Amtrak Grand Central Terminal Operations

When Amtrak moved from Grand Central Terminal to Penn Station in 1991 it was a huge victory for Amtrak, New York State and especially Amtrak's passengers. It made it much simpler to service and exchange equipment, for passengers to connect to other points whether it be by Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey points or the subway. It was a win, win, win.
Noel Weaver

Although I would kill to take the Lake Shore out of GCT

Did amtrak ever run trains up the corridor from GCT?

Pertaining to how the equipment got from GCT after the 2012 ceremonies, I was lucky enough to witness the operation first hand.

MN had two crews working the moves. I'm not familiar with what their call numbers were, but I assume one was PMMO. For the Amtrak part from New Rochelle there were also 2 crews for the move. Anyway after about 8pm, the first set of equipment left. Then because they probably didn't want to clog a track in NR, they held the second consist for about an hour plus. Then the first cut (or only cut) of PVs were taken into the basement for a brake test. After that it was taken to a point east of Pelham, where it was held for about 30 minutes waiting for an engine. Once in NR, the engine swap was quick, and it was clear sailing.

I'm not sure, but I think the Amtrak stuff was towed to Penn, and one of the protect engines came in from the middle stub track between Lines 2 and 4 to take it into Sunnyside. The PVs were taken to the usual interchange spot next to the PATH shops in Harriston.

It was very interesting seeing how much work goes into making railfans alike happy.

I believe someone said already somewhere else that the Penn Central originally consolidated everything to Penn Station, so if an Amtrak train has gone into GCT from Boston, it's because of construction, etc.

The only reason you can even go NYP-BOS as is now is because PRR decided to connect NYP with long island and build a yard there. If they had built a GCT style station with loops and large number of dead ended tracks all that would need being done is to double track the west side line and empire tunnerl and you could route everything going north/east via spuyten duyvil.

As far as going between the two stations, NYC and PRR were rivals, going between them will never be easy.

Hence one is named a Station, and the other a Terminal

25Hz wrote:The only reason you can even go NYP-BOS as is now is because PRR decided to connect NYP with long island and build a yard there.

Mr. Hertz, I would think a far more accurate statement would read as follows:

The only reason you can even go NYP-BOS as is now is because PRR and NH decided to build the New York Connecting RR, the principal asset of which was Hell Gate Bridge.

There was New York - Boston service out of Grand Central Terminal in the New Haven days (lots of it), Penn Central reduced the service after many prior reductions in service earlier by the New Haven and finally in 1970 (I have the exact date here somewhere) the Penn Central moved the remaining New York - Boston trains from GCT to Penn. Even after that move they ran the UAC Turbo Train for a while longer out of Grand Central Terminal but eventually that too moved to Penn. There were a number of reasons that this move took place; they wanted to release the FL-9's that were running in this service for use on commuter service to Poughkeepsie and Brewster and by doing this they could replace them with GG-1's, they wanted to pool more equipment in the Northeast Corridor and that was not as easily done with the service running to Grand Central Terminal instead of Penn Station and finally it was a good move for the passengers too because now they knew they had to take a train out of Penn Station in order to go from New York to Boston without changing trains at New Haven. Although Grand Central Terminal was a more pleasant place to board a train the connections both by rail and by subway were far better at Penn Station and this is the case today as well so the move made much sense for the public although I am not too sure that the Penn Central was really concerned by public opinion in 1970. Incidentally Penn Central during its early years had a period when both Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal were in the same employee timetable and today this is rather hard to believe, it is not likely to happen again.
Noel Weaver

i thought connecting tunnel boring was underway. part of the east side program. am i wrong? ken patrick

Mr. Patrick, that tunnel will link HAROLD interlocking with a new deep-bore station under Grand Central. The tunnel will be only for LIRR trains (as only M3's and M7's and nothing else can fit through it) and there will still be no direct route between NYP and GCT.

Are you sure the East side access tunnel will only hold LIRRs M3s and M7s? It makes little sense to design the tunnel this way (one would think it would be built to accommodate the mulit-level cars that LIRR uses).

The tunnel was designed and partly built long before LIRR had Multilevels, the poster is correct only M3- M7 will fit out of current fleet.

And it's worth noting that Metro-North's M8's would not fit through the tunnel either. While they do share a similar shape to the M7's, the added roof hump would make the train too tall to make it through the tunnels.

needless to say that there is no physical connection between ESA and Metro North tracks other than by roundabout way via hellgate and sunnyside.

The big issue with ESA loading gauge is the east river double deck tunnel, the top level of which the NYC subway F train uses. If the tunnel were not in use on the top level they might be able to modify it, but that as they say is the way it is. Not sure how many of you have been through that tunnel, but you can tell there's space below by how it sounds, especially comparing it to how it sounds though manhattan. and in fact if you are nerdy about rails enough you can go to roosevelt island station and hear the equipment moving around in the lower level through the station. Will be interesting once revenue train traffic commences, hearing a train coming through but not seeing it..... :D

Yes, the connecting railway route/hell gate line etc important, but if NYP dead ended at 7th or 6th ave there wouldn't even be the chance of constructing such a link, not without serious property/zoning/NIMBY issues at the least... Thankfully PRR had some future-proofing geniuses, and we have them to thank for the modern NEC and how it connects the northeast megalopolis. GCT now reduced to a commuter terminal only.