. or
Springfield at 10:40 p.m.
or
leave New York by 8:50 p.m. and get into
Hartford at 11:41 p.m.
Springfield at 12:26 a.m.
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If you wanted to extend the trips above to make one daily Inland to NYP:
  • When must an Inland leave BOS to get to "be" the SPG start at 7:50am ?
  • When would an Inland leaving SPG at the 10:40pm end wind up getting to BOS ?
Not that that's the only choice of timing, but it again has me thinking I'd rather time the train for humane hours at BOS and HFD/NHV
 
AndrewOnTheMBTA said:
A summer pilot to spur tourism to Boston from SPG wouldn't be bad, like the CapeFlyer, and the distance and fleet is the same. I wonder if ridership would be over 100? For Friday/Sat/Sunday service
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The Cape tourism season ends right before the Big E, leaf peeping, and Salem Halloween begins. Colleges come back overlapping with Cape peak tourism I think, but huge demand there too if you can reasonably connect Amherst and that area in Boston. Could do a Thanksgiving train home for the colleges. A turkey train to Plymouth is a very stupid idea that also kind of rocks

How much would the T need to make in ticket sales to cover the cost of the Cape Flyer/Ski Train specials going somewhere else?
 
What would be REALLY cool is a temporary stop in W Springfield during the Big E. I don't know if that's possible but the LSL goes within about 0.6 mile of the Big E:
1686939139826.png
 
cden4 said:
What would be REALLY cool is a temporary stop in W Springfield during the Big E. I don't know if that's possible but the LSL goes within about 0.6 mile of the Big E:
View attachment 39187
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I made a crayon map plan for Springfield/Westfield/Holyoke commuter rail through there in college, and that yard is way larger and busier than I realized, lots of issues with the locals and not sure how cooperative they would be. Given how bad traffic gets that time of year, a connecting bus from Springfield sounds like a nightmare though, so definitely worth putting a platform there if its any way possible

Using the existing track from the yard for Richard's Grinders (according to Google Maps), you could even smack a new station right on the middle of the fairgrounds.

My favorite plan though is buying a cheap ferry or duck boat and connecting Big E to Six Flags, Basketball Hall of Fame/MGM/Amtrak, and then the Volleyball Hall of Fame if it hasn't sunk yet.
 

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Arlington said:
If you wanted to extend the trips above to make one daily Inland to NYP:
  • When must an Inland leave BOS to get to "be" the SPG start at 7:50am ?
  • When would an Inland leaving SPG at the 10:40pm end wind up getting to BOS ?
Not that that's the only choice of timing, but it again has me thinking I'd rather time the train for humane hours at BOS and HFD/NHV
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The LSL is timetabled for about 2:30 BOS to SPG. The Inland Regionals in the early 2000s were the same. (They included a lot of padding - it was approximately 1:00 BOS-WOR and 1:30 WOR-SPG westbound, and 1:00 SPG to WOR and 1:30 WOR to BOS eastbound. The Bay State in the early 1970s was a zippy 2:05 in each direction - 1:00 to 1:05 for each half - but was up to 2:15 by its 1975 discontinuance. Pre-Amtrak, it was pretty consistently 2:15.

So, you'd be looking at a Boston departure somewhere around 5:30 am, and an arrival around 1:00 am; Worcester around 6:40 am and 11:50 pm. Right now, the first southbound is the 5:00 am Acela, and the latest northbound is the 12:15 am Regional. That super-early start could be plausibly useful for morning business meetings, albeit limited without a matching northbound return. The late return would have no subway or commuter rail connections; it would also arrive after the last train otherwise using South Station (12:09 am weekdays, 12:40 am weekends) and thus might have non-trivial marginal costs for that.

Ultimately, if you're only adding one round trip at first, I don't think it should be designed for a New York day trip. Boston, Springfield, and Hartford already have plenty of service to/from New York; the Inland trains aren't about that market. They're about BOS to SPG and HFD; and WOR to SPG, HFD, and NHV (and to a lesser degree points south) - and they should be timed to serve that market. Corridors like the Downeaster tell us that with limited service, your most important trips are essentially supercommuter trips.

For a single trip, I think you'd want something more like Regionals 171 and 174. With the new Airo trainsets, it should be rather easier to have a train split/merge at New Haven. That would get you a schedule like:
BOS 7:00 am
WOR 8:00 am
SPG 9:15 am
HFD 9:45 am
NHV 10:30 am
NYP 12:30 pm
WAS 4:30 pm

WAS 10:00 am
NYP 2:00 pm
NHV 4:00 pm
HFD 4:45 pm
SPG 5:15 pm
WOR 6:30 pm
BOS 7:30 pm
 
For the second trip, you want essentially the reverse schedule for a Boston supercommuter train:
NHV 6:30 am
HFD 7:15 am
SPG 7:45 am
WOR 9:00 am
BOS 10:00 am

BOS 4:00 pm
WOR 5:00 pm
SPG 6:15 pm
HFD 6:45 pm
NHV 7:30 pm

The northbound wouldn't connect to any existing Amtrak train, though I don't think a 4:30 NYP departure would be completely unused. The southbound is approximately on the schedule of shuttle #417, which has an hour-long layover to meet Regional #177 at NHV.

For a third round trip, something like the 1970s Bay State schedule: left BOS at 11:15 am, arrived at 4:20 pm. Only once you have those supercommuter runs and the midday do you start thinking about things like New York day trips.
 
The EGE said:
The LSL is timetabled for about 2:30 BOS to SPG. The Inland Regionals in the early 2000s were the same. (They included a lot of padding - it was approximately 1:00 BOS-WOR and 1:30 WOR-SPG westbound, and 1:00 SPG to WOR and 1:30 WOR to BOS eastbound. The Bay State in the early 1970s was a zippy 2:05 in each direction - 1:00 to 1:05 for each half - but was up to 2:15 by its 1975 discontinuance. Pre-Amtrak, it was pretty consistently 2:15.
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We'll have to re-figure those LSL times if the current $108M grant application goes through for uprating WOR-SPG speeds from Class 3/59 MPH to Class 4/79 MPH. That'll bleed off lots of time, especially on the very straight Palmer-Springfield stretch. You may indeed get it down to 2:15 again from that speed increase. Whether 2:05 is possible again may depend on whether the freight interference could be tamed. The grant application is a little vague about exactly how much it's going to do about that.


EDIT: Looking at the NNEIRI study's projected schedules, BOS-SPG is doable in 2:03 both directions with Class 4 track and all appropriate mitigations to freight interference. And that was with a Palmer infill on the schedule.
 
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Thanks, @The EGE and @F-Line to Dudley for doing the math

I think 3 r/t per day departing BOS at 5:30a, 7a and 4p with a final return at 1am is a pretty darn sweet NHV schedule

5:30a starts and 1a returns have been the standard way of getting an otherwise unused train set to/from the “new ends” of Northeast Regional routes—pretty much all of Virginia has or had a “utilization” trip to start and end the operating day (Roanoke/Lynchburg, Richmond, Norfolk,Newport News)

The early bird and night owl markets are big enough to pay for these marginal trains
 
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?
 
You *could* take the LSL Amtrak to Springfield as well, but honestly the fastest and cheapest mode besides driving is to take the bus directly to NYC. Or fly from Worcester to LaGuardia or JFK.
 
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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I’d bet that people who want to go from Worcester to NYC today via train, opt to drive private automobiles (for at least a substantial portion of the trip) due to how poor the alternatives are.

I’d imagine that most of those people either drive all the way to New York City or park at a Metro-North Station for the final leg of the trip.
 
cubalibre said:
You *could* take the LSL Amtrak to Springfield as well, but honestly the fastest and cheapest mode besides driving is to take the bus directly to NYC. Or fly from Worcester to LaGuardia or JFK.
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Peter Pan and Greyhound only offer a couple of buses direct per day. Half the time you're backtracking to South Station to transfer to a direct BOS-NYC bus, which...when Pike congestion both ways is taken into account...puts total travel times in the 6-8 hour range. The general slate of WOR-NYC bus options is so abysmal that the train will probably capture most of the transit market instantaneously.
 
I thought we'd established that from WOR people drive to PVD or HVN or STM and catch the train if not driving all the way?
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
We'll have to re-figure those LSL times if the current $108M grant application goes through for uprating WOR-SPG speeds from Class 3/59 MPH to Class 4/79 MPH. [...] Looking at the NNEIRI study's projected schedules, BOS-SPG is doable in 2:03 both directions with Class 4 track and all appropriate mitigations to freight interference. And that was with a Palmer infill on the schedule.
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Oh, man the whole of Mass should be in favor of that. Frankly, it makes me want the 89mph version.
 
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