I was told that the NYC and Pennsy had 4 track mainlines running from NY to Chicago…Two tracks in the middle for fast freight and Passenger and the Outside two tracks for local freights. Further More NYC had 3 parrel routes cross NY state,The West Shore from Bergen NJ to Buffalo,The Peanut Line and the Niagara Line from Lockport NY…Yet today with Centralised trafic Control
and 2 track main lines and paired down RR system is it no wonder that CSX and NS say they have no more room for Amtrak and more trains. Oh and I forgot to mention that the Nickle Plate Line from Buffalo to Chicago was doulble tracked…
And your question is… ???
One of the very important things Al Perlman did at NYC was to get rid of a lot of the four-track main, replacing it with efficient 2-track CTC. The West Shore (one of the lines you mention) was 4-track to Dumont (where the commuter district ended) then two tracks above that; by the time I started watching it in the 1970s it was essentially single-tracked (an extended ‘siding’ below Dumont made it technically double-track there, but one of the two tracks was much less maintained than the other). They still ran plenty of traffic on fast schedules.
Oh, yes: part of the electrified PRR main was six-track, not four-track. And they needed all six a lot of the time…
If you read the Trains Magazine article a couple of years ago about signaling, you can appreciate some of the fine points regarding how many ‘tracks’ you need on a modern railroad to give quality service. In most cases, you’d only need a four-track main for the kind of situation Pennsy found itself in: lots of fast passenger trains running at high speed, in both directions all the time, and lots of freight trains limited to 50mph also in both directions all the time. Even if you can separate the fast movements from slow movements in time, you can quite easily reduce the ‘number of tracks’ required for effective service. That was an early and effective point about CTC, including how you can effectively dispatch fast trains around slower ones in both directions with some care.
After Conrail’s inception, lots of ‘redundant’ main lines were shucked or sent into ‘secondary’ retirement. In some cases, it’s worthwhile keeping separate mainlines from merger partners and running traffic only one way on each – ask politely and someone can probably give you a definitive list of places this has happened, with the specific reasons for each. Often, it’s a matter of ruling grades.
Note that the savings both in track capital cost and in track maintenance result
NYC and Pennsylvania railroads operated a mainline that ran from Buffalo into Canada and along Lake Erie all the way to Windsor and than went under the St.Clair River into Detroit. They abandoned it though after Conrail was split up and what a mistake it is. Would have been shorter for CSX intermodal to use that way than the Cleveland Subdivision.
Was it because the tunnel under the St. Clair River was too small to handle double-stack trains? Or was the tunnel enlarged?
Tunnel has been enlarged (by cutting away the floor) to give clearance for stack trains.
I think part of the “problem” is the part of the run that goes through Canada – certainly no tax advantages for that portion of the ROW from the USA, and (Canadian politics being what it is) little change of a US company getting anything from Canada. That may have changed, perhaps dramatically, with CN and CP getting strongly involved in US railroading…
Government is draging their feet a bit but they seem to want to get more rail line re-opened and protected. The old Canada Southern /Wabash Line is a great alternative because it is more direct for intermodal and for that matter for Buffalo/Detroit auto trains.
The Windsor tunnel last I heard was capable of carrying doublestacks as long as the containers are those small height ones. I have noticed that some container have a different height that the other. CP right now is the most active user of the tunnel and runs most of their intermodals single stack and cannot run their automax train down it. I heard that the government however is considering using the Windsor tunnel to connect the 401 highway to it.
Pennsy had nothing to do with the Canada Southern line across Ontario, nor did it have any trackage in Canada (unless you count its interest in the Wabash, which did). And, If I remember correctly, Conrail sold off the CASO before the split.
Pere Marquette (later C&O) used the CASO east of St. Thomas to get across to Buffalo; it had its own lines between St. Thomas and the shores opposite Michigan, via both Windsor and Sarnia.
Shades of the C&O Historical society[?]
Carl, I think you remember correctly,but wouldn’t
that have been PC,not Conrail[?][:)]
No, it was Conrail; this sale happened well after 1976, but before 1999.
The NYC and PRR arranged their 4 track mains differently (they rarely did anything the same!) The NYC had the tracks:
Passenger eastbound
Passenger westbound
Freight westbound
Freight eastbound
This arrangement kept passenger trains from high closing speeds with freights, which the NYC thought was safer. You can see the remenants of this track arrgt in places like Rome NY where the pass sta is on the main tracks. (I may have my east and westbound designations backward) It also led to some goofy things like the fly over between Selkirk and CP-169 that seems to serve no purpose today.
The PRR had’em like this:
Pass westbound
Frt westbound
Frt eastbound
Pass eastbound
They liked this arrangement because you didn’t need to wided the ROW to fit a passenger station in - just put platforms along outside tracks.
It was?[?] I’d like to know where. The only place I see double track on the old NKP is in Fort Wayne for about 10 miles. I thought that was part of the charm of the NKP, a fast single-track railroad out-hustling its multi-tracked competitors.
NKP-Buffalo to West Side of Cleveland…Anyway Railroads in many cases still own the right of way some times as much as 100 yards on each side of the tracks which leaves room for the goverment to build high speed Passenger only tracks. The QUESTION that I was leading too is that
why did railroads have no trouble acomidating there own fast and freiqunt passeger trains on 90 MPH schedules in the 1940s,But cant acomidate the one lone amtrak in the middle of the night…Answer is 4 track main lines!
CSX did try to use the CASO for intermodal, a logical idea, they had running rights on Conrail’s CASO. When double stacks became the norm the tight clearances in the tunnels at Dtroit ended that. CSX did not own the line and Conrail was not improving the clearances at the time. Now the CASO is closed as a through route wich is a major shame because it was very direct and what traffic now that could have used the CASO on the Canadian side runs mostly CN or CP whose lines go down the Niagra escartmant then up again. The CASO was relatively flat. Both CN and CP were interested in making sure that the CASO line would never fall in the hands of some compeditor hence they made a joint purchase and joint effort to close the middle section of the line for good. Also the line was well built but poorly maintained by Penn Central and Conrail especialy the large bridges.
I understand the CASO was once a signaled ABS double track 100mph steam railroad.
WHAT AM I TRYING TO GET AT[^] ? is that railroads have shed all there excess capasity over the past 32 years to the point were they have no room for high speed passenger and even there own high prority intermodal.
They used to have it were passenger and freight got along just fine but now they female dog everytime Amtrak or some commuter agency wants to add trains[?]
Railroads have cut multiple track lines,and more than one line between the same two points,especially back in the 80s,that they cant handle traffic at current levels.This is the cause of much of UPs meltdowns.
Preserve as a welfare service? Railroads are unique corprate creature were in many cases were funded and created by granting state charters and land grants as much as 100 miles on either side of the tracks. If railroads were built today they would be built by state “Authoritys” Who would have bonding authrity.
It is a mistake to have national infrastucture like railroads in “Private hands”
Norfolk Southern has repeatly said in press releases that they dont want passnger trains on the same tracks as there freight trains.
Don’t know were you heard that, around here for instance NS is looking into having Septa operate on its track from Philly to Reading which sees 10-20 trains a day.
I agree with M.W Hemphill in that most areas do not need quadruple tracks other than the North East Corridor and CN Oakville Subdivision between Toronto and Oakville. I would wonder though why railroads don’t at least make sure they have the land to so they at least have the option of double, triple or quadruple the track. In some areas you can’t help that. You get what you get-technically you could attempt to ask the government to expropriate the land for you if it benifits the government. Of course what is the likely hood of that? I know first hand that the CASO is not being used between Attercliff and St.Thomas. It could be redone except for the some of the property that would need to be bought. They could get running rights on the CP Hamilton Subdivision at Welland since it joins up. CP has a double track tunnel underneath the Welland Canal that can take automax clearances. CP does not use the old CASO line between Port Colborne and Fort Erie because they decided that it would be better to junction on to CN at that point so they share the line toward Buffalo. The old line is currently a storage siding for old 86 foot autoboxes. Welland tunnel is being worked on by CP and the government is considering using it for the boarder to join up directly with Highway 401. There is legislation in effect provincially that protects lines from becoming bicycle paths and other stupid uses. The federal government also has something in place that makes it that if you are not using it but the service is in demand you either must sell it or use it. It has something to do with the Competition Act. Basically if CSX wanted it badly enough, the government would be forced to make CN and CP sell if they aren’t going to use it. NS would likely want to use it as well. Amtrak would likely want to use it and Via, well you never know. Basically the CASO is out and the CN used to be NS Cayuga Subdivision is trackless in most spots so all it is is land not being used but CP and CN still pay taxes on.
Mark
Not completely true. A large “straw that broke the camels back” in Texas just after the merger was taking much of SP’s SIT trackage that duplicated the MP’s SIT tracks out of service forcing storage to take place on “operating” tracks rather than SIT trackage. The railroad constipated in part because of this act.
Also, the current traffic flow constipation problem they have along the I-5 Corridor is the closing and then dismanteling of the Eugene Hump Yard. This worked OK with Roseville and Albina doing what Eugene had done until traffic levels crept up past Albina’s and Rosevill’s capacity. UP has delayed the Cascades and Starlight as long as five hours just getting the 10 miles between Canby and Brooklyn. The State of Oregon has helped some in completing the double track (the signals needed to be done) and upgrading it to CTC between the Steel Bridge and Willsburg Jct, but last I heard was that the two sidings south (Clackamas and Coalca) were either taken out of service or shortened.
To be sure, this is not the sole reason, nor the biggest reason, even, for UP’s problems, but when the traffic can not move through or bypass Roseville and Albina effeciently for whatever reason, this whole neck of UP’s system gets a noose put around it, and then the problem quickly spreads to the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Seattle (Argo) because they can’t dispatch trains through Roseville or Albina and then they start clogging up.
Would leaving Eugene alone have helped this situation? To the extent that Los Angeles and the Bay Area built trains to bypass Roseville to be humped at Eugene for points north, and Spokane, Hinkle and
[#offtopic][#offtopic]
Mark
I had that (the hard time) figured out early on! [wow] I remember saying something in a different thread when you said we were off topic (we were) and I said something like “stuff it”. What goes around comes around - which is the definition of a balloon track.
Yes, “The Friendly” was doing that. House tracks and set-out spurs. But I didn’t think they were doing that to yards and SIT tracks. I can remember working at Brooklyn (the interlocking, now gone into the double track), and because of the way the radio receptions worked, I could talk with trains between Hito and Brooklyn, but as soon as a train started down the hill from Canby to New Era, the dispatcher lost reliable communication. Thus, for all practical purposes, I was a partner with the dispatcher in working that railroad.
And I can remember, in one short morning, blocking Clackamas, the Oregon City siding, Coalca, Canby siding and Hito with one car each for the RIPS to go rescue. Even though Oregon City and Canby were Train Order sidings and not signaled for CTC, we could still use them if need be. Until they got fixed, we had 35 miles without a siding. [#oops] Not a good way to run the railroad. When I hired out in 1964, we had setout spurs at each end of a siding.[banghead]