Amtrak Trains Fight to Go First

[happyslug]

2. Norfolk Southern is #1...

Last edited Tue May 24, 2016, 09:54 PM - Edit history (1)

Norfolk Southern operates the old Pennsylvania Railroad main line from New York City to Philadelphia to Harrisburg to Altoona to Johnstown to Pittsburgh, and then to Youngstown, Cleveland, Toledo, Gary and Chicago.

In the 1960s, either before or after the Pennsylvania Railroad merged with the New York Central to become the Penn Central, that main line between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh was cut from four line to three. The justification for the cut back was the number of trains had dropped and thus no need to maintain four lines. The problem has been, you needed the four lines to keep trains flowing in the Appalachian Mountains. This has been a HUGE cause of the delay, and it has increased since Norfolk Southern took over that route and increase the coal trains on that route (Norfolk Southern started out hauling coal out of West Virginia to Norfolk Virginia and still does a lot of business in coal). Since at least the 1980s (and some have said since the fourth track was removed in the 1960s) there have been a push to reinstall that fourth set of tracks. The road bed exists, the bridges can handle the extra set of tracks, thus the only cost is installing the new track and maintaining those tracks. Norfolk and Southern cares less about on time performance of its own fright trains let alone AMTRAK, as long as the train gets to where it is going that day, Norfolk and Southern is happy. Shippers put in enough lead time to make sure they can survive any late shipments, and when it comes to coal, you just hold the coal in the coal cars till it is time to unload them and they often sit for days before that happens. The other big set of shipments are containers, including trailers, again another set of shipments that can sit around till someone picks them up. You rarely see box cars on those trains today, for they MAY have to be unloaded when they arrived, thus you see coal cars (and other bulk good cars, including syrup for Pepsi and Coke Products, bulk oil, bulk chemicals etc) and flatcars with containers or trailers on them.

My point is Norfolk and Southern has no incentive to improve service, as long as they primary source of revenue is the movement of bulk goods. Thus unless Congress or the Department of Transportation goes something and REQUIRE that fourth set of tracks, these delays will continue.

Now another source of delays for AMTRAK are the tunnels into and out of New York City. These are maxed out and Governor Christie of New Jersey canceled the deal to address that problem. Now most of the rail lines used on Amtrak on the East Coast is owned by AMTRAK itself. AMTRAK also owns the Tunnels between New York City AND New Jersey:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_River_Tunnels

CSX has similar problems as Norfolk and Southern, favoring their Container and Coal (and other bulk shipments) over passenger service. While similar problems, CSX has less delays and what delays they have caused in the past will go down over the next few years. The reason for this is the Pinkerton Tunnel Cut in Somerset County PA is finally finished. The Pinkerton Tunnel was to narrow and to short for double stack flatcars, so CSX decided to "open it up" i.e. taking out the ground above the tunnel and making it a cut instead of a Tunnel. This was completed in 2015, but while it was being done caused all types of delays especially in the Capital Limited From Washington DC to Chicago. To a degree this opening up will also address some of the problems of delays by Norfolk and Southern, AMTRAK's schedule from Pittsburgh to Chicago for the Capital Limited goes from the CSX tracks to the Norfolk and Southern Tracks in Pittsburgh. Thus the delays caused by the opening up of the Pinkerton Tunnel lead to delays on the Norfolk and Southern Lines, which caused the conflicts between Norfolk and Southern Fright trains and AMTRAK Trains between Pittsburgh and Chicago (The delays on the CSX lines, caused even more delays on the Norfolk and Southern Lines).

The old main line, now run by the Norfolk and Southern Lines go from Three lines in Blairsville Pennsylvania to two tracks, but the third track does NOT end in Blarisville, but goes along the Kiskiminetas River to the Allegheny River, where it continued to Butler PA and Youngstown Oho to Chicago OR along the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh and rejoins the main line. Again the track is flat in that area so the need for another set of track is less important, but the Kiskiminetas River route can be expanded to two tracks, and the Direct Route to Pittsburgh can be expanded to three tracks,

More on the Pittsburgh Line:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Line

The Conemaugh Line of Norfolk and Southern (it follows the Kiskiminetas River):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conemaugh_Line

More on Pittsburgh Division Lines for Norfolk and Southern:

http://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/NS/NS%20Track%20Charts/NS%20Pgh%20Division%20Track%20Chart%202008.pdf

Blog on how to improve the old Main line to be High Speed Rail, right now speed on the Main Line is restricted to 45 mph, do to the fact most of the present Right of Way dates to 1905, but the most critical part dates to 1834, when it was built as part of the orginal old Portage Railway of the 1830s:

http://testplant.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html