Where would you add new or additional NEC stops?

To date Amtrak has served SEC only twice: Senator Lautenberg's farewell ride and the Super Bowl (February 2014).

Maybe the greatest benefit could be obtained by stopping a couple of regionals each way morning and afternoon on weekdays when there is the most connecting service on the diesel lines.

The lack of a station between Wilmington (occasional stops at Newark) and Aberdeen seems to be an obvious hole. Restoring service to Elkton would provide some rail service to northeast Maryland and southern Chester County, PA.

rcthompson04 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2023 9:48 am The lack of a station between Wilmington (occasional stops at Newark) and Aberdeen seems to be an obvious hole. Restoring service to Elkton would provide some rail service to northeast Maryland and southern Chester County, PA.

The existing station at Elkton is not in the most optimal location anymore due to how the town had developed since its closure. I suspect that a reopened Elkton station would be built at the western end of BACON so that a large parking lot adjacent to the platforms, with ready access to Maryland Route 272 and local transit, could be provided.

Service at Elkton would also require the long-gestating MTA maintenance yard in Cecil County to be constructed and put into service for MARC’s rolling stock. Because of the lack of a reverse commuting flow out of Baltimore, all of the inbound services have to deadhead from Martins Yard or Baltimore Penn up to Perryville; extending this deadheading to Elkton would consume paths between PERRY and BACON that don’t earn any revenue for MARC and get in the way of the Amtrak services. A shorter deadhead move from the proposed yard in Cecil County would be much less difficult to schedule. Unfortunately there’s no information readily available on the MTA web site about this proposed yard and the last news reports on the yard from local media in Cecil County dates back to January 2015.

(I hope someone with more info on these plans can comment!)

The last I heard, there were motions to buy part of a farm to put a MARC maintenance facility.

That said, they did turn a deadhead move into a revenue move out of Baltimore up to Perryville for a few years now. Apparently there's enough morning commute traffic to justify it. Check the latest schedules.

On the station positioning... I do have to agree. The old station is behind a bowling alley and has no access to get to the other side (outside of a long way over the nearby bridge). Have it around Bridge Road lets you save on costs, although I would incur extra cost to add a fourth track between IRON and BACON.

STrRedWolf wrote: ↑Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:23 pm The last I heard, there were motions to buy part of a farm to put a MARC maintenance facility.

That said, they did turn a deadhead move into a revenue move out of Baltimore up to Perryville for a few years now. Apparently there's enough morning commute traffic to justify it. Check the latest schedules.

On the station positioning... I do have to agree. The old station is behind a bowling alley and has no access to get to the other side (outside of a long way over the nearby bridge). Have it around Bridge Road lets you save on costs, although I would incur extra cost to add a fourth track between IRON and BACON.

Thanks for the tip! I checked the schedule and found the service; I had no idea that there was any reverse commute flow north of Baltimore.

I went back and checked Wikimapia to determine where BACON was located and realized that it is actually in North East, MD, adjacent to Mechanics Valley Road. If it wasn’t possible to build a new station in Elkton next to N Bridge Street it might actually be possible to build the new station in North East instead, since the access to US 40 Pulaski Highway is just as good and availability of land for parking is also good.