Teban54
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2021
- Messages
- 1,004
- Reaction score
- 2,576
I did also provide a potential solution without a flying junction, if we're willing to accept an unconventional track layout.
Sorry that I didn't see this earlier. I think this is a pretty interesting and innovative idea; but one thing to clarify is whether you intend Providence and Stoughton/SCR trains to run on local or express tracks. It appears that local is more likely, even if SCR trains were to skip Hyde Park, so that they don't block Amtrak trains at Ruggles. If that's the case, the majority of NEC's load will be on local tracks, and there will remain merge conflicts between Franklin trains in one direction and Providence/SCR trains in the opposite direction. Not as bad as having additional conflicts with all Amtrak trains on top of them, but since regional rail trains will see much higher tph than Amtrak trains, it's probably only removing a small number of conflicts, as opposed to "not nearly as big of a capacity constraint".What about the 2 western tracks being local and the 2 eastern tracks being express? You would still have a flat junction with the Franklin line, but since that would only affect local service it's not nearly as big of a capacity constraint. That would solve the gradient issue at Readville since that area has way more room for an incline, and would also "solve" the platform issue at Forest Hills by reusing the existing not-quite-wide-enough island platform. There's plenty of room on the Franklin Line for double (Or even quad-track) here, so that's not an issue. To avoid a curved platform the station should probably be shifted northwards by about ~300-400ft, but it would be fully level with parallel local/express platforms. (Although without a flying junction there would be no same-direction cross-platform interchange.)
The one big operational hurdle is that to make this work where quad-track turns into triple-track, the Franklin Line would need to run on the left for this section, with a crossover between Readville and Endicott to go back to standard right-hand running.I can't find any rule that says this is 100% verboten, but I don't think it's done anywhere else on the NEC. Perhaps @F-Line to Dudley has some insight on whether or not this is possible from a regulations perspective.With an Inbound Local | Outbound Local | Outbound Express | Inbound Express layout, the outbound services would share the middle track for triple-tracked sections.
(The other option is to have some NEC regional rail trains run express, but then you're cutting service at Readville and Hyde Park, which is undesirable as we discussed earlier. That sounds even more awkward if the reason is solely to give Franklin riders OSRs to Ruggles and Back Bay.)
I do think it's the best compromise to date for killing two birds in one stone (Franklin Line merge and Hyde Park/Forest Hills platforms), though.