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(erielack) Keeping a railroad fluid
In a message dated 06/20/09 12:05:55 Eastern Daylight Time, jguthrie_@_pipeline.com writes:
What might be done is to take
a six-car peak train
if fhere is one that short and add the four Scranton cars to it, then run it
express electrically to
Dover where a diesel would take the four through cars farther west.
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Great notes, Jim,
As you know, moving trains is like moving fluid through a straw. I live within earshot of DL&W milepost 37 and 38, and that axiom is quite apparent.
Any new trains extending NJT's reach would be best kept moving to the terminal, reversed and sent back out. Granted, few people from Scranton would be going all the way to Manhattan, but there will be a lot of people from the intermediate stops going to other intermediate stops. And as NJT caters more to the growing reverse commuting patterns, the Scranton trains may help fill that need.
With a three-hour-plus running time, one trainset from Scanton to Hoboken may require an overnight for the crews as that train runs east, then makes shorter trips to fill that crew's eight hours. What may be logicial is to have PennDOT trainsets troll the Poconos, trading passengers with the NJT trainsets at Columbia or Andover.
One of the limiting factors on the DL&W has always been the two track main west of Summit. Without a third track nothing can easily overtake anything else, so all of the trains pretty much must follow the one in front it. Changing power isn't practical today from a time and manpower standpoint (yarding, working around high-level platforms, etc).
(In 1998 when I first started as a brakeman on the Morristown & Erie I calculated that the average off-peak train speed including station stops was 34 mph, that if we kept moving at 34 mph -- in theory -- our engines shouldn't catch up to the NJT train ahead of us, thus making an easy trip between Baker and Dover. Except for anything usual, it worked fine, no advance approaches or approaches. With additional trains on the schedule, I don't know what that speed would be today.)
....Mike
East Dover, NJ
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