Page from PENNDOT with the recent public meeting record:
Thank you Woke. I’m still curious how they’re getting across the river or will they go through Philipsburg, N.J.? I think they could restore the bridge but big bucks!
I think you’re mixing up the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton (ABE) train with the Scranton train.
The former is supposed to proceed via a restoration of the CNJ Raritan line (now with some service to High Bridge). Yes, via Phillipsburg. This would require at least one comparatively expensive tunnel under the I-78 grade, and a great winding diversion to the north. On the other hand the line is demonstrably compatible with Manhattan Direct service even though only one of the current Raritan commuter trains uses the dual-mode power – I presume the revived faux Gateway will be pushed through by the time arrangements on the west end have been made.
The Scranton service would run via the restored Lackawanna Cutoff crossing the Delaware to Slateford Junction, then follow the ex-EL Water Gap line (not the Old Main bridge) and then the Lackawanna main up to Scranton. See the proposed map in the meeting record.
IN THEORY you could run service on the Bel-Del that would connect the services, but there is no really convenient connection to that line from the Cutoff (as there was from the Old Main). Even restoring the part of the Bel-Del between Rt. 46 (where it was severed by Diane in 1955) and East Stroudsburg would be ridiculously expensive for any real gain.
Part of the big perceived advantage is to make areas of the Poconos cost-effectively available as bedroom communities – an extension of much of the perceived NJT restoration of the New Jersey part of the Cutoff. That implies to me that the Amtrak service would not involve limited-stop expresses, or perhaps as high speed on the west Pennsylvania trackage as on the Cutoff. They indicate the service would be run by Biro sets and dual-modes (AC for Manhattan Direct) rather than rebuilt Amfleet shells with ‘engineered extra amenities’.
Sorry, not confused. The bridge at the end of the cutoff into Slateford is the one i’m referring to. Abandoned in '74, i believe and would require extensive renovation to make useable. I have not seen mention of plans regarding that bridge.
The condition of that bridge was discussed somewhere either in the report or in the various comments about it.
It needs very little remediation. As you may know it is a ballasted-deck concrete viaduct like Paulinskill or Tunkhannock. Any surface spalling can be addressed with modern materials, and I doubt there is an unanticipated concern with deep loss of reinforcing integrity.
I walked that bridge in the '90s and I think you could have run a TLM across it then. It is on a curve, but I believe Lackawanna ran 80mph around it eastbound with their superelevation; I suspect that as a dedicated passenger corridor some combination of higher superelevation and tilt could be used, and as I doubt they would place one of the passing sidings on it, the actual curve could be eased to use the double-track width.
All right! We’re on the right bridge. A lot of weathering in 35 years. I could get on the Paulinskill 5 years ago, went to the Delaware and was afraid to try. I don’t doubt it could or might be done, just skeptical of what “very little remediation” will add to the cost.
I if I remember correctly, there is a ‘ringer’ condition here: since 80 and 46 (and I think 94) go under the bridge, the State has been very careful maintaining any spalling or other deterioration that might wind up causing vehicle damage. With a large indeterminate structure like one of those Nicholson-style viaducts it is unlikely you’d have substantial internal corrosion that did not promulgate through to the lower faces of the spandrels and be recognized.
When they took the track up on the ballasted deck, they left the ballast tremendously torn up. That was their convenience, not a marker of structural bridge-deck condition. I had no trouble walking across and halfway down the approach grade on the other side… of course in that era I had no real thought that service would ever be restored over it.