miscellaneous musings here while I am boatsitting during tropical storm ‘Isaac’ in Key West: the Amtrak systemwide timetable shows the ‘Carolinian’ covering 92 miles between Greensboro and Charlotte, but the ‘Crescent’ does it in 89 miles. the shorter route of the ‘Crescent’ apparently is substandard track since it takes 18 minutes longer between that city pair!
The only difference is the station track they use in Greensboro!
(the real answer is 91.96 miles…)
Per E.M. Frimbo/ Rogers E. M. Whitaker ? (Robert LeMassena was skeptical about those last 2 digits of ‘precision’ in Frimbo’s mileage totals . . . see:
Selected Railroad Reading: “Numbers - accuracy beyond the decimal point”
by LeMassena, Robert A., from Trains, July 1982, pgs. 44 - 45)
- Paul North.
The two trains use the exact same route between those two cities. The Carolinian stops in Kannapolis and the Crescent does not. Three stops vs two.
So, if you are from the southern suburbs of Charlotte, you can hop on the Crescent at Gastonia. But, if you are from the north side, you are out of luck! (even though it is the middle of the night - that’s another issue!)
Why not a Crescent stop in Kannapolis? Most likely because it didn’t stop there 30 years ago when Kannapolis was just a one horse town…
91.96 is what our “ohysical network” thinks the distance is… Our more recent engineering fly-mapping data might have a different “opinion”. Someday, we might only have one opinion on this, but the wheels of progress move slowly, sometimes.
At Greensboro, the Crescent turns north and head toward Charlottesville VA. The Carolinian continues on to Raleigh, turns slightly south and east, then north to Richmond. The routes meet up again at Alexandria, VA and both go to NYP.
The Crescent is an Amtrak train. The Carolinian is funded by NC.
Actually, the junction at Alexandria is at AF Tower, which a little bit south of the station. I am away from home, and I do not have any timetables or other information which gives the exact difference
There are intermediate differences between the mileage shown in the Amtrak timetables. Greensboro-High Point is 16 miles for the Carolinian, and 12 miles for the Crescent. High Point-Salisbury is 34 miles for the Carolinian, and 35 miles for the Crescent. The same distance, 42 miles, is shown for Salisbury-Charlotte for both trains.
It is interesting that some roads, such as the L&N showed miles to the one-hundredth in their employee TT’s, and no decimal at all in their public TT’s.
The difference is probably due to Amtrak standard practice of turning both the Carolinian and the Piedmont when it arrives in Charlotte. The trains stop short of the station, back up and take a turnout on a short branch line that goes approx five city blocks wyeing at another NS branch line that covers the intersections of Atando Ave & N. Graham St. They then back up back down that same branch line, back onto the main and into the station. The Crescent goes through Charlotte and does not terminate there. This probably accounts for the difference in timetable mileages. Here’s a map reference link:
Rick Shivik
Conyers, GA
They do not stop short of the station and turn around. They pull into the station and discharge their passengers. Then they back out and turn on the wye and back back past the station to the storage track where they are cleaned and refueled. They do not return to the station track until it is time to load the next set of passengers. The station track belongs to Norfolk Southern and they use it when Amtrak doesn’t need it. Amtrak trains are not parked on it. If you change to the Earth view on that map you posted you can see the Piedmont parked on the storage siding just south west of the station.
Geez - LeMassena asked seemingly ‘tongue-in-cheek’ if they were taking into account the slightly longer distance through sidings, the longer or shorter distances on multiple tracks around curves, which car of the train he got on - front or rear, etc. I guess he was on to something ! (Recall that 0.01 mile = only 52.8 ft., less than the distance between the vestibules of most standard passenger cars.)
- Paul North.