Track bridges in use today?

I've always seen the portable bridges stashed at stations, but assumed they were there for emergency use. Say, to evacuate people from a train stuck on the middle track. But, this morning, I got a train inbound from NRO (don't remember exactly which one, 11:34, maybe?) and was surprised to see us pull into Pelham station on one of the inner tracks. My first thought was we had gotten switched onto the wrong track and things were about to hit the fan, then I noticed they had the bridges installed spanning the platform track. They had already announced that you had to be in the first two cars to get off at Pelham, and obviously, this was why.

This was repeated at Mt. Vernon.

Is this a common thing? I'm guessing the platform track was out of service for track work?

Interesting question. I think they're called bridge plates.

Very common particularly on weekends when there is track work being done.

The real fun is when you have double bridge plates -- boarding an inbound train on the outbound express track, with bridge plates across two tracks. I've seen that a few times while they've been working on Devon Bridge. Usually they only have a few doors double-bridged even if they have single bridge plates the length of the platform.

In the waning days of Devon Transfer 1.0 last fall, they had this setup at Stratford and Bridgeport 24/7, which in turn meant that they went to left-hand running in the morning peak because there was no way they could board enough people safely over those plates.

You don't get to the upper New Haven much do you? That's the land of the bridge plate - up there, there are bridge plates more often than not because of ongoing catenary work, etc...What's really fun is when Devon Transfer has bridge plates!!! (NOT.)

Now if you look closely in Stamford under the station signs...Amtrak does keep portable ramps there, but that is an entirely different animal, and I think they use those to board people with wheelchairs. I believe MN equipment carries ramps like that on board.