Hoosac Tunnel Discussion & News

You didn’t hear? CSX is abandoning the B&A and Selkirk yard and moving everything to the PAS route and East Deerfield yard.

F74265A wrote: I’d speculate that buying the vrs system could be less costly than boring a new tunnel

That would only be possible in the extremely unlikely event, that VRS would be willing to sell out.

You are probably right since it appears that much of the vrs trackage is owned by the state of Vermont and governments are not driven by profit. In any event, digging a new tunnel would be prohibitively expensive. The options are continue to repair existing tunnel (most likely outcome) or abandon and reroute traffic. Obtaining operating rights over vrs would at least be a possibility in theory.

There needs to be undercutting and relining of the Tunnel for proper double stack clearance for domestic Doublestack containers,
The STB will insist on a competing Line to the far northeastern US, freight traffic.
The NS takeover of part of the D&H was not in vain.

Anybody have a WAG for the cost to double-stack and fully repair the Hoosac tunnel? I am assuming that it really isn't up to "state of good repair"

F74265A wrote: ↑Sat Jan 23, 2021 7:31 pm You are probably right since it appears that much of the vrs trackage is owned by the state of Vermont and governments are not driven by profit. In any event, digging a new tunnel would be prohibitively expensive. The options are continue to repair existing tunnel (most likely outcome) or abandon and reroute traffic. Obtaining operating rights over vrs would at least be a possibility in theory.

Nothing is going over the VRS end of story. That's a 3 railroad line (and longer)line haul that they would need to pay for which would quickly (monetarily) negate the point of going around the tunnel. Someone (NS) would walk away from PAS entirely before that happened.

Q: can Hoosac Tunnel be upgraded to facilitate DPU operation? In my limited internet research on the topic, I couldn't find any technology that would definitively enable head end to DPU radio communications in a long tunnel that takes several minutes for a train to pass through. Thanks.

Shouldn't be too much difference from cell phone repeaters in subway tunnels I would think. Under normal conditions (outside tunnels specifically) what happens if the DPU loses comms w/the head end? Does it try to "ride thru" the outage for a short while or does it go to idle? My guess is the latter, you wouldn't want it pushing if the head end has crashed.

The technology is definitely here. BNSF runs DPUs through their Flathead and Stevens tunnels daily.

Presumably no different than the technology that allows the head end to communicate with the EOT device in a long tunnel, no?

Telemetry stops communicating inside the Hoosac, at least it did when I was there.

For DPU, long tunnels need repeaters.

Take a drive on Route 2 over Whitcomb Summit and you'll realize the answer to "can a new ROW replace the Hoosac Tunnel" is "no"

They'll put all the double-track back in on the B&A and go that way instead...

cpf354 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 27, 2021 9:42 am Take a drive on Route 2 over Whitcomb Summit and you'll realize the answer to "can a new ROW replace the Hoosac Tunnel" is "no"

Yeah....
https://goo.gl/maps/MLgGjySZoy4wKikB9
https://goo.gl/maps/Aw5uJ5No84fbfpWA7
https://goo.gl/maps/gr3ZffcJEWeCrm9YA
1,600 vertical feet up to the summit from North Adams and then 1,500 vertical feet down to the Deerfield River in a little over 4 miles straight-line distance. Unless you're going to build a rack railway its a tunnel or nothing.

Even though we refer to Hoosac Mountain as part of the Berkshire "Hills," geologically its a continuation of the spine of the Green Mountains. That same chunk of high ground continues south all the way into western Connecticut, only finally petering out around Derby. There's a reason there aren't more E-W links between the New England coast and the rest of the country...

The only conceivable surface bypass of Hoosac Tunnel would be a 26 mile loop to the north via Readsboro and Heartwellville, summiting at just over 1900' at Dutch Hill. Dunno if boring 4 1/2 miles of new tunnel would be cheaper or not than building 26 miles of new line.