lirr42 wrote:NHAirLine wrote:They could figure out how to fuel the P32's. Send them to NHV mid-day if needed to fuel up for the evening rush... Clearly, no one could find diesel fuel at NHV... Yeah, the BL20s probably aren't such a good idea. The CDOT P40's could do 12 cars (they wouldn't be able to get out of their own way, but they would work), but the P32's are enough to use up the whole Shoreliner fleet anyways. They should put a dozen regular Maxi-Bombs on local service, and run a dozen Maxi-Bombs running express STM-125-GCT. They have 221 Shoreliners, figure 200 are in service, that would give them a dozen 7-car Maxi's for local service, and a dozen 7-car Maxi's for express service, leaving ~32 cars for Upper Hudson/Harlem service. They could cancel SLE west of NHV to not contribute to the chaos at STM, and east of OSB to save a set, and they have 33 Mafersa's, they need 12 to do SLE service with 3-car sets, figure 27-30 are in service, that leaves ~17, put 3 on Waterbury, make 3 ~6 car trains or 4 ~4 car trains for Danbury. Locomotives aren't the issue, they could use up every last coach that can run, and still have diesels sitting in the yard...
See, now that's more based in facts and numbers. While it still won't work, you're taking a step in the right direction.
Unfortunately, we cannot abandon the H&H riders. They represent a substantial amount of riders too and bringing them down with the NHL will only make conditions into and out of GCT more hectic and more uncomfortable.
MN is doing everything they can to the best of their ability to maximize the amount of trains they can run. They're not intentionally cheating out the NHL riders because they want to, there's only so much that can be done.
I could see the logic behind the idea that the NHL is the one that's messed up, so it should take the hit, and the upper H&H shouldn't have any issues, but they really need to share the pain. The upper H&H are relatively small commuter operations, the NHL is the biggest in North America. If my plan has too much overcrowding on the upper H&H lines, then maybe pull some of the Maxi's down to 6 cars, so you have a few more for the upper H&H, although 6 trains at 5 cars each isn't that shabby to cover Upper H&H. They could also send some M-8's over to the lower H&H lines, although they probably have enough M-3/M-7 cars to replace the Maxi's with EMUs to Southeast/Croton to connect to the upper shuttles. SLE has 14 locos. Let's say 11 are in service, use 4 for SLE, 4 for Dbury, 1 for Wbury, they'd have 2 more, they could send 2 P40's over to the upper Hudson to run some longer trains up there (based on pulling the mainline Maxi's to 6 cars), although I don't think that would buy anything, as they have plenty of BL20's, even if they had to double them up...
And to address the post above about getting more diesels, the math bears out that the issue is coaches, not locomotives. They have 12 BL20's assume 10 in service, you could cover 5 Upper H&H trains with doubled-up units, and then 2 more with P40's. Given that, this situation could soak up a ton more coaches. Put the express Maxi's to 12 cars (P32 HEP can do 16), that's 12x5=60 + 8 car P40 trains on Dbury = 4x4 =16 + 16 more for upper H&H, and that's 92 more coaches that could be used with the current motive power available. And the Shoreliners can hook up with the Mafersas, although that obviously limits them out of 3rd rail territory. My plan is so coach limited, that it still leaves 3 or 4 P32's sitting in a yard somewhere, although all other diesel power would be utilized in one way or another. In reality, it would be better to send the P32's to the upper H&H, and have the BL20's available for yard/rescue/towing.
