The DT between Walpole and Norfolk seems to stop at 115 crossing. Will Norfolk ever get a second platform in an RER world?
Yes. This project stops at 115 because it's simply cheapest and nets them the maximum length of DT for their money to not have to engage that grade crossing or rebuild the station right now. Whenever DT comes to town that new interlocking switch will get turned into a set of crossovers.
Thanks for the clarification.
This may be a bit off-topic, but if an extension of the Franklin line to Milford was constructed, how much additional double track would be required on the line to run 16 Milford round-trips daily? All the way to Forge Park?
DT would have to go to Franklin Jct. Which right now would only have to consist of infills. . .
- Norwood Central (DT currently ends 500 ft. south of platforms) to Windsor Gardens, stopping at foot of WG platforms. Approx. 1.3 mi. Base requirement for 16 F'boro round-trips, already planned if the full-build service gets enacted.
- through Windsor Gardens platforms to Walpole tunnel. Approx. 2 miles. Tunnel goes underneath Route 1A about a half-mile north of station. Short-length (no traffic pinch) constriction of permanent single-track; zero impact on RER or future extensions. Plimptonville gets permanently retired. Windsor Gardens would have to be rebuilt, probably shifted south a little towards Mylod St. so there can be ramp access to 2 platforms (which wouldn't alter the current egress much at all since these would be 800 footers). MA Architectual Commission may have to grant a mini-high exemption for this one since Walpole Jct.-Readville Yard is a high-and-wide freight clearance route, and adjacent wetlands make doing a passing track more difficult. (You can see why they aren't touching that stop for Foxboro full-build).
- Walpole Station. Stop would have to be relocated away from the historic building because middle of the wye is too cramped to make ADA. New stop easiest to do as a full-high island platform atop widened Elm St. and Neponset River bridges with the northbound freight wye separated onto a third track. Trailing crossovers to the southbound wye allow access to/from Foxboro from each platform track. Junction switches would probably be chained together with the nearby switches for the tunnel single-track so they all act in-tandem for traffic sorting. This will be a controversial project for the town and somewhat expensive because of the bridge work, but it's the only plausible way you can make such an extremely busy stop ADA-compliant and serve both Forge Park and Foxboro directions from a unified station.
- 115 grade crossing + Norfolk Station to Franklin layover leads. Approx. 3.8 miles. All stops Norfolk-south can be full-high since the clearance route ends at Walpole Jct. This stretch of mainline has been single-track longer than points north, so a few of the empty bridge decks need rebuilding. Other than that, nothing any more expensive than what the current Walpole-to-115 project is doing.
Foxboro full-build would reconfig the Franklin layover leads into passing crossovers to whack one cascading traffic conflict upstream between Forge Park and expanded Foxboro schedules, making that half-mile "real" DT instead of just yard access. Franklin station has a scant 1600 ft. of single sandwiched between the end of the layover DT and the Franklin Jct. runaround siding. It's not clear if that's even impactful enough to need to backfill for RER. Depends greatly on future extension plans.
Anything past Franklin Jct. is going to be majority-single.
The Milford Branch was never historically a double-track line, is extremely curvy, and passes through lots of wetlands (pretty much bolted to the Charles River from Bellingham Jct. out) so chances are that's going to remain single with passing sidings. But the only stops being considered were Bellingham Jct. and Milford on a very long schedule because of the slow speeds, so meets aren't hard to stage on passing tracks or if the stops themselves get doubled in lieu of the running track. Note that the power plant by Bellingham Jct. is where they ID'd the only plausible replacement layover site for Franklin with enough space to increase service, so the ruling assumption going into the Milford study 10 years ago was that those low-margin extension stops were necessary just to get the increased service Norfolk-Forge Park. I don't know if attitudes have changed now. The MPO oddly never ended up publishing the results of the Milford study, which lends suspicion that the ridership numbers were really really not worth the cost. At any rate, the Milford Branch has a long-term safe freight franchise and isn't going anywhere, so we'll have another crack at troubleshooting this one later.
If the line instead/additionally gets extended to Woonsocket via Blackstone as RIDOT covets, it would probably also be single with passing tracks. Maybe the DT gets extended along the active Franklin Industrial Track stub of the old mainline to Canal St. and a replacement station (permanent or temp until Milford is figured out) for Forge Park gets sited there with shuttle buses 'inverted' from that site to the FP area. And then from the former Canal St. grade crossing it goes single with a couple passers to the Blackstone River and the new southbound wye onto the P&W mainline to Woonsocket Union Station (already DT). Downtown layover gets shared with the one ID'd on existing freight stubs for RIDOT Providence-Woonsocket service, which ends up being a convenient solve for the whole Franklin layover mess and a convenient cost consolidator. The only other intermediate stop you're likely to have on this route other than that Canal St. drop-in for Forge Park is Millerville on Route 126 in Bellingham, which has a convenient RIPTA catchment from the northern neighborhoods of Woonsocket as well as 'good enough' GATRA shuttles from downtown Bellingham. And, yes, there is luxurious space for rail-with-trail here...even accommodations for a tree barrier between the track and the SNE Trunkline trail (which is poorly utilized and minimally maintained on its Franklin rump, so the rail extension may actually help trail usability a lot). In Woonsocket's case the travel times on a very straight and brisk ROW make the meets easy to stage on single if Millerville is the target area for the passers.
