eastwind wrote:Greg Moore wrote:F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:The junction is waaaaay more a bottleneck than the bridge or the short single-track pinch at the bridge. CP DV needs to be totally reconfigured to sort the merging traffic better. Until they do that an extra half-mile of double track laid through the empty bridge berth doesn't make a difference. The same crossovers are the bottleneck.
I was just about going to add this. The bridge itself has rarely been an issue for me. It's the crossing over (especially NB) that has been.
When the West Side Line was the New York Central's freight line, was it double-track the whole way, and was the junction configured the same way as it is today?
It's hard to believe the Central would allow freight trains crossing over to tie up a busy four-track passenger main.
Not sure, but some thoughts
1) The bridge itself I'm pretty sure was double tracked.
2) There is the remnants of a wye there, which operationally would have helped NYC more than MNRR or Amtrak today. (I believe dutchrailnut pointed out today it would interfere with the Spuytn Duvyil station trackage and it's a fairly tight radius in any case.)
3) I'm sure NYC it's more likely the NYC delayed the freight trains in favor of passenger trains whenever possible. Now you've got passenger trains on both legs, with MNRR owning the 4 tracks, so most likely if there's interference, they'll decide in favor of MNRR.
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