What is the maximum speed of trains of the Atlantic City Rail Line? I thought that they went suprisingly fast like 90-100 when I was in one. They were sure faster than the Trenton to NYC NJT trains. How embarassing! Diesels run faster on a less buisier line.
suggest you recalibrate.
Trenton NYC is one of the fastest on the NEC @125. Some years ago ATK was planning to upgrade parts of it to 160. Haven’t heard of any progress there .
Yes only for Amtrak trains. The local commuter trains going to NYC are slow.
I don’t think the Atlantic City Line has any form of automatic train stop, so the trains are probably limited to 79MPH. The stations are farther apart, though, so the trains spend a lot more time at their maximum speed.
The NEC line as a lot of closely spaced stops, so trains spend most of their time accelerating and decelerating rather than running at their higher top speed.
When did that happen? Even in the 1980s I regularly observed ‘all-stops’ locals with Silverliners routinely reaching speeds over 100mph indicated between some of the stations. You could tell this because it was possible to ride in the rear vestibule and fold down the motorman’s seatboard for an ‘observation car’ effect, and observe the brake gauges and speedometer directly.
Occasionally you’d see startling high speed on Atlantic City service RDC speedometers. But that was almost certainly because some of those speedometers were Italian-car optimistic.
Speed is 70 to 79, i think Atlantic City Line.
Trust me they can go up to at least 90. The GP38-40 can go 100MPH The train was swaying. I remember that had to be more than 80.
I know of no GP38 that is geared higher than 65mph, and it would rapidly run out of usable drawbar TE at its constant maximum horsepower with any appreciable passenger load long before it reached 90mph. Some of the GP40Ps had 61:16 gears for “77mph” (in other words, essentially full track speed under the 80mph ATC requirement) but again that’s a long way from 100mph.
Yes, the F40s had taller ratios (57:20 for 103mph; 56:21 for 110) but I have never heard of a GP40 having those ratios. (You could order a GP50 with 42" wheels and 92mph gearing, but acceleration times might require a calendar in heavy commuter service…)
It’s not as if the Atlantic City route is inherently slow – at just before the turn of the century, some of the Camden-Atlantic City expresses were the fastest trains in the world. But I don’t think gambling expresses command quite the same justification that the competition back then provided… or that state-funded agencies would spend the considerable money needed to take Atlantic City service legally past 79mph when those funds could be applied to new or better service elsewhere.
The fact that the train was swaying is no guaranteed indicator of speed. Condition of the track is also a factor. I can remember riding a Rock Island suburban train west of Blue Island in the mid-1970’s and it was swaying at 20 MPH. This was at a time when crews received a five-page train order to cover the slow orders between La Salle Street Station and Joliet.
My recollection of the one time I rode Amtrak to Atlantic City, the train had an ex-metroliner cab car and we were operating in push mode. The train had the PRR cab signals and we did run over 80 mph. I never left the A C station and one memory I have is of the little older ladies riding back home after visiting the casinos and counting their remaining change. Kind of sad.
Does anyone here remember how fast the ACE (the train with the diesel on one end and the electric on the other) ran on the ‘diesel’ end of the route?
80 mph is the maximum authorized speed. The line is cab siganalled the whole way. The original plans were for the bottom 10-15 miles to be good for 90 mph, but that was scrapped when Amtrak pulled out. I don’t know if Amtrak ever operated at 90 mph or not.
The GP40PH-2B locomotives that were typically used for many years by NJT are only allowed 90 mph, anyway, mostly due to their weight.
The big problem with the line isn’t the speeds south of Lindewold, it’s the running time from Lindenwold to 30th St. If you are commuting to Phila, it’s much quicker to hop off the AC train at Lindenwold and take PATCO Hi Speed Line the rest of the way.
Amtrak typically operated with the cab car on the east end, locomotive pulling back to Phila.
Some video here https://youtu.be/hEhb9IWH2hw
Very fast service
I ride this line on a regular basis and as was mentioned below Lindenwold the speeds are fast. I have timed the train out my window using mileage markers and a watch with a second hand. Most of the time at high speed I have est. Train speed as 75 MPH or so. So I would say the maximum speed is rated as 79 MPH. I also did ride this line in the old days of the RDC’s and got to ride in the front cab on several occasions. Back then with limited stops and low intermediate station ridership we arrived early at Atlantic City As much as 10 minutes early. I don’t know how accurate the speedometers were but I did see it hit 100 MPH on many sections of the line.
GP40s were rated for 100 mph per my copy of an ETT from 2001. Although I think the track MAS was 90.
Line has cab signals, so speed limit is 80 mph.
Some Budd data I saw long ago showed the balance speed of a three car RDC to be somewhere around 85-90 mph. They did zip along pretty good. I remember riding from Ocean City to Lindenwold in 1975. It was full throttle nearly all the time. It felt like 85 mph or so north of Tuckahoe.
The GP40-2PHs are limited to 90 mph because ride quality.
Not if the crew wants to keep their job. Speed recorders, you know…
There was a branch to Ocean City? RDCs at 80-90mph seems very fast for an RED to me.
The Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines operated all the former Reading and PRR line in South Jersey (except for the CNJ’s weedy little line to Bridgeton and Mauricetown.) In the 1970’s service was down to a handful of trains, all terminating at Lindenwold. I think there were three to AC each day, and one combined train to Ocean City and Cape May. The combined train split at Tuckahoe with two RDCs going to Ocean City and one to Cape May.
Between Tuckahoe and Winslow Jct, the line is flat and mostly tangent and even in the 1970’s still pretty smooth. Running wide open, the three car Budds would creep over 80 towards 90 mph. The sort of slack attitude toward speed limits was pretty commonplace then, not like the strict adherence there is now.
The top speed of an RDC train is governed somewhat by how many cars are in the train. The first cars has to cut the wind.