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

 

[Tallguy]

A Commuter Rail station in the western part of Worcester (around here?) makes sense, but not an Amtrak stop.

Yes

 

[themissinglink]

It sucks that the new Palmer station won't be at the historic depot. I wonder where else the platform could go?

Historic station out of new Palmer rail plans, but boosters focus on getting service close to downtown

MassDOT is now doing further study and will come up with a conceptual design by spring or summer of 2025.

www.masslive.com

PALMER — There isn’t enough room at Palmer’s historic 1884 Union Station for either the new tracks or the high-level platform required of a new station for west-east rail.

It’s also located in a spot where passenger trains would interfere with CSX freight traffic, according to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and its consultants.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

It sucks that the new Palmer station won't be at the historic depot. I wonder where else the platform could go?

Historic station out of new Palmer rail plans, but boosters focus on getting service close to downtown

MassDOT is now doing further study and will come up with a conceptual design by spring or summer of 2025.

www.masslive.com

They studied several different sites. . .

Location B seems like it would be the best all around.

 

[riptide]

It sucks that the new Palmer station won't be at the historic depot. I wonder where else the platform could go?

Historic station out of new Palmer rail plans, but boosters focus on getting service close to downtown

MassDOT is now doing further study and will come up with a conceptual design by spring or summer of 2025.

www.masslive.com

The last five minutes of that public meeting (video here for anyone interested) got so heated they cut the meeting short. It was mostly a few people who were not cooperating with the prescribed means of public comment, but you could hear displeased background muttering from the crowd throughout the presentation.

Alternative B is the best option that meets Amtrak/CSX/etc’s desired optimal criteria, and considering Palmer’s only projected to have less than 20,000 riders a year, it’s probably fine. TOD, walkability, etc are not steering this ship. This is going to be a “single platform with a parking lot” kind of a station, and they can go wherever there’s roadway access.

I understand why it makes sense for MassDOT to incorporate those desired criteria into the baseline assumptions for site selection, rather than picking unnecessary fights, but there are times you really need to be able to take a step back and imagine how it’s going to look from the public’s perspective when you show them something like Alternative F (a platform in the woods, more than a quarter-mile walk down a path from the parking area) and tell them your site selection criteria indicate that’s a more viable station site than the spot where their old station building still stands. It just makes you look out of touch.

Maybe it’s a fool’s errand to even dream of asking CSX if they’d accept something less than their gold-standard 18’6” of horizontal clearance, or any of their other optimal standards. But things might have gone a little smoother at that meeting if MassDOT had acknowledged the options presented weren’t all that compelling and could say they at least attempted to find ways around the regulatory obstacles.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Site selected for future Palmer train station along West-East Rail line | View map here

MassDOT announced on Monday that the South of Palmer Yard is the best site for the future Palmer train station.

www.wwlp.com

Site selected for Palmer Station. They went with the "Location B" that's closest to the historic depot, which is a bit of relief considering how far out of Downtown the other Alts were.

 

[themissinglink]

Despite funding uncertainty under President Trump, Gov. Healey says ‘full steam’ for west-east rail

Gov. Maura T. Healey said ‘we’ll use the money we have’ at a tourism conference this week.

www.masslive.com

Design work for track and station projects needed to make Pittsfield-to-Springfield-to-Boston passenger rail work proceeds despite worries that the Biden-era federal funding might not last in the Trump administration.
“Well, I tell you this, I’m going full steam on east-west rail,” Gov. Maura T. Healey told reporters this week following her speech to more than 400 people at the Governor’s Conference on Travel and Tourism in Springfield. “I’m glad to see we’ve got designs going for the Palmer station. We’ve got funding now for Springfield.”

 

[themissinglink]

Despite funding uncertainty under President Trump, Gov. Healey says ‘full steam’ for west-east rail

Gov. Maura T. Healey said ‘we’ll use the money we have’ at a tourism conference this week.

www.masslive.com

The Republican minority leader in the state Senate, Sen. Peter Durant of Spencer, told the Daily Hampshire Gazette that he’s “not a huge fan” of west-east rail. His office didn’t respond to calls Wednesday.

This guy is a moron. I’m “not a huge fan” of his anti-rail nonsense.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

This guy is a moron. I’m “not a huge fan” of his anti-rail nonsense.

He leads a caucus of only 5 Senators. I'd be grumpy, too, if I were that powerless in my job.

 

[Koopzilla24]

This guy is a moron. I’m “not a huge fan” of his anti-rail nonsense.

He added that fixing the MBTA must be the priority and that there should be less focus on “shipping people off to Boston for work every day.”

What does he even mean? Focus on the T but also focus less on getting people to their jobs where most of the jobs are?

 

[Stlin]

What does he even mean? Focus on the T but also focus less on getting people to their jobs where most of the jobs are?

At least in part, I can understand that as "people in Metro Boston need a functional transit system, but not everyone in the state is looking to get to jobs in Boston."

Perhaps poorly worded, but not knowing the full statement, I generally don't disagree. Especially in a hybrid post-covid work world, I can see how focusing exclusively on commuters could be something of a fallacy; that user base is less reliable than in years past. In essence, if he's saying the system shouldn't be designed exclusively for the needs of commuters, and should work equally well for Bostonites or suburbanites to visit the western part of the state? Getting students to Amherst/Noho, folks to Worcester or Springfield based events ... That's the promise of a regional rail system.

 

[themissinglink]

Western Mass. Amtrak Expansions Are Flush With Funding, But New Routes Won't Debut 'Til 2030s - Streetsblog Massachusetts

Years of work remain before new Amtrak routes start rolling through Springfield to connect Boston, Albany, and New Haven.

mass.streetsblog.org

Last week, MassDOT officials confirmed that most of the necessary infrastructure projects for increased passenger rail service are still very early in their planning and design phases.

And that means that new Amtrak routes won't start running until the early 2030s.
[…]
But last week, Trump's Department of Transportation allayed those concerns by awarding another $3.6 million grant to MassDOT to advance its planning for a new Boston-to-Albany Amtrak route.

 

[riptide]

I came across an article yesterday talking about how the towns of Windham and Putnam, CT passed resolutions in support of the old Central Corridor (New London, CT to Brattleboro, VT) passenger rail idea from a decade ago at the behest of the Central Corridor Passenger Rail Coalition. The CCPRC lists a Palmer address on its nonprofit filings, and the current Citizens for a Palmer Rail Stop group came into being in 2015 partly from former members of the (similarly-named) Central Corridor Rail Coalition.

With that in mind, note the following section from the letter the CCPRC sent to Putnam (which was pasted into this Facebook post) and, most likely, Willington, Lebanon, and Essex, CT as well:

Recently, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Transportation selected a site in Palmer to provide a stop to accommodate east west passenger rail service. The new station will allow for an Amtrak stop. Palmer is the only location where east west service intersects with the Central Corridor north south proposed passenger rail. That is great news. However, the bad news is the location selected by MassDOT for the east west stop in Palmer is located about one mile from the only place that north south intersects with the east west line making it exceedingly difficult to transfer passengers between the two lines. The CCPRC strongly opposes the train stop as proposed because it precludes the possibility of north south rail service from easily transferring east or west. The CCPRC strongly supports the historic site for a passenger rail platform so that both north/south and east/west train service can easily transfer.

To be fair, Palmer-area rail supporters have wanted passenger service on the Central Corridor since long before the Palmer Station siting became an issue...but I think there's definitely an element of "the tail is wagging the dog" in the CCPRC's current outreach effort. If what they really want is to overturn MassDOT's recommendation not to put the future platform at the historic station site, the energy they're investing into all this coalition-building would be better spent focusing on the design criteria that eliminated the old station site from consideration, and whether there's any possible room for exemptions. It would be a long shot, but getting the Central Corridor idea to a place where MassDOT would take it seriously is probably an even longer shot.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I came across an article yesterday talking about how the towns of Windham and Putnam, CT passed resolutions in support of the old Central Corridor (New London, CT to Brattleboro, VT) passenger rail idea from a decade ago at the behest of the Central Corridor Passenger Rail Coalition. The CCPRC lists a Palmer address on its nonprofit filings, and the current Citizens for a Palmer Rail Stop group came into being in 2015 partly from former members of the (similarly-named) Central Corridor Rail Coalition.

With that in mind, note the following section from the letter the CCPRC sent to Putnam (which was pasted into this Facebook post) and, most likely, Willington, Lebanon, and Essex, CT as well:



To be fair, Palmer-area rail supporters have wanted passenger service on the Central Corridor since long before the Palmer Station siting became an issue...but I think there's definitely an element of "the tail is wagging the dog" in the CCPRC's current outreach effort. If what they really want is to overturn MassDOT's recommendation not to put the future platform at the historic station site, the energy they're investing into all this coalition-building would be better spent focusing on the design criteria that eliminated the old station site from consideration, and whether there's any possible room for exemptions. It would be a long shot, but getting the Central Corridor idea to a place where MassDOT would take it seriously is probably an even longer shot.

There's no physical way to use the historic site for a stop that hits both the B&A and Central Corridor alignments from one access point. The switches to NECR's busy Palmer freight yard are literally 300 ft. south of the B&A diamond not allowing much of a platform, you can't physically have turnouts of any kind in the middle of a full-high platform without turning cars smacking the platform, it's a high-and-wide freight clearance route so a platform anywhere on the mainline would be incompatible with NECR ops, and the yard stretches almost a half-mile in length down to the Quaboag River with the yard portions accessible to the street grid nearest to the old station being actively used for truck transloading preventing a turnout platform track on the Depot St. side. The Central Corridor platform would have to go either on Water St. several blocks away from the old station and any possible B&A station near the old station, or north of the diamond on Foundry St. even further away.

Ops today are not what they were 125 years ago when this was last a functioning union station. ADA/MAAB regs for level boarding now exist. Any way you slice it the stations for each line would be completely separate and a good hike away from each other.

 

[KCasiglio]

Having worked in the New London-Windham Region and been a strong advocate for better multimodal connections....New London <-> Palmer isn't it.

Long term, a New London to Hartford via Willimantic....I'd like to see it. But it's objectively low on the CT Rail priority list.

 

[ceo]

There's no physical way to use the historic site for a stop that hits both the B&A and Central Corridor alignments from one access point. The switches to NECR's busy Palmer freight yard are literally 300 ft. south of the B&A diamond not allowing much of a platform, you can't physically have turnouts of any kind in the middle of a full-high platform without turning cars smacking the platform, it's a high-and-wide freight clearance route so a platform anywhere on the mainline would be incompatible with NECR ops, and the yard stretches almost a half-mile in length down to the Quaboag River with the yard portions accessible to the street grid nearest to the old station being actively used for truck transloading preventing a turnout platform track on the Depot St. side. The Central Corridor platform would have to go either on Water St. several blocks away from the old station and any possible B&A station near the old station, or north of the diamond on Foundry St. even further away.

Ops today are not what they were 125 years ago when this was last a functioning union station. ADA/MAAB regs for level boarding now exist. Any way you slice it the stations for each line would be completely separate and a good hike away from each other.

It looks like it ought to be possible to site a combined station on the other side of the diamond, off Foundry St. There's still the platform issue, but that's what automatically-deploying bridge plates are for. But this Central Corridor plan in general does seem like kind of a train to nowhere from nowhere.

 

[The EGE]

Central Corridor was a good idea proposed too early. There are a number of corridors that would be useful to have regional rail on - moderate-speeds, cheaply operated, ~10 mile stop spacing, service every hour or two, intended for a mix of trips rather than commute-focused. New London-Brattleboro, New London-Worcester, Providence-Hyannis, parts of the Housatonic, etc. Some similar services like the outer LIRR branches, SLE, and Atlantic City Line already exist (but need improvements). Yes, some of these can be served with buses, but those typically have few stops

But in order for those to work, you need a framework of robust intercity services for those to connect to. We're talking half-hourly Northeast Regionals on the NEC, hourly Inland Route trains, and high frequency on the denser local corridors (Worcester Line, Providence Line, etc). Service on lighter corridors won't work if it's only useful for travel within that corridor - it works when it provides a link to everywhere else on the network. New London and Palmer and Brattleboro aren't big endpoints, but as gateways to the entire NEC and the three biggest cities in Massachusetts?

 

[riptide]

It looks like it ought to be possible to site a combined station on the other side of the diamond, off Foundry St. There's still the platform issue, but that's what automatically-deploying bridge plates are for. But this Central Corridor plan in general does seem like kind of a train to nowhere from nowhere.

But even if you found some workaround for the switch and freight clearance issues, site access would be the next issue you’d run into. For Palmer to function as a modern-day union station in the way the CCPRC is arguing for, knowing that you will have two separate rail platforms no matter what, the “union station” part of it would come from using a single, shared parking area, drop-off loop, passenger shelter, etc. That pretty much means the station infrastructure needs to be near the diamond, i.e. where the historic station building is.

Whether the historic station side or the Foundry Street side was made the modern-day station, by virtue of being on the inside angle of the rail crossing, the station site will have subpar connectivity to the surrounding street network.

I’m all for walkable communities and supporting historic village centers, but in this day and age, most people will be accessing the Palmer station by driving themselves or getting dropped by someone else driving them. Convenient automobile access has to be one of the ruling factors in site selection. It’s not unheard of to have all the cars funnel through a single access point, but why willingly subject yourself to that condition AND fight uphill against the platform design regs?

The site MassDOT recommended is right near the convergence of Routes 20 and 32, giving it good reach into the surrounding region. It’s not much for placemaking and doesn’t have much TOD potential, but for the type of service that’s going to come through Palmer, what they’re proposing will do.

I feel for the people in Palmer, and I respect their attachment to the historic station, but they have to be able to square the sentiment with the practical constraints of the day. It would be a tough fight even if they choose to fight it head-on vs. the roundabout strategy of building a coalition for a service that doesn’t have much organic grassroots interest.