B-Line (Manassas to Riverton VA)

[Arlington]

$60m of work has been completed to create longer passing tracks and add signals to the B-Line "end" of the Piedmont Division. On top of that, a significant amount of double-tracking has been done north of Riverton on the Shenandoah line's route to Hagerstown MD.

Now it looks like the next thing is re-doing the junction at Riverton VA where the Piedmont ties into the Shenandoah Divsion. An update from July 2009 can be found here:
http://www.drpt.virginia.gov/projects/f ... Update.pdf

It says the work on the Riverton Junction will be done from late 2009 to early 2010 (see page 27 of the PDF, above). What I can't tell is why the new intersection is better than the old one. Will the North-South traffic now fly over the East-West traffic on its way to the little-used part of the B-Line (that goes to Strasburg / Edinburg VA)?

[Arlington]

At the Manassas end of the B-Line (just west of the downtown passenger station), they have just finished the project to take Route 28 on an overpass over the railroad, eliminating all car-rail interaction there.
http://manassaspark.patch.com/articles/ ... the-making

[Arlington]

Is more double tracking coming to the Front Royal area?

At the Woods Interlocking (where the B-Line currently transitions from single track to double at Riverton/Western end of the B-Line) it looks like they recently disturbed the ballast and have staked out the width of the right of way. It might just be improvements to the (terrible) road junction between Happy Creek Rd and Shenandoah Shores Road (that the RR crossing is too near).

Are they planning to extend the 2 tracks further "into town"? (From Woods to Riverton Jct (in Front Royal) is currently single track)

[Arlington]

Is more double tracking coming to the Front Royal area?

At the Woods Interlocking (where the B-Line currently transitions from single track to double at Riverton/Western end of the B-Line) it looks like they recently disturbed the ballast and have staked out the width of the right of way. It might just be improvements to the (terrible) road junction between Happy Creek Rd and Shenandoah Shores Road (that the RR crossing is too near).

Are they planning to extend the 2 tracks further "into town"? (From Woods to Riverton Jct (in Front Royal) is currently single track)

Answer: the prep work is for a new road intersection and future overpass bridge on the single-track side of the Woods junction. The town of Front Royal is constructing Leach Run Parkway from VA-55 (John Marshall Highway) to VA-647 (Happy Creek Rd). They don't have the money for an overpass over the NS tracks, though, so the existing crossing of Shenandoah Shores Rd (VA-606) will be reconfigured.