Metro-North New Haven Line Penn Station Access

In my opinion there are enough problems handling Amtrak Empire Service trains in Penn Station. Empire Service can only use tracks 5 to 9 inclusive and I doubt very much given the track layout and available space if that can be changed. You would have to put Metro-North trains somewhere and as quickly as possible and that would not be easy. Personally they would be far better off to just keep Metro-North at Grand Central Terminal. Penn Station is efficient but crowded and much busier with less overall capacity as well. As for equipment, it would be far better to design a car that could run from the New Haven Line to Penn Station on overhead and forget about third rail operation. Maybe an electric motor similiar to what NJT is operating would do the job with Bomb cars, the overhead wires are extremely low in both the tunnel and in Penn Station and any overhead problems could cause a huge problem with an M-8 train running off third rail. I doubt if we will see any Metro-North equipment in Penn Station anytime soon and probably not for quite a while.
Noel Weaver

As has been said previously (by me) MN would have to develop a new type of equipment, or modify their P32AC-DM's to be able to operate into Penn Station via the Empire Connection and into GCT. I'm not aware of any such plans. That doesn't mean it won't ever happen, but it will be many years until it could.

Tommy Meehan wrote:

About 219,000 LIRR customers travel into and out of Penn Station on a typical weekday...

They also keep saying they expect about 150,000 LIRR riders a day to use GCT. Apparently a lot of ridership that now goes to Penn Station is going to go instead to GCT once the connection opens.

But really, at this point I don't think anyone can really say they know what is going to happen at Penn Station when ESA opens.

One thing is for sure, there is huge pressure to get Metro-North into Penn Station. Some very powerful people are pushing for it.

nope just some people who think they are powerfull but are not at all....

Many "powerful" people may indeed be advocating it. But until they come up with the $$$ it's all just talk.

Tommy Meehan wrote:One thing is for sure, there is huge pressure to get Metro-North into Penn Station. Some very powerful people are pushing for it.

The same people who write letters to MNR to add more cars to the front of the train not the middle.

As far as what to do with MNR equipment going to Penn... was talking to another buff who works here and he mentioned opening up the wye at Spuyten Duyvil and sending trains back up the Empire Connection and down to Highbridge yard for midday storage. There isn't much empty space in Highbridge midday but a possibility with all the infrastructure changes that would have to be made to accommodate this anyway.

ROS, that wye was one of the options for Harlem service, which is currently not included. It would be ironic if it was used to store the Empire connection trains.

While I see some talk of the Empire connection in the recent flurry of news, the recent emphasis has been on the East Bronx, i.e. Co-op City, Parkchester, et al. I think that will happen long before the Hudson connection.

Was there ever talk about an MNRR terminal on the West Side in the 50's? I suppose the Trump development on the old rail yards foreclosed that possibility. There's always the High Line LOL.

RearOfSignal wrote:As far as what to do with MNR equipment going to Penn... was talking to another buff who works here and he mentioned opening up the wye at Spuyten Duyvil and sending trains back up the Empire Connection and down to Highbridge yard for midday storage...

Re-instating the leg of the wye running from northbound Empire Connection to southbound Hudson Line would be a big task. The connection is severed entirely both from Empire Connect and Hudson Line, and reconnecting it would be problematic - as the curve on the Hudson Line has been rebuilt with significant superelevation at the point where the connection used to be. It would be necessary to lay a new track on new landfill parallel along the south side of the Hudson line, which would then merge in farther east, after the Hudson Line track flattens out (similarly to what was done on the Empire Connection to northbound Hudson Line connection).

See http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=40.8 ... 19&vpsrc=6 for a view of the area...

Spidey!!!

[added link to google maps view]

They would just take out the super-elevation and adjust the curve slightly, that would be much easier than adding landfill further down to the rock cut.

The wye at CP12 was never good for passenger cars, there is no way you can get a 85 foot car from Wye to track 4 and now specialy since switch would be next to platform.

RearOfSignal wrote:They would just take out the super-elevation...

There is a reason for that superelevation (that's a mighty tight curve) and a switch opposite the Spuytin-Duyvil platform is pretty unlikely. Also, as others have pointed out, the curve would probably be too tight for passenger cars - so might even need to rework part of the bridge, even if they don't add landfill.

Bottom line: It would cost a LOT of money to make this happen, and money is scarce...

A couple of hits today:

http://gothamist.com/2012/02/06/when_wi ... tro-no.php

All of this talk may be somewhat premature. Metro-North told 2nd Ave. Sagas in November that the Penn Station assessment wouldn't even be completed until 2013. But think of it this way: residents of the Bronx could get to 34th Street and their sweet, sweet donuts in 25 minutes.

http://secondavenuesagas.com/2011/11/11 ... n-station/

Patrick Rocchio had more:

The final plan could include the creation of new stations along Metro North’s New Haven line that would service Co-op City near Erskine Place, Morris Park near Einstein Medical Center and the Hutchinson Metro Center, Parkchester in the vicinity of Unionport Road and E. Tremont Avenue, and Hunts Point near Southern Boulevard, said Assemblyman Michael Benedetto.

Space for the extra trains coming into Penn Station from the new stations should be available in 2016, after Long Island Rail Road’s East Side Access Plan re-routes many of the trains currently terminating at Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal, Benedetto said. “They do expect this to happen, and therefore they want to start planning now so things are ready when space is freed up in Penn Station,” Benedetto said.

The public should not expect new Metro North stations in the Bronx in the next couple of years, even though construction theoretically could begin on the four new Bronx stations before space becomes available at Penn Station, Benedetto said.

Crazy idea time, and I may have asked this before. I haven't looked at track maps in a while, so I'm not sure. Will tracks from the NEC coming from the east have access to the ESA tracks?

I ask for this reason: the East Bronx suffers from long commute times, whether it's bus connections, slow subways, etc. If they could get to Penn in 25 minutes using this potential connection, could MNRR conceivably connect BACK to GCT via ESA after running through the East Bronx with M8's? And wouldn't that be ironic?

answer is absolutely NO, the New Haven line equipment does NOT fit in ESA tunnels, only M-3 and M-7 and in future the M-9.
Nothing else fits.

From having ridden on a train alongside a New Haven Line train, they just barely fit in the Park Avenue tunnel.

DutchRailnut wrote:answer is absolutely NO, the New Haven line equipment does NOT fit in ESA tunnels, only M-3 and M-7 and in future the M-9.
Nothing else fits.

And that ends that crazy idea.....

Thanks Dutch. Didn't know that. Must be the catenary equipment, right?

How high will the ESA tunnels be?