Regional New England Rail (Amtrak & State DOT & NEC)

Jahvon09 said:
Was watching vids on the new Acela. It was topping out at 165 mph!! This was in Connecticut at or near Kingston. It can only do that in certain spots. Not the whole way. Amtrak would have to build a whole new railroad in order for the new trains to reach top speed. It said that it doesn't have the dough to do that. If it had, both old & new trains could run at full speed, or near that. It would cut travel time down considerably!! :)
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That would be Kingston, RHODE ISLAND, Sir ;)
 
The current Acela has been tested at 165 as well. Bug bucks went to make sections of track capable of that speed. After 10 years of construction, that is supposed to be finished, but naturally Amtrak wont kick up the throttle.
 
jass said:
The current Acela has been tested at 165 as well. Bug bucks went to make sections of track capable of that speed. After 10 years of construction, that is supposed to be finished, but naturally Amtrak wont kick up the throttle.
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Over-simplistic at best.

Kingston-Cranston and Attleboro-Sharon have been signaled 165 for about a decade, but aren't long enough stretches for a +15 MPH uprate to have made any tangible schedule gains. The plan was to wait until the 165 uprates in NJ were completed, then wad them all together into a single schedule adjustment.

That Jersey track work was finished about 2-1/2 years ago. They weren't able to do it at that time, however, because the Acela I trainsets' uptime has plunged precipitously in that span due to old age and unavailability of spare parts. To the point where close to 1/3 of the fleet is currently in long-term storage with various ailments while they're still in COVID recovery mode. Rather than push the power cars and finicky-on-a-good-day tilt mechanisms closer to design limits, they kept the 150 restriction for self-preservation purposes on specific recommendation from the Mechanical Dept. and the techs at Bombardier. You heard that right: the manufacturer of those turkeys said to avoid running them at advertised design speed, because they couldn't hack it without breaking down more often than the unacceptable rate they're already breaking down.


"Won't kick up the throttle" implies that this was somehow withheld in bad faith. That's not the case. It got quantified for them how many more breakdowns they'd be dealing with if they pushed those piles of junk--which already take near-superhuman shop effort to keep running for their next trip--another gear. And 5 minutes faster most trips wasn't worth the downside of all the refunds they'd have to issue in cancellations and re-bookings. As soon as enough of the new sets are in-service next year for them to re-factor the schedule, they'll start running 165. There's no other details that need to be settled, other than fulfilling the majority of the Alstom procurement.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Over-simplistic at best.

Kingston-Cranston and Attleboro-Sharon have been signaled 165 for about a decade, but aren't long enough stretches for a +15 MPH uprate to have made any tangible schedule gains. The plan was to wait until the 165 uprates in NJ were completed, then wad them all together into a single schedule adjustment.

That Jersey track work was finished about 2-1/2 years ago. They weren't able to do it at that time, however, because the Acela I trainsets' uptime has plunged precipitously in that span due to old age and unavailability of spare parts. To the point where close to 1/3 of the fleet is currently in long-term storage with various ailments while they're still in COVID recovery mode. Rather than push the power cars and finicky-on-a-good-day tilt mechanisms closer to design limits, they kept the 150 restriction for self-preservation purposes on specific recommendation from the Mechanical Dept. and the techs at Bombardier. You heard that right: the manufacturer of those turkeys said to avoid running them at advertised design speed, because they couldn't hack it without breaking down more often than the unacceptable rate they're already breaking down.


"Won't kick up the throttle" implies that this was somehow withheld in bad faith. That's not the case. It got quantified for them how many more breakdowns they'd be dealing with if they pushed those piles of junk--which already take near-superhuman shop effort to keep running for their next trip--another gear. And 5 minutes faster most trips wasn't worth the downside of all the refunds they'd have to issue in cancellations and re-bookings. As soon as enough of the new sets are in-service next year for them to re-factor the schedule, they'll start running 165. There's no other details that need to be settled, other than fulfilling the majority of the Alstom procurement.
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Youve listed a series of excuses that have extended an Obama shovel-ready project into a 10 year odyssey.

The plan was to wait until the 165 uprates in NJ were completed, then wad them all together into a single schedule adjustment.
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Come on, can you really type this with a serious face?

"Why yes, we do update the schedule twice a year, but shaving off those 55 seconds is really too much work for the spreadsheet guy"

There are a dozen projects around the country where we paid big bucks to upgrade track speeds, and in 95% of them, the result was no change because theres always reasons why this country cant make things happen.
 
jass said:
Youve listed a series of excuses that have extended an Obama shovel-ready project into a 10 year odyssey.
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Excuses? Sure...there's likely plenty of them. The whole AMTK vs. BBD equipment maint clusterfuck with the A1's is full of them. But at least aim straight if you're going to point fingers. It's somewhere in the Mechanical Dept. vs. Manufacturer murk, not broad-brush shadowy unnamed forces trying to repress Common Man.

Come on, can you really type this with a serious face?

"Why yes, we do update the schedule twice a year, but shaving off those 55 seconds is really too much work for the spreadsheet guy"
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Yes...with totally straight face. Because the schedule is not that simplistic and there are timing mechanisms for starts/stops vs. commuter traffic at the major terminals (esp. NYP, NHV, the collective BOS+BBY+128 grouping, and PVD...in descending importance). The gains from +15 MPH in separate parts of RI and MA bookending terminals didn't bring the schedule out of the margin of error that could cut down those gains, so it wasn't reliable enough to project across the full schedule. Rolling it up with the contiguously longer upgrades in NJ punched above the MoE largely because of the consistently sooner arrival times @ NYP. There's a lot of bloat in there that could be cut if all hands were working together (see: MBTA, MNRR)...but it is definitely not simplistic.

There are a dozen projects around the country where we paid big bucks to upgrade track speeds, and in 95% of them, the result was no change because theres always reasons why this country cant make things happen.
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Wow...and if we completely ignore those individual reasons because a simplistic temper tantrum is so much more satisfying, we'll never give fuckall about what actually solves them! Not so great if you want to solve problems with targeted solutions. Not so great when it pollutes the discussion with tons of rage-soaked misinformation. But, admittedly...totes awesomesauce if screaming into the void is the be-all/end-all of the exercise!
 
BostonTrainGuy said:
That would be Kingston, RHODE ISLAND, Sir ;)
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Not to excuse placing a village in the wrong state, but... it's damn confusing down there in URI-ville, in terms of the plague of village names. For example, Amtrak calls it "Kingston" station--yet per the map it's in West Kingston. Yet both West Kingston and Kingston are merely villages of South Kingstown. Yes, with a "w." How screwy is that?

Also, why would the municipality get the "South" qualifier? Shouldn't the municipality be simply "Kingstown" or "Kingston"--and its subsidiary villages would get the various compass point qualifiers? Lil' Rhody, in its manifold quirks and charms....
 
DBM said:
Not to excuse placing a village in the wrong state, but... it's damn confusing down there in URI-ville, in terms of the plague of village names. For example, Amtrak calls it "Kingston" station--yet per the map it's in West Kingston. Yet both West Kingston and Kingston are merely villages of South Kingstown. Yes, with a "w." How screwy is that?

Also, why would the municipality get the "South" qualifier? Shouldn't the municipality be simply "Kingstown" or "Kingston"--and its subsidiary villages would get the various compass point qualifiers? Lil' Rhody, in its manifold quirks and charms....
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You have obviously never dealt with Kansas City :rolleyes:
 
DBM said:
Also, why would the municipality get the "South" qualifier? Shouldn't the municipality be simply "Kingstown" or "Kingston"--and its subsidiary villages would get the various compass point qualifiers? Lil' Rhody, in its manifold quirks and charms....
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I'll keep this off-topic tangent brief but to answer your question: Kings Towne, RI was divided in 1722/23 into North and South Kingston. South Kingston was the county seat, but, a village in its borders, Little Rest, became much more successful so that by 1752 the courthouse and county jail were moved there. Little Rest became the de facto county seat (and rotating state capitol) and was renamed to Kingston Village in 1825. Ultimately, when the railroad did not go through Kingston, the village lost prominence and the county seat eventually moved to a newly constructed and prospering West Kingston (on the railroad) and has remained there ever since. Here's the Historical register nomination form with those details.
 
jbray said:
I'll keep this off-topic tangent brief but to answer your question: Kings Towne, RI was divided in 1722/23 into North and South Kingston. South Kingston was the county seat, but, a village in its borders, Little Rest, became much more successful so that by 1752 the courthouse and county jail were moved there. Little Rest became the de facto county seat (and rotating state capitol) and was renamed to Kingston Village in 1825. Ultimately, when the railroad did not go through Kingston, the village lost prominence and the county seat eventually moved to a newly constructed and prospering West Kingston (on the railroad) and has remained there ever since. Here's the Historical register nomination form with those details.
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Shorter: "King's Towne" naming conventions are the "Washington Street" of census districting.
 
There was at least one other segment tested for 165mph: a 21 mile stretch between perryville MD and Wilmington

Since that’s a stretch that Pres Biden commuted regularly I am surprised we haven’t heard more of it

2012 Progressive Railroading article
The faster trains will be tested along the following sections of track: 21.3 miles between Perryville, Md., and Wilmington, Del.; 22.9 miles between Trenton and New Brunswick, N.J.; 29.2 miles between Westerly and Cranston, R.I.; and 27.8 miles between South Attleboro and Readville, Mass. Amtrak is considering operating trains at up to 160 mph along those segments.
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www.progressiverailroading.com

Rail News - Amtrak testing trains at 165 mph in Northeast Corridor. For Railroad Career Professionals

www.progressiverailroading.com www.progressiverailroading.com
 
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F-Line to Dudley said:
. . . Attleboro-Sharon have been signaled 165 for about a decade, but aren't long enough stretches for a +15 MPH uprate to have made any tangible schedule gains.
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Always was of the opinion that when the NEC was being developed they should have routed it through the College Hill Tunnel east of Providence and ran it north from the draw bridge. That would have created a 25 mile long beeline from Providence to Sharon which would have been a true high-speed rail stretch.

The existing route through Pawtucket is excruciatingly slow.
 
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Arlington said:
There was at least one other segment tested for 165mph: a 21 mile stretch between perryville MD and Wilmington

Since that’s a stretch that Pres Biden commuted regularly I am surprised we haven’t heard more of it

2012 Progreessive Railroading article
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That territory has the geometry and signaling for higher speed, but still lacks about 9 miles of torn-out 3rd track that must be re-added with additional crossovers before an Acela can do both-directions leapfrogs of a 125 MPH-capped NE Regional in that stretch. This is all in the commuter rail desert between MARC's Perryville terminus and SEPTA's Newark terminus. After Penn Central commuter trains dropped the gap in the 70's, Amtrak simplified the infrastructure through there for its Metroliner/125 MPH program. Right now it's damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you don't prospect re: speedups...you'd be able to pass in one direction for noteable schedule improvement but would inadvertently create corresponding schedule gaps in the opposite direction from the lack of passback opportunities bogarting a track for use in the opposite direction.

The fix for all this is wadded up in the MARC-to-Delaware funding hustle for re-healing the commuter rail gap, so it gets intentionally downplayed as a "high speed" program in order to increase the chances for the commuter rail target...even though on the ground they're mutually serving. It's triangulation that Biden himself set up when he was a sitting Senator. Safe to say that with B.B.B. being pushed by Preznit Amtrak, the chances of that MARC/Penn Line re-extension are extremely good for fast-tracking right now. But it does have on-the-ground construction dependencies left to settle before it can get rolled into the schedule, while for NJ+RI+MA 165 running is construction-finished and simply waiting for the equipment turnover to get enacted.
 
BostonTrainGuy said:
Always was of the opinion that when the NEC was being developed they should have routed it through the College Hill Tunnel east of Providence and ran it north from the draw bridge. That would have created a 25 mile long beeline from Providence to Sharon which would have been a true high-speed rail stretch.
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Alon Levy put the maths to the East Side bypass, and the schedule savings weren't much. There was less improvement to be had through Seekonk and East Providence than there was by tightening-up Back Bay to 128 with non-slop T electric ops and punting off the slower-by-stop-density Needham and Franklin trains. Cost-benefit wise it was waaaaay more expensive with less benefit than enacting the Needham-to-rapid-transit conversion, EMU'ing Franklin/Foxboro as primary Fairmount Line appendages, and tightening every Providence/Stoughton ops bolt outbound of Ruggles. This is mainly because the current alignment really isn't all that slow...125 MPH end-to-end on the Attleboro Cutoff between East Junction and Boston Switch, 70 through Pawtucket...slightly faster than the 55-65 between the end of the Cranston straightaway (end of 165 MPH) and the south approach to Providence Station. The NEC FUTURE study, also being an overall administrative dumpster fire, set it up to fail by making it this rarified-air HSR "nice-to-have" while throwing shade at the whole transit ecosystem on the NEC here...so it ended up being one of the first cuts. Too much bucks for too few seconds worth of schedule improvement.

I think there's a far-future purpose to explore here...but it's mainly commuter driven, not HSR driven. RIDOT Intrastate commuter rail (if they ever get around to completing it) has well-established upside. But if you're truly looking to a future where Metro Providence is transversed by near- rapid transit level frequencies, you're going to need to find a way to both pulse up the trans-295 frequencies to :15 Urban Rail spec and significantly densify the station spacings beyond simply the Pawtucket and Cranston infills officially proposed. How far you go there can indeed come into conflict with Amtrak thru service, especially when the FRIP (P&W freight) track from Central Falls to Cranston can't feasibly be electrified under the overpassing City street grid while still being tasked with carrying heavy autorack freight traffic from Quonset Point. If you could boot Amtrak Acelas + Regionals through the tunnel to the East Side so South Attleboro-Providence were just homogenous commuter rail traffic, you could drop Urban Rail infills at Mt. Hope, Woodlawn, and/or Central Falls slotted between the existing South Attleboro-Pawtucket-Providence trio and only need to finagle passing opportunities with the Boston commuter trains skipping the lesser stops. The stop density (coupled with an Olneyville infill spanning Providence-Cranston to the south, where extra electrified tracks amid Amtrak traffic are much easier to swing) could then give South Attleboro-to-T.F. Green inside the 295 belt comparable all-day transit coverage to the Fairmount Line in Boston...and form an actual load-bearing north-south complement to the primarily east-west oriented Providence Streetcar proposal.

But it has to be coached in ^those^ terms to really give it any juice or mindshare. The East Side bypass just isn't consequential enough in an HSR-centric vacuum to command the resources. If somebody ever does a good-faith autopsy on the NEC FUTURE study fiasco and tries to re-mount it with less tone deafness and more equitable treatment of the total NEC ecosystem, the Urban Rail angle might be a tact worthy of gaining it some attention.
 

Practically a blur as it flies past!! Even the sound of the horn has changed! Cool!! :)
 
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F-Line to Dudley said:
I think there's a far-future purpose to explore here...but it's mainly commuter driven, not HSR driven.
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The other piece of the puzzle is that you would somehow need to rebuild a track connection between the tunnel and the extant ROW. And possibly need to relocate the station, or build a second station for trains using the tunnel. I believe I've seen diagrams floated around here to show how that could be done, but I have a hard time imagining any sort of public buy-in. Maybe in 50 years, when most of the living memory of the last time tracks ran through downtown has been lost, but it's still a tall order.

EDIT: For the most part, the East Side Tunnel solves a problem that no longer exists. Providence will always be a waypoint between Boston and New York, and that means the orientation will always be north-to-south or north-to-southwest (if you go via Hartford). Pawtucket is almost certainly always going to be higher density than East Providence, and once you leave East Providence you literally are in the woods, so the local market is also always going to be north-south oriented. Yes, its utility as a bypass, in order to access those tracks in Rumford... sure, it has some theoretical value there. But again, only in service of north-south service.

Until and unless the South Coast turns into Long Island 2.0, home of New York/Connecticut super-commuters, there's never really going to be demand to run mainline rail east from Providence. (And even once there is, it'll almost certainly be more parsimonious to run it via Taunton and Attleboro.)
 
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Amtrak announces the bid winner for the Amfleet replacement contract. No surprises: it's Siemens, "Venture" series. NEC, Keystone, Empire Corridor, and other East Coast statie routes like the Downeaster will all get the same single-level cars currently on-order for Chicago Hub and California. Which are in turn based off the Brightline cars that have been operating in Florida for a couple years and the new VIA Rail Montreal-Toronto-Windsor Corridor fleet. A small tack-on to the order will go to the Cascades route to replace the retired Talgo trainsets. Amtrak, states, and Siemens have until some point this summer to finalize the formal contract that locks everything down including delivery dates, so for purposes of this press release Siemens is functionally "Builder-Elect"

The press release is worded real awkwardly, as they refer to "83 trainsets" worth of cars as if these are fully-integrated trainsets. They're not; they're regular loco-haul (Sprinter or Charger) coach trailers. Yet to be seen how many actual cars that entails. For whatever reason both the Brightline and VIA orders stick with the "trainset" nomenclature (though the Cali/Midwest order doesn't), but it's just marketing boilerplate. So far the Long Distance-configured Amfleet II's are not subject to replacement in this order. That'll be taken care of on the options end, substituting an LD seating configuration.


The things are effing GORGEOUS compared to the claustrophobic Amfleets, so despite Siemens being the transparently obvious pick for the bid from a mile away this news signifies a coming attraction legit worth it to celebrate. Yuuuuge windows, more interior square footage than the old tubes they replace, widebody vestibule doors, automated gap fillers for interfacing with gapped high platforms (i.e. we can build full-highs on freight clearance routes now!), and refreshingly lighter-weight. The interiors are comprised of modular snap-in sections loadable by popping off the end caps in the shop, which makes changing/updating the layout to refreshed livery and alternate configurations...literally...a "snap". And the statie routes will be able to offer partial-luggage alt. configurations from the standard coach template, meaning baggage/bike/ski handling can become a standard flavor on many more routes at lower operating cost than ever before.

Siemens_Venture_Trainset_California.jpg

Brightline_Train_(47283172241).jpg
 
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