CSX opposes NYS high speed plans

Greg Moore wrote:What ^ he said!

Seriously.

I think really this should be thought of as two completely separate projects.

Get ALB-NYP to sub 2 hour running (it can be done... as I've related, I've ridden it, in 2:10 with a 10 minute stop at POU).

It means working with MNRR quite a bit and perhaps a bunch of work there.

But removing a bunch of time here is a huge win, both in terms of actual time saved and psychological (1:59 sounds a lot better than 2:01).

After this, then we can start to look west (and honestly, perhaps east).

It's not just speed with MNRR. Speed you probably can't do much more about here than you can on the New Haven Line. It is what it is with the service density. Capacity and ability to mitigate delays probably matters more.

The NY Central had the Hudson set up as contiguous 4-track RR everywhere from Spuyten Duyvil to Rhinecliff save for the rock cuts between Peekskill and Garrison currently occupied only by the Manitou flag stop. Here's the 1943 track map for all points north of electric territory: http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/imag ... hudson.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Electric division had up to 5 from SD to somewhere past Yonkers.

I really don't see how this works for the long-term unless they roll it back almost to that 1943 track chart. You need 5 tracks from SD to Yonkers to stretch out the traffic sorting around the junction through multiple sets of crossovers. You need, at minimum, tri-tracking everywhere in MNRR diesel territory except for that negligible Manitou gap where it's geologically impossible to go >2. And you need the railbed pre-prepped during the tri-track construction for the 4th track and 4th bridge decks to be effortless drop-ins later. Because this pretty much is gonna be the second New Haven Line re: traffic levels when you lump in 3 decades worth of commuter rail growth with realization of all of these cross-state dreams.

Throw in painstaking, one-by-one station rebuilds to support this. All- 8-car platforms with space provisions at all stops to drop in platform extenstion for a full 10 as-needed. More consistent outer local + inner express track setups like the New Haven Line and most of electric territory so less track switching is required for Amtrak or MNRR expresses. If the ultimate future calls for contiguous electrification to Albany, then the demarcation line between what's now electric territory vs. diesel territory is going to completely blur into a dizzying array of overlapping local vs. express MU's of any given length and micro-targeted skip-stopping. The railroad will have to be set up all the way to Poughkeepsie (or hell, just assume Rhinecliff right off the bat) just like quad-tracked, maximum-length platformed, locals-and-express intermingled electric territory to handle everything that'll be thrown at it. Because MNRR will be throwing anything and everything at it by the time it gets built. That's the only way a train is going to make it through such incredibly high service density maintaining the max (and largely unraiseable) track speed without conflict.

What they're proposing is only a drop in the bucket. A little bit of third iron passing siding here. A few more crossovers here and there. Relocating a few crossing movements to yards and pocket tracks. It's fluffing the pillows and taking a giant punt on most everything that constitutes a permanent fix for conflicts with MNRR traffic increases that are pretty much unbounded. It's not like EVERYTHING has to be done over in one fell swoop to remake the NY Central's track capacity with modern station setups. But there's almost no attention being given to provisioning for slow expansion. Every additional track segment that's needed over the years, every station rebuild...that's all being left subject to individual touches, individual turf wars, and local political interference fought over every station and damn near every mile post. There's no vision on how to transform it. It doesn't even address the questions of how MNRR demand growth is going to be satisfied in its own vacuum, let alone coexist with statewide trains or transition MNRR service patterns (much less equipment) after the electric/diesel divide disappears. You're damn right the MTA is going to dig in and defend their turf with all that's left unexplained by the total afterthought these Hudson upgrades are in the plan Cuomo et al. have presented. It's their own survival instinct to kick and scream about these uncertainties.

And yet...here they are fighting hypothetical battles with CSX on the Water Level Route when hardly any of that matters until a train can get to Poughkeepsie/Rhinecliff on-time and to Albany at the fastest time geometry and projected local traffic will allow. It's not serious. It's chumming the waters for political favors in somebody's Assembly district along the WLR and pitting region-on-region, county-on-county pissing matches. A Cuomo specialty. Short-term gain stuff for pols who are snickering amongst themselves about how they'll long since have departed for the private sector or lobbying circuit before any real vote has to get taken about starting or funding real work.

I tend to agree.

While I think faster top speeds in MNRR would be nice, simply smoothing out the traffic patterns would help.
My 2:10 train was the last on on Friday when there were no other trains to get in the way, and as far as I know, the engineer never exceeded MAS.

But, heck, just getting across Spytun Dyvel can kill 2-3 minutes off the time of an ALB bound train.

Get it stuck behind a local MNRR (and it's happened to me) and you lose another 10 minutes by the time you get to POU.

NYS is going to have to get even more serious about rail in the coming years.

Along with two D stops (train may depart ahead of schedule) at RHI and HUD, and a clean sheet with no restrictions helped also. The last train up back during the #273 days wasn't that busy and they may have only handled 10 or 15 people at each of those stops. Maybe some day on the Hudson between ALB and POU we will have a higher MAS to operate with but I cant see MNRR boosting theres

Railjunkie wrote:Along with two D stops (train may depart ahead of schedule) at RHI and HUD, and a clean sheet with no restrictions helped also. The last train up back during the #273 days wasn't that busy and they may have only handled 10 or 15 people at each of those stops. Maybe some day on the Hudson between ALB and POU we will have a higher MAS to operate with but I cant see MNRR boosting theres

Ayup, the D definitely helped. Like I say we were held at POU for 10 minutes, otherwise we'd have made it in almost exactly 2 hours.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: And yet...here they are fighting hypothetical battles with CSX on the Water Level Route....

Deciding to upgrade Albany to Buffalo beyond getting 90 MAS here and there means deciding on a route. You have to slug it out with CSX before you can decide that upgrading the tracks next to the freight tracks is worth it. Or not worth it. If you want to be completing the high speed section between Rochester and Utica in 2030 now is the time to be slugging it out with CSX. If you want to be completing the high speed section between Rochester and Syracuse in 2050 you can put off slugging it out with CSX in 2030. Since I'll be dead in 2050 I would much rather it be completed in 2030.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: Really, NYP-ALB and ALB-BUF should be semi-independent Parts I and II of the plan akin to the way CAHSR is broken apart by segment.

Probably three parts. Buffalo to Albany, which will be relatively cheap and easy to make into full fledged high speed rail, Albany to wherever you want to call the end of commuter traffic from New York City, and from there to New York City. If you want fast trains between Albany and Buffalo they will be electric. You can't haul around enough diesel and it's fuel to go much over 125 and 150 would be pushing it to the limit. Same thing with Albany to the end of commuter territory. Where to call the end of commuter territory and the start of intercity is yet another decision. Electrifying all of the Metro North service would be good. Do they do it with catenary north of Croton or do they attempt to run third rail and catenary all the way down to Sputen Duyvil? Or third rail all the way to Penn Station. I'd be inclined to spend the extra money to rip out the third rail all the way down to Highbridge and use M8-ish kind of equipment for commuter service on the Hudson line. I don't have the information, skills to evaluate it or patience to do something like that. Poughkeepsie to Buffalo there isn't any doubt that it's going to high voltage overhead.

On the other hand it we have to consider the parts embedded in a wider system. Doing that is a good thing because airports are expensive to expand. If we go for the high speed option not only do we get much better service to New York City we get better service to Philadelphia and someday Baltimore and Washington DC. It's reasonable to assume that someday NY-DC is going to be faster than what it is now. Being able to take the train from Albany and be in DC in three, three and half hours means the flights from ALB to DCA go away. Frees up space in DCA for flights to someplace else and makes the airlines search around for destinations they can serve from ALB that don't have an HSR connection. Someday it will take three hours to get from DC to Albany and instead of the train to Montreal being one for land cruise customers Albany to Montreal high speed rail can reach as far as Cleveland, Washington DC and Boston. Lots more passengers on the expensive track through the Adirondacks means the expensive track's cost get spread around. High speed rail from Boston to Albany to serve Albany and western Massachusetts doesn't pencil out. High speed rail from Boston to Albany so that New England has high speed rail service to Cleveland, Toronto and Montreal spreads that cost out over more passengers. An integrated system across the Northeast in 2050 and I can imagine some odd routes. Harrisburg to Montreal via Hartford for instance.

So it has to be divided up into sections but when designing the sections, that it's part of a wider statewide system and wider system across the Northeast and Midwest, has to be taken into account.

I am so tired of people thinking, "I like passenger trains, and so the government should be able to take a private company's property so that I can have my passenger trains but not have to pay the full cost of them."

I'd love to have an Acela to Buffalo, on its own right-of-way, but I'm pulling for CSX here.

Why must everything be all or nothing? Maybe work with CSX to go from 79 mph max operating speed up to 79.9 mph this year, say 81 mph within two years, 84.7 mph within five years, etc?

The best part: a 1 mph increase can realistically be done for zero cost. But a couple of decades worth of 1 mph increments gets you high speed rail for free!

SouthernRailway wrote:I am so tired of people thinking, "I like passenger trains, and so the government should be able to take a private company's property so that I can have my passenger trains but not have to pay the full cost of them."

I'd love to have an Acela to Buffalo, on its own right-of-way, but I'm pulling for CSX here.

So Amtrak long distance services, ( and most corridors), would not exist.
The fact that they do indicates there is some kind of obligation there.

SouthernRailway wrote:I am so tired of people thinking, "I like passenger trains, and so the government should be able to take a private company's property so that I can have my passenger trains but not have to pay the full cost of them."

I'd love to have an Acela to Buffalo, on its own right-of-way, but I'm pulling for CSX here.

Who said they wouldn't be compensated for it either directly like they were for the stuff east of the Hudson or indirectly by track fees? As of close of business on Friday CSX was worth 30.9 billion. We could offer the stockholders a ten percent premium and own it again. And get some stuff that wasn't in Conrail when we sold to them, at very good prices, 15 years or so ago.

Matt Johnson wrote:Why must everything be all or nothing? Maybe work with CSX to go from 79 mph max operating speed up to 79.9 mph this year, say 81 mph within two years, 84.7 mph within five years, etc?

The best part: a 1 mph increase can realistically be done for zero cost. But a couple of decades worth of 1 mph increments gets you high speed rail for free!

Going from 79.9 MPH to 80.1 MPH costs a lot of money. You need cab signals. To go from 89.9 to 90.1 costs a lot of money because the track has to be maintained more carefully. to go from 109.9 to 110.1 costs a lot of money because not only does the track need to be maintained more carefully the grade crossings need to be upgraded. 124.9 to 125.1 costs a LOT of money because improved grade crossings are no longer good enough and the ROW has to be grade separated. And the track has to be maintained more carefully. You don't want freight running regularly over your 125.1 MPH and higher track. Unless it's one freight train a day,you want separate tracks anyway. The fast passenger train keeps catching up to the much slower freight trains.

Would CSX be opposed to passengers running at full sprint through the aisles of the coaches in the direction of travel? Figure you can maybe hit 15, 20 mph at full sprint, which aboard a 79 mph train would get the person close to 100 mph.

David Benton wrote:

SouthernRailway wrote:I am so tired of people thinking, "I like passenger trains, and so the government should be able to take a private company's property so that I can have my passenger trains but not have to pay the full cost of them."

I'd love to have an Acela to Buffalo, on its own right-of-way, but I'm pulling for CSX here.

So Amtrak long distance services, ( and most corridors), would not exist.
The fact that they do indicates there is some kind of obligation there.

That's not what I said. What I said is that private railroads should be paid the full cost of what they give to passenger trains, largely track access.

A freight railroad is like any other private entity: the government can't just take its property away from it, even for passenger trains.

SouthernRailway wrote:
That's not what I said. What I said is that private railroads should be paid the full cost of what they give to passenger trains, largely track access.

A freight railroad is like any other private entity: the government can't just take its property away from it, even for passenger trains.

There's a gazillion ways to account for track access. Amtrak likes the ones that cost Amtrak little money. The railroads like the ones that cost Amtrak a lot of money. If Amtrak tries to go from one that's in the middle to one that costs them a bit less the railroad screams that Amtrak is evil and is trying to take.

Although you would think CSX would welcome any improvements to their infrastructure, it would come at a huge cost to them. If the state invested a lot of money into their plant and the host continued their "business as usual" attitude of accepting the money and not maintaining the agreed standards, it would be a nightmare all around.

I kind of side with SouthernRailway. Make them an offer and buy the territory so it is out of their control, or leave them alone.

What good is a hostile host?

The "BREAD AND BUTTER" of CSX across New York State is IM and other freight. Chemicals, oil, coal, lumber, cement, minerals, you name it, they haul it. I don't see any reason that any major freight railroad should give up their rights to haul as much freight as possible as that is where there profit is. The only way for improvements for Amtrak or any other passenger carrier to happen here is for a lot of, lot of money from somewhere other than CSX comes forward for improvements to the physical plant. There are a number of improvements that could be done, more crossovers, more controlled or in today's terminology signaled sidings, cab signals and automatic train control and maybe station improvements. All of this will cost a huge amount of money and some of it probably would be a hard nut for CSX to deal with. Cab signals sound good BUT with the amount of pooled power running on this line today some of which comes through from far away points it would add a burden to the operating costs here which CSX might not be willing to absorb. Pooled power from other railroads is not new on this route, I retired 17 years ago this year and even when I was still working I ran locomotives from practically all of the major railroads of that period between Buffalo and Selkirk. Pooled power represents a big savings in operating costs for all railroads involved in that they do not have to keep locomotives just sitting and waiting at interchange points for a train to come in so that they can change engines, just send them through. I had engines eastbound that came through from Los Angeles, Oakland, Tacoma and other western points. I do not see the wisdom of putting tons of money in to this route just so the trains might be able to travel a little bit faster than they do now. I do think they need to make improvements to the physical plant for capacity issues which will probably increase as time goes on but I do not think they will be able to crack CSX or any other major railroad on some issues as I have outlined here.
Noel Weaver

Are you then suggesting that CSX will not even do PTC on the Empire Corridor? What is it that you get with "cab signal" that you do not basically get with PTC?