Progress

I was aware of auto-route, but I assumed it was already in place when I started regular riding early 2012.

Your's is the first confirmation of what I have suspected: that all it can do at control points like Wayne is "first come first served." Putting aside the issue of whether auto route is "good or bad," if the program can't be or hasn't been programmed to put expresses in front of locals when arriving within moments of each other, that seems to be a rather silly oversight.

Everyone:

Great topic here...

The first thing this needs is a better title: "SEPTA RRD RDG Side Progress (?) makes far more sense then plain "Progress" which is just too vague for this topic...

NPL mentions a comparison of 40 years ago - 1976 - as a comparison to today on the Reading RRD routes...I will make direct comparison with September 1976:

Conrail was all of six months old then after taking operation of the Reading Company commuter rail routes on April 1, 1976.

The Bicentennial Summer of 1976 was winding down remembering Philadelphia's historical role on the founding of the United States back in in 1776.
There were special train services operated that year - to places such as Valley Forge Park.

Back then there was a entire fleet of brand-new 100 series Silverliner Four cars entering service. In 9/76 they were under one year old. The 9000 series S4 cars
were just two years old (9018-9031 built 1974) and the 17 Silverliner 2 cars (9001-9017) were all of 13 years of age then...

There was a entire yard of just-retired RDG 30s vintage MU cars at what is now Liberty Yard S of Wayne Junction being sent out for scrap primarily...
The Blueliners - which were rebuilt in the middle 60s - stayed on for more then a decade afterwards (last Blues retired 1989)...

The Diesel fleet of RDG RDCs and the one push-pull train served the two longer distance non-electrified routes of the Bethlehem and Reading-Pottsville Lines.
Fox Chase-Newtown trains also used these same RDCs. Most if not all of us remember what happened to these three routes during the first half of the 1980s...

The only RDG side commuter area welded rail was a one-mile section on the northbound track in the Melrose/Elkins Park area...
The Silverliner Four cars never rode well on jointed rail remembering rough rides in these cars in the past...

The only high-level platform station (first on the RDG side) was Warminster which opened with that one-stop extension from Hatboro in 1974.
The second would be Elm Street-Norristown which I believe opened in 1978...

AC: The "Wall Street" and "Crusader" were the two RDG trains operating to Newark, NJ via West Trenton with connections to Penn Station-New York...
Back then the Jenkintown stop was as important as Reading Terminal was for these two weekday round trip runs. More then likely they never ran via the NYSL...

NPL: I rode many trains during the 70s and 80s and never once saw any train crew member smoking a cigarette when they were engaging in "lifting transportation"
(collecting tickets). That even then was not permitted. SEPTA Regional Rail was the first commuter rail system to ban smoking in 1985 - as a comparison the LIRR
and Metro-North banned smoking in the Spring of 1988 and Chicago's METRA in 1990...

The good point made is that SEPTA RRD has a share of slow speed limits on their tracks - I can think of one in particular that has always baffled me: The slow order
over the 5th Street crossing in Lansdale at the beginning of the Doylestown Branch which was implemented during a repair project but never lifted...

Millions of dollars have been spent since SEPTA assumed direct control of the Regional Rail lines in 1983 on various improvement projects - it would not surprise me
if the sum since then totals over a billion dollars. Under Conrail contract operation (4/1976 to 12/1982) the system struggled to stay afloat with rising costs and
the deteriorated condition of the physical plant on both the RDG and PRR/PC systems. Record inflation leading to major fare increases in 1980 led to the major
1981 service cutbacks - and ridership loss. Things got bad enough that the RRD system's own survival was threatened back during those early 80s "bad old days"...
SEPTA RRD has come a long way since those rough times of the early 1980s - let's all hope they never "go back"...

MACTRAXX

Great timeline MAC

When did they convert the Silverliners from knuckle couplers to spear couplers? 1983 / 1984?

I'm still undecided if the Quiet Car replacing the Smoking Car is progress. I'm not sure which group is more radical, the quiet car police (passengers) or the anti-smoking police. Nothing makes people crazy like arguing politics, talking in the quiet car, and smoking cigarettes.

I'm not a smoker, but I personally don't transform into The Hulk when I catch a whiff of burning tobacco. Same goes for talking on train. I could care less if the train is in complete silence, or not. I think people's cell phone manners (in public spaces) have come a long way in the last 15 years. Besides, 99% of the kids today prefer texting as their primary means of communication. I'm just glad the fad of carrying an enormous BOOM BOX on your shoulder to listen to music has passed. Thank you Sony Walkman and Apple I-Pod.

NorthPennLimited wrote: When did they convert the Silverliners from knuckle couplers to spear couplers? 1983 / 1984?

The SLIV's always had the current spear couplers. The SLII's were delivered with tightlock couplers with a MU head below the coupler for air and signal connections. I have a picture of RDG SLII 9007 in July of 1974 which shows the newer coupler so they were most likely converted around that time to be compatible with the newly delivered GE cars.

x-press wrote:I was aware of auto-route, but I assumed it was already in place when I started regular riding early 2012.

Your's is the first confirmation of what I have suspected: that all it can do at control points like Wayne is "first come first served." Putting aside the issue of whether auto route is "good or bad," if the program can't be or hasn't been programmed to put expresses in front of locals when arriving within moments of each other, that seems to be a rather silly oversight.

The computer could be programmed to give trains priority based on a variety of variables; however, there are two primary reasons why it has not happened. 1. Dispatchers are slow to change, and are wary of a computer doing their job for them. 2. The companies that make train control software do not make a lot of money off of it, nor are they installing software system very often, so they have little incentive to improve the software unless they are required to by a specification. That brings up another question though, which is what functions should train control software have that it does not have now?