Regional Rail (RUR) & North-South Rail Link (NSRL)

bakgwailo said:
I think it at least helps commuters a bit even without capacity upgrades: the electric push/pulls should at least accelerate better (maybe shaving a few minutes off), and, most importantly should in theory be an order of magnitude more reliable than the existing diesels.
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I'm not sure about the reliability. Power is frequently knocked out to suburban communities during storms, that would affect the commuter rail too.
 
tysmith95 said:
I'm not sure about the reliability. Power is frequently knocked out to suburban communities during storms, that would affect the commuter rail too.
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I am pretty sure that the NEC electric feed is way more secure than the power feed to suburban bedroom communities.

You don't hear that Amtrak is stalled because the power is out in Attleboro.
 
tysmith95 said:
I'm not sure about the reliability. Power is frequently knocked out to suburban communities during storms, that would affect the commuter rail too.
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Depends on the towns and neighborhoods. When my wife rented in Chestnut Hill, a stiff breeze would knock out power. I gotta think that the infrastructure for the CR will be a bit more durable.
 
You don't hear that Amtrak is stalled because the power is out in Attleboro
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It's hilarious that you mention this. Two or three years ago, I was on a train to NYC stuck somewhere around Attleboro due to a power outage. Something shorted out somewhere and it killed the power ahead of us. It was a short wait for the power to be restored, but apparently it left some lingering issue with signals, so we cruised at a majestic 5-10mph for a few miles before resuming track speed.

Agree that it's a rare event, though and a lot of ROW maintenance is done to ensure that.
 
DominusNovus said:
Depends on the towns and neighborhoods. When my wife rented in Chestnut Hill, a stiff breeze would knock out power. I gotta think that the infrastructure for the CR will be a bit more durable.
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True. At least when I lived in Andover, power would go out for days at a time on average about once a year. Everyone on the street where I lived had generators.

But yes I'd hope the Commuter Rail is more durable. Would likely require a lot of tree cutting (which might be controversial).
 
I'm not confident that a power outage that affects electric Amtrak service on the NEC could somehow be avoided by the MBTA CR continuing to run diesel. Besides the fact that there are bottleneck points between PVD and BOS that would cause MBTA coaches to get stuck behind a downed NER/Acela train on the same route, a lot of the infrastructure is also electric.

As a timely example, last night MBTA train 832 (6:57pm out of Wickford) ended up having a 30+ min delay just south of Canton Junction. The conductor relayed that this was because Amtrak lost power to the switch at Canton, and everything in both directions on the Providence/Stoughton line and NEC was backed up as a result.
 
MjolnirMan said:
I'm not confident that a power outage that affects electric Amtrak service on the NEC could somehow be avoided by the MBTA CR continuing to run diesel. Besides the fact that there are bottleneck points between PVD and BOS that would cause MBTA coaches to get stuck behind a downed NER/Acela train on the same route, a lot of the infrastructure is also electric.

As a timely example, last night MBTA train 832 (6:57pm out of Wickford) ended up having a 30+ min delay just south of Canton Junction. The conductor relayed that this was because Amtrak lost power to the switch at Canton, and everything in both directions on the Providence/Stoughton line and NEC was backed up as a result.
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That's only one line that interferes with the NEC for most of its distance. Yes there are other lines that interfere north of Readville, but that's for a short distance that is mostly triple tracked anyway.
 
tysmith95 said:
I'm not sure about the reliability. Power is frequently knocked out to suburban communities during storms, that would affect the commuter rail too.
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I meant average breakdowns/repairs per mile. However, the NEC seems to do reasonable well during storms, at least as well or better than the current diesels in blizzards/etc. As does NYC/NJ, London, Germany, northern Europe, etc.
 
tysmith95 said:
True. At least when I lived in Andover, power would go out for days at a time on average about once a year. Everyone on the street where I lived had generators.

But yes I'd hope the Commuter Rail is more durable. Would likely require a lot of tree cutting (which might be controversial).
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Thats the problem right there. People freak out every time any tree gets cut. Its the rich communities that tend to lose power the most, in my experience. In Quincy, I think our neighborhood has had two black outs in the past five years (and I’m rounding up, I only specifically remember one).
 
DominusNovus said:
Thats the problem right there. People freak out every time any tree gets cut. Its the rich communities that tend to lose power the most, in my experience. In Quincy, I think our neighborhood has had two black outs in the past five years (and I’m rounding up, I only specifically remember one).
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The NEC is largely immune from this because Amtrak is the track maintainer and uses its federal status to clear the trees a wide swath from the ROW. There's also miles and miles of grassy swampland from the Boston-Dedham city line to Canton Junction, again in Sharon, and again between Sharon and Mansfield. Also, unlike the New York to D.C. segment that has its power sole-sourced from Safe Harbor Dam in Pennsylvania and the New York to New Haven segment that is ridden very hard by electric Metro-North traffic, the New Haven to Boston segment is the most robustly sourced segment from local transmission lines...mainly needing just the extra on-line substation capacity to handle full-blown Purple Line traffic. Trees and ice end up not being that big a problem up here. Heat and lightning moreso...but that also tends to hit the grid interconnects more than the railroad. Obviously a strong enough wind can pose a hazard anywhere, but in MA the line isn't nearly as close to the ocean as it is in RI and CT so that threat is all relative.

In other words...this is a world apart from the D Line's constant wooded issues with power raising its spectre on a train painted Purple. Now, the T will legit experience some problems with tree canopy vs. wires vs. NIMBY's when it gets around to electrifying the Worcester Line. That one will be a test of their ability to manage the canopy around the ROW, because MetroWest pretty much all points Riverside to Natick is choked with trees--especially in the Wellesley-Natick cut--with some more uncontrolled growth further west surrounding touchy wetlands. They shouldn't have any issues with the Fairmount Line because north half is all urban embankment and south half is all urban cut behind fenced manicured backyards, and shouldn't have any issues with wiring up Riverside entirely in the Pike cut...so for the maximum that first-phase RER can chain off a to-the-limit expanded Sharon substation they're fine.
 
JeffDowntown said:
I think the intent of the test is a cheap test of electric locomotives, on a line that is already electrified (i.e. NEC).
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Yes. There's only 2 passenger electric loco makes that are in-service and still available-for-new-sale on the continent right now: Siemens Sprinter ACS-64, and Bombardier ALP-46A. Amtrak has a Sprinter-servicing shop right in Boston and a couple spares to bum now that we're getting into warm months, while NJT has a little bit of an electric fleet shortage. As an opportunity to kick the wheels around and see what's inside, this is hard to pass up.

Just remember: it's only a demonstrator. The wires aren't there in the commuter layovers to carry water on the schedule, and the substation capacity has not yet been upgraded and can only take a hair above-and-beyond normal max-density Amtrak service levels before it's tapped out. Those substation and yard fixes are design-build procurements that can't be strung together in a few months. So this demonstrator is only going to hit a lucky one every few trains, and the schedules still have to be predicated on assumption that any train can be a 79 MPH-capped diesel set because most will still be.

After-hours you might be able to catch them doing non-revenue runs that try to gun it to the 93 MPH limit of the Rotem and rebuilt Kawasaki coaches to benchmark what a test electric schedule would look like, and that's good. And...they would probably test out the trainlining between T coach sets and Amtrak coach sets to see if more flexible rescues could be staged for either railroad's disabled trains. And all of that will be put to good use...including if they have no intention whatsoever of buying electric locos and want to proceed straight to EMU data collection next. This is a very beneficial trial...just not one that riders are going to see much immediate different experience from because the nature of the data collection is all internal.
 
FK4 said:
I don’t know where to put this, so I will put it here: the MBTA is replacing the bridge in Roslindale Square. Obviously there are implications down the road depending on how they build it… https://www.universalhub.com/2019/mbta-getting-ready-replace-120-year-old-train
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Not really. The bridge is a former tri-track structure with the other two track decks removed in 1985 when the Needham Line began comprehensive renovations for its '87 service restart at the opening of the SW Corridor. The only thing they are replacing here is the single deck (which used to be the middle track). It's lost so much steel mass over 120 years that despite its non-rusted paint job the interior is the metallurgy equivalent of swiss cheese at this point. The stone abutments, however, are in great shape and will be touched up to hold the new deck. This will be another rapid replacement job using a prefab deck assembled to the side then prepped for lifting into place... like a bunch of the recent Fairmount Line bridge replacements are. And it's likely the replacement will do away with the metal girders that overly narrow the sidewalk.

The UHub thread on this beats the drum that they have to double-track the span NOW in case something happens later or else "Oh noes! Teh T sucketh agin!!!6!". But that's really not necessary here. The way these stone abutments were built to distribute weight this is always going to be a bridge comprised of separate disconnected decks for each track (a very common arrangement for turn-of-century RR bridges on stone abutments). They don't need to stake themselves to doubling-up the bridge now for future considerations they may not use for 15 years when the construction is born to be modular with detached track decks, and rapid replacement prefabbing has driven down the cost of these kinds of bridge decks by a lot.

When they need to plop another deck on because they're bringing Orange to the neighborhood or have figured out some voodoo to get the Needham Line some halfway-RER frequencies through the SW Corridor chokepoint...they can just order a second carbon-copy deck off the blueprints of the replacement deck and lift it into place adjacent to the other span late on some Saturday night. Need +2 more decks because an Orange +1 to Rozzie has 2 OL tracks coexisting with 1 CR track through that spot? Same abutments are ready-made for it. Deck 3 would only need to be lifted from the opposite side of the street from Deck 2, since Deck 1 occupies the middle berth. The future-proofing is already there, so they don't have to overthink it or raid funds from other spans on what's right now a big blitz of CR bridge replacements in order to over-pad this span's budget for future uses they haven't begun to figure out.


This is exactly how the Fairmount-Franklin connector bridge over the NEC was done. The concrete & stone abutments there used to carry 4 tracks there, reduced by the 50's to just 1 to help simplify the interlockings on both sides of Readville Jct. The T did a rapid-replacement 1-for-1 and there were similarly internet howls about how "Single track is totes stoopid!" without positing an answer to what future service densities would actually ever get pinched by 1000 ft. or so of single there (none that I can think of under RER). But, no matter...because they cleaned up those abutments anyway to slap a second deck on to the southerly side if NSRL or something makes that a prudent idea. There's no reason to pay for something twice when you're not going to use it for 20 years. Need unbroken double-track outbound of Readville...order up another prefab deck to lift into place, just like with Roslindale.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Yes. There's only 2 passenger electric loco makes that are in-service and still available-for-new-sale on the continent right now: Siemens Sprinter ACS-64, and Bombardier ALP-46A. Amtrak has a Sprinter-servicing shop right in Boston and a couple spares to bum now that we're getting into warm months, while NJT has a little bit of an electric fleet shortage. As an opportunity to kick the wheels around and see what's inside, this is hard to pass up.

Just remember: it's only a demonstrator. The wires aren't there in the commuter layovers to carry water on the schedule, and the substation capacity has not yet been upgraded and can only take a hair above-and-beyond normal max-density Amtrak service levels before it's tapped out. Those substation and yard fixes are design-build procurements that can't be strung together in a few months. So this demonstrator is only going to hit a lucky one every few trains, and the schedules still have to be predicated on assumption that any train can be a 79 MPH-capped diesel set because most will still be.

After-hours you might be able to catch them doing non-revenue runs that try to gun it to the 93 MPH limit of the Rotem and rebuilt Kawasaki coaches to benchmark what a test electric schedule would look like, and that's good. And...they would probably test out the trainlining between T coach sets and Amtrak coach sets to see if more flexible rescues could be staged for either railroad's disabled trains. And all of that will be put to good use...including if they have no intention whatsoever of buying electric locos and want to proceed straight to EMU data collection next. This is a very beneficial trial...just not one that riders are going to see much immediate different experience from because the nature of the data collection is all internal.
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They just need to convince the NIMBY's that electric is much cleaner than diesel. Though I believe that the biggest difficulty will be people pushing back against the look of overhead wires.

For heavily traveled northern lines I think it would be pretty easy to electrify the Newburyport/Rockport up to Beverly Depot. Past that you'd run into more tree cutting and NIMBY's.
 
Late notice, but we are having an event in Providence tonight if anyone can/wants to join:

Register for free: http://conta.cc/2HUfgge

There will be power players from Rhode Island in the room according to the RSVPs.

D4AMMxrXoAAtqsH


D4NQ4CkWwAAyU4w
 
Just have to say, that "Get There Get Home" poster, with the Designer Editorial, is great.
 
tysmith95 said:
They just need to convince the NIMBY's that electric is much cleaner than diesel. Though I believe that the biggest difficulty will be people pushing back against the look of overhead wires.

For heavily traveled northern lines I think it would be pretty easy to electrify the Newburyport/Rockport up to Beverly Depot. Past that you'd run into more tree cutting and NIMBY's.
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I seriously doubt that the look of overhead wires would bring out more than 3 people to a meeting that might mention it in as an offhand comment.

I know by public meeting cricket and pin drop standards, 3 people showing up to a public meeting might feel threatening to public officials but I am pretty sure they can handle it.

Overhead wires are everywhere and as much as I wish we could have fewer of them a few more isn't going to bring out a mob of people as you suggest.

The price tag and cost/benefit analysis is what will (and should) make or break electrification not how good the wires look strung above the tracks.

I'd like to see the cost benefit of what battery/hybrid locomotives look like in 3 years before committing to full electrification. Keeping dumb metal tracks is preferable if the economics and performance of batteries starts to make sense as it is with cars.

https://www.ge.com/reports/leading-charge-battery-electric-locomotives-pushing-us-freight-trains/
 
Rail ROWs are a great place to have overhead wires, as they are mostly not visible to day to day human existence. And they make for quieter, less polluting trains. That's a win. The greater cause for NIMBYism is the required tree clearing. My neighborhood Facebook page has several threads filled with horrified comments about the Needham Line clearing happening over the past few weeks. People have actually used terms like massacre and holocaust to describe the work. Plenty of people who might otherwise claim to favor electric powered rail transit for environmental purposes see no inconsistency with freaking out about tree and animal habitat displacement.
 
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