The summer of major work starts Monday however probably much is already in progress this weekend ?
Wick Moorman has stated that the NYPS repair work is the most difficult piece of work he has ever seen. Here is link to short interview with him on CBS Friday morning.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amtrak-penn-station-new-york-renovations-mta-summer-of-hell/
Just how much hands on management he will have to do we will leave for others to ascertain. May be reason Anderson is coming on early to cover other Amtrak concerns ?
The few pictures we have already seen of preliminary work seems to indicate a lot of very specialized equipment. Any information on where spare equipment is being staged in case of a major failure of track equipment ?
https://media.amtrak.com/2017/06/infrastructure-renewal-advances-new-york-penn-station/
Can we expect that spare parts for all this equipment will be available and of the highest priority to keep the project from being delayed ?
Management of the work will probably take a lot of event managers to keep work on schedule ?. With a 24 / 7 work schedule keeping everyone alert will be a full time job for several supervisors alone.
The installed equipment of NYPS is old and much exists from the PRR era. Does Amtrak have aircraft standing by to ferry any legacy parts if they are found to be needed ? It appears that logistics will be one leg of the stool to complete this projece. Other legs will be the complex planning needed…
WSJ has open article showing a bunch of pictures.
http://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/new-york-penn-station-partial-shutdown
Another article had LIRR passenger complaining that her LIRR train was 3 minutes early making her over 1/2 hour early to work !
Oh poor dear! How will she ever survive being early to work? [soapbox]
Progress report from Amtrak. 1st week they are on schedule so far. Management must be doing a good job ? Remember Amtrak also has the Baltimore station track renewal going on this weekend as well as track work at BWI and the New Haven - Springfield double tracking all at the same time !
https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/666/333/Infrastructure-Renewal-Weekly-Progress-Report-071417.pdf
Just in case you wanted to see an Amtrak train listed on the Hudson Line Departure Board, here it is.
However, there is no ticket office for Amtrak at GCT. Possibly Metro-North is selling the tickets for these trains? Also, Randy reports that as yet there are not up-to-date Amtrak timetables in the racks, only out-of-date ones.
[quote user=“BaltACD”]
daveklepper
Just in case you wanted to see an Amtrak train listed on the Hudson Line Departure Board, here it is.
Nothing seen!
[/quote above]
Is this true for everyone? Shows up on the quote as well for me.
I do not see that which Dave wanted us to see.
Just speculation. MARC announced Amtrak had cancelled for this week the work around BWI. Could it be those workers are being sent to NYPS to keep the work on schedule ?
Trying to repost via Imgur. See if this works and let me know:
Dave, that’s a beautiful picture! Success!
I suspect Amtrak’s cancellation of the BWI work may have more to do with the 90+ weather that is forecast for the local area - disturbing track structure during periods of high heat can create any number of problems.
"We set up the operation so that we only turn trains that have no food service and that can go right back out. All of the former commissary facilities are non-existent anymore as well as the storage tracks we used to use have long been taken over by layover commuter sets. We modified 3 dual modes to run on the Sprague 3rd rail by flipping the shoes over and fabricating a bracket to get the shoes to the right height. We had talked to the vendor that made the Metro North brackets and they wanted $200K with a 22 month lead time! Glad to see we still have some ingenuity left.
We put the dual modes on the south end and we modified 3 P42’s to operate on the north end of the 3 sets of equipment where we took the slow speed backing switch out and put a mode change switch in instead so we’re really using the P42 as a cab car (not enough cab cars or dual modes to go around). We’re not actually looping anything but the one set in the morning I think we’re running onto the loop to get it out of the way before it turns and goes north. Those locos can run around the loop tracks. I personally took an Amtrak P40 (under diesel power) around the
Weekly progress report July 28th. From this report appears Amtrak is slightly ahead of schedule.
https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/125/980/Infrastructure-Renewal-Weekly-Progress-Report-072817.pdf
Jack May reports:
NOTES ON TRAVEL BETWEEN NEW JERSEY AND NEW YORK ON THE FIRST DAY OF REDUCED RAIL SERVICE TO PENN STATION
By Jack May
Monday, July 10 was the first day of the much publicized beginning of an all-out Amtrak program to repair the ladder of tracks leading from the tunnels under the Hudson River from New Jersey into Pennsylvania Station, New York. Plagued by a series of derailments, it was “discovered” that the tracks and trackbeds had deteriorated to an unsafe condition over many years of extensive usage and an irresponsible failure to maintain them in an effective manner.
It such a shame that we could not complain about all the Amtrak screw ups in the rebuilding ? Good set of pictures from Newsday and at end what is next .
http://projects.newsday.com/lirr/lirrs-summer-hell-trackwork-penn-station/