Haverhill Line Upgrades (Western Route)

Unfortunately, a very serious accident injured a worker last month on one of the bridge sites

Truck driver's legs crushed beneath tires at MBTA work site; http://www.eagletribune.com/latestnews/ ... -work-site

This morning there were crews assembling turnouts at both AS and I495. Work continues on the Andover and LJ Shawsheen bridges. The LJ site looks like they may be placing the easterly girders this week.

Thanks for the update. I'm a little surprised they're working winter days, unless this project has an imminent deadline approaching. Is track 1 [former runner] connected to AS yet?

Rockingham Racer wrote:Thanks for the update. I'm a little surprised they're working winter days, unless this project has an imminent deadline approaching. Is track 1 [former runner] connected to AS yet?

I can't answer the second, but as to the first: There's not an imminent deadline, but something changed politically and the project became a very important priority. My guess is the standard behind-the-scenes back-and-forth where this project getting prioritized might mean a local pol voting to better fund the T later.

At AS, the points for the facing point crossover W of the grade crossing were assembled more than a year ago, then left sitting unconnected to the easterly main's new welded rail & rock ballast (installed on the former 'runner' from I495 about the same time as track 17 was finally put into service). This morning a gang with wrenches were adjusting the points, though I don't think they're connected to the runner yet. W of the street, there's no frog yet, nor the other turnout needed for the crossover. The assembled new turnout sitting by the former tower E of the street hasn't moved, nor is the street yet dug up for new rails.

The EGE may be right, but my own guess is interaction between Maine's senators and the MBTA's management got the latter off the dime. That it took place on the political plane was initially indicated by real work beginning two weeks after the election, and supported by continuous work since then, only interrupted for a couple of days by the February blizzard.

The EGE wrote:

Rockingham Racer wrote:Thanks for the update. I'm a little surprised they're working winter days, unless this project has an imminent deadline approaching. Is track 1 [former runner] connected to AS yet?

I can't answer the second, but as to the first: There's not an imminent deadline, but something changed politically and the project became a very important priority. My guess is the standard behind-the-scenes back-and-forth where this project getting prioritized might mean a local pol voting to better fund the T later.

I think the calculus was actually a lot more complicated than that. This project benefits the T but the Downeaster far more so. My impression is that the MBTA was dragging its feet in part since they knew this was guaranteed work that could be started and done over the next few years as things allowed. NNEPRA/MDOT and the FRA/USDOT on the other hand almost certainly didn't appreciate this approach. My guess is that this involved federal level politics probably reaching into the offices of the United States Senators for both MA and ME.

I have doubts that local horse trading in MA would produce such dramatic results as what we are seeing now.

One other factor - the Shawsheen bridge work looks like it might be a lot more involved that was thought to be needed even a couple years ago. Not that I have any engineering knowledge, but there's a lot of work going on around those two bridges, and I suspect that had they known just what would be involved they wouldn't have built the second track across the eastern span, only to pull it back up (then again, maybe I'm ascribing too much credit here). Knowing that the bridge rehab would slow things down, that could have also driven decisions to shift work elsewhere.

I'm also wondering whether the bridge work will require shifting traffic to the other side of the spans to complete, or if they'll be able to do all the work on the westbound side just with short-term track outages.

Not on topic exactly, but Andover St. crossing needs a re-make--badly. I almost broke an axle driving over it in December when I was there.

When the entire Haverhill Line upgrade is complete, will more service be offered?

An employee told me that both Shawsheen arches will be dummies after all this is done - girders will carry the train's weight. At both bridges they will shift traffic to the easterly track once it's completed so they can do the west. They are fabricating a steel arch at the LJ bridge - can't tell if it's a temporary shore, or something that will be installed permanently and hidden.

Signal gang ditching right next to Andover St. this morning.

More service would be possible, but as long as the MBTA is broke, we're more likely to see another Downeaster r/t than new schedules on the MBTA. It would be nice if the T adjusted the schedules a bit; it's a long gap inbound between the 7:30 and the 9:05, and I find it tiresome that both the 6:46 and the 7:30 go via Wilmington instead of Wakefield. Once upon a time, what is now the 9:05 left at 8:46.

Hopefully the schedule adjustment that gets made is a trip time reduction for the Downeaster. That would have a major and disproportionate impact on ridership especially for commuters coming out of New Hampshire and even northern MA (HHL). As discussed in the Downeaster thread these are the people that "carry" the service. Anything that helps their cause also ultimately helps the Downeaster as well.

jbvb wrote:An employee told me that both Shawsheen arches will be dummies after all this is done - girders will carry the train's weight. At both bridges they will shift traffic to the easterly track once it's completed so they can do the west. They are fabricating a steel arch at the LJ bridge - can't tell if it's a temporary shore, or something that will be installed permanently and hidden.

Signal gang ditching right next to Andover St. this morning.

More service would be possible, but as long as the MBTA is broke, we're more likely to see another Downeaster r/t than new schedules on the MBTA. It would be nice if the T adjusted the schedules a bit; it's a long gap inbound between the 7:30 and the 9:05, and I find it tiresome that both the 6:46 and the 7:30 go via Wilmington instead of Wakefield. Once upon a time, what is now the 9:05 left at 8:46.

Better on-time performance and losing the single-track choke point around train meets might pry open a couple schedule slots simply by reducing the margin-of-error padding they're required to put on the current schedule. But Bradford layover is still at capacity, so the capacity cap doesn't get lifted until they resolve the NIMBY stalemate in Plaistow or find an alternate layover site. They need the more spacious layover environs to do any transformative increases in service density. Easiest way to cram a couple more would be additional Anderson expresses where the trip time savings of skipping the Reading Line entirely makes deadheading in lieu of a Bradford stay slightly easier to swing. Any additional run helps, but still talking far shy of transformative increases until Bradford's replaced.


A new layover probably also tilts heavier to Anderson expresses filling a much more significant chunk of the schedule. Reading Line's still got a lot of single track (even if they take care of Reading station and the Wellington passing track) plus dense stop spacing and a few constrained 450 ft. platforms that can't open all doors on a long consist. There's only so much you can do about the dwell time penalty at the constrained stations and the frequent starts/stops that prevent running at true track speed, or the train meets in Somerville and Medford (esp. on the BET-Sullivan stretch shared with the Eastern Route). Something more like a 50/50 or 60/40 split of Reading vs. Wildcat trains is probably what's required to flush Wilmington-north service up to the true track capacity. And that wouldn't be a bad thing because Reading can get a little denser service if a % of thru runs were traded off for more short-turns, and trip times to Haverhill/Plaistow would trim to downright comfortable if expressing to 128 got it safely under an hour. Might even bring enough flex to support future reopening of Salem St. and Shawsheen if the schedule segmentation were balanced enough.

F-line,

As best I could tell the above calculus included any potential alterations to the Downeaster's schedule as well. Or perhaps not?

gokeefe wrote:F-line,

As best I could tell the above calculus included any potential alterations to the Downeaster's schedule as well. Or perhaps not?

Downeaster benefits immediately. Amtrak should be able to do a lot right off the bat. But unlike the Fitchburg improvements where Wachusett's new layover does open up genuinely transformative new CR slots in a couple years to support better reverse commuting, the Bradford issue severely limits the T's wiggle room. With Amtrak grabbing its share immediately, I think about the most the T can do is finagle a +1 net gain on the schedule with an extra Anderson express filling in the freed up "margin of error" time no longer needed. Anything else they can fit is more likely going to be the result of recalibrating the entire schedule and maybe finding an extra +1 express slot in a trade-off for an extra Reading short-turn...i.e. netting a "found" slot with artful realignment of departure times and shortened runs. Window dressing stuff.


I really hope they can calm Plaistow the hell down. The T doesn't get to be an equal partner for this project's return on investment like Amtrak and Pan Am do until the layover capacity crunch is settled.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

gokeefe wrote:F-line,

As best I could tell the above calculus included any potential alterations to the Downeaster's schedule as well. Or perhaps not?

Downeaster benefits immediately. Amtrak should be able to do a lot right off the bat.

More specifically are we talking "only" about OTP improvements or can we agree there's a near universal likelihood of trip time improvements? I'm having a hard time imaging otherwise but I'm not familiar at all with how the MBTA calculates these kinds of things.