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Pennsylvania community seeks ‘Capitol Limited’ stop
Rick Geist is being paid to facilitate grants. While in PA government he was anti passenger rail. go figure
It doesn’t cost $3,000,000 for a concrete pad and a step stool. How about we institute the service and let it grow from there?
You forget that those PA step stools have a 'Union Label" and are not made in China.
William, wouldn’t you prefer those stepstools to be made here rather in China? I know you hate unions with a passion.
How close will this stop be to the Rockhill Trolley Museum.
Somerset County has ~80k people, so this appears like it might be a helpful thing.
Agree that you don’t need $3M to get service started. You just need a platform. You can do that with some timber, fill and asphalt and a portable wheelchair lift for tens of thousands. If the ridership forms, then go back and do a “proper” station, parking and platform.
There would be a need for some kind of a shelter for inclement weather. In California, usually a slab will do since the weather here is usually mild. Elsewhere, where’s there lot’s of rain, show ,sleet or just plain cold, a shelter is mandatory.
If you California commenters had lived near Rockwood, as I once did, you would soon realize that mid-winter conditions there require more than a modest platform or shelter. We are talking about the top of the Eastern Continental Divide here and the weather is abysmal.
I Googled the area and there is already a station there. At the foot of Main Street. So why does it cost $3 million dollars for a station? Seems that Amtrak loves to hire consultants and other money grubbers who would love this big fat paycheck. They could probably do it under a few thousand dollars providing a new asphalt staging area. Why all of the money? Because Amtrak is a big wasteful money hole… that’s why.
The reason for the station is to provide access to Seven Springs/Hidden Valley Resort just a few miles from Rockwood. The cost of the station does sound excessive.
You’d have to be involved in planning and setting up a station to understand the complexities. Were that it was as simple as getting a load of lumber and sending out the locals to build a platform. I won’t bore you with the details of land acquisition, site preparation, utilities and other considerations that must be taken into account. Then there is question of compliance with state and local ordinances as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act just for starters. Someone has to design it, build it, make sure it is done so to meet with requirements placed upon it by the freight railroad (in this case, CSX) as far as clearances, security, access and a thousand other issues. While work takes place, there has to be protection provided to insure that those doing the work are not in danger of injury from passing trains, and that passing trains are not in danger from equipment an vehicles engaged in the project. There is also the matter of roadway improvements, traffic patterns, warning signaling for vehicles and pedestrians, signage, curbs, gutters, sidewalks and a million other considerations.
While I did operate the Captiol Limited between Washington and Pittsburgh, and am familiar with Rockwood, I can’t begin to tell you what other considerations and questions must be resolved before ground is broken.
Although it may simply be a “slab”, it is a structure, and to be quite honest, these days, if you’re going to build a hen house, it’s got to be able to accommodate the goose that laid the golden egg. Nothing is simple.
The stop is about equidistant (between) the Rockhill Trolley Museum (near Orbisonia PA, of EBT fame) and the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (near Washington PA). But it’s also equally inconvenient, being about 75 miles in either case. For Rockhill, better to take Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian and get off in Huntingdon, less than 25 miles away, or toss the suitcase off while going thru Mt. Union (11 miles away) and bail out (this last option not recommended, for a variety of reasons).
Never really understood why stations appear to cost so much. The average Burger King seems to have all the amenities you’d expect in a station - large weather proof seating area, bathrooms, fairly substantial offices/selling/storage area, etc, minus the 1,000ft long 4ft high concrete slab, which surely can’t add nearly three million to the cost, and I assume Burger King would be out of business if it cost much more than a hundred grand to build each franchise building.
We just (well, a year or so ago) lost an attempt to create an Amtrak station here in Stuart, Florida. They were planning to spend around 10 million on a combined train and bus station, and pulled out at the last moment due to a combination of concerns about being in compliance with the FRA grant they’d been offered, and an environmental issue (as in - toxic chemicals found underneath the land that needed cleaning up) at the station site.
Whether we lost anything is open to question - Amtrak, the FEC, and the Florida state government are still at the planning stages about introducing rail service here, but I had to do a double take at the apparent cost of the proposed station. It doesn’t make sense.
Being near the Pennsylvania Turnpike can’t hurt.
Oh, darn, we must meet the american with disabilities act! Stations need high level platform. Whoops, This interferes with extra wide loads on freights. Then we will design a flip-up or roll-out extension on the high level platform. This can be put in place and taken down. Don’t mention liability of it being left up at the wrong time. Okay, tie inrto signal system. Oh by the way,extending platform means a signal has to be moved. Now since station is placed in a deep cut, we need elevators on both sides of the station and maybe a pedistrian bridge. Oh, what Joy and fun this project can be. This statment is by an electrical engineer, who was involved in a design project for rebuilding an existing Amtrac Station. As part of the project we toured a beautiful station in new jersey that had most of the features that were needed, 3 million does not go far in this economy. Stations are no longer possible like the Bus Shelter and a pad at Olympia Washington. The Middletown station in PA. is being moved to a new location, since it is a low level station on a curve.
How does Amtrak find the most expensive way to do everything? The Capitol Ltd. is sold out six months in advance pretty much at all times and till can’t even cover operating expenses…this baffles me…
Doug Riddell said it all and knows what he’s talking about. Even a former station being reactivated would have to be renovated and meet enough standards to keep God Himself away.
I love all these “experts” on how to build a train station. You have to get approval from the town parents ie fathers and mothers. Then, you have to hold hearings, battle the NIMBYS and get state approval. You also have to get environmental clearance. This takes time and money. It’s not like the 1800’s when a town could ask or bribe a railroad to stop their train there. Yes, Goosie, the “wonderful” capitalistic robber barrons would gladly take bribes. Either money or other “services”.
This location would not be too far from the 9/11 memorial at Shanksville, PA where the United flight 93 crashed.