A route that may be considered is the I-81 route only extended much further. Harrisburg - Roanoke - Bristol - Morristown, Tn., Knoxville, Chattanooga, Memphis, Dallas - Ft. Worth. February's Trains magazine talked about Lincoln and how the North built a lot of east - west routes and the south relied on the waterways more and did not engineer their routes as well. This route would give a very important alternate to the Midwest routes that were so severly flooded last 2008 spring and summer.
Now for the nuts and bolts. The old Harrisburg PRR and N&W route has been well documented as to what is needed to upgrade this part of the route. Less has been said about the Bristol - Morristown route that is slow, curvy, street running in Johnson City and right through Jonesboro, Tn on a hill and Greenville Tn. Once past Bulls gap old 2 track mainly straight ROW to Knoxville. This route was 128 RR miles now 105 miles on I-81, I-40. Scheduled SOU RR passenger time Bristol - Knoxville was 4:10 with 5 or 6 stops. This gives some idea of the agonizing ROW. Once going into Knoxville fairly straight forward except for bridges and around the mountains in Chatanooga all the way to Memphis. The Knoxville - Nashville - Memphis route could be considered but Knoxville - Nashville never has had a good route (old Tennessee Central (TC)] because of mountains (Cumberland river in that area looks like a snake) and would probably take many tunnels and bridges to make a high speed route, Cross the Mississippi and the old CRI&P ROW into Dallas.
Expensive? Very. Jobs, lots of construction jobs?. You bet. A great alternate route for a shutdown of midwest? Yes. Take trucks off highway ? Yes I-81; I-40 always loaded with trucks even now (Jan 2009). Ancillary benefits? Yes will give NS a better route and it can use parts of the route for outher routings. Also give a new route from Memphis to DFW for boh BNSF and UP.
May not be in the league of CREATE or NS's problems in Indiana, but I'm guessing CSX would sure like to have today the double track between Richmond and Jacksonville that ACL once had. From what I understand, both Amtrak and CSX's freights experienced major delays on that stretch, at least before traffic declined recently.
Railway Man Ed, I have never heard anyone mention double-stack dynamics and stick rail being a poor combination, moreso than covered hoppers or a bulk train. The issue more to the point is low joints and soft subgrade, and a well-maintained line doesn't have low joints and soft subgrade. There are many lines out there that have had a tremendous tonnage of double-stacks on some very old stick rail -- the TP comes to mind between 1997 and 2002 -- and there was no big issue about it. RWM
Ed, I have never heard anyone mention double-stack dynamics and stick rail being a poor combination, moreso than covered hoppers or a bulk train. The issue more to the point is low joints and soft subgrade, and a well-maintained line doesn't have low joints and soft subgrade. There are many lines out there that have had a tremendous tonnage of double-stacks on some very old stick rail -- the TP comes to mind between 1997 and 2002 -- and there was no big issue about it.
RWM
The issue with jointed rail with stack trains and jointed rail in curves was solved long ago (Early 90's poor lubrication on truck center plates and kingpins causing articulated cars to "stick"/ not articulate.)
The joints failed because the excessive L/V forces with the stuck trucks/ poor lubrication broke the joint bars first or rolled-over the rail second. The weakest failed first (usually the angle bars)...
The Joint Line is OK - They either need to upgrade the dispatchers or quit overloading them with huge territories. They have proven that they can run more trains than they do now. The Crews-Palmer Lake bottleneck in the middle is not going away anytime soon and the Colorado Springs/ El Paso County politicians that welched on the original 1975-78 doubletracking of the DRGW deal are long gone.
ED NS was running trackage rights train before FRA inspect. know the steel turn plus a unit grain was on line. The Trackage rights agreement go back to when CSX sold line to Rail America(CF&E). was a very important part of sell.
Allen
Don:Is the Newcastle between Cincy and Ft Wayne getting congested? Or is it the terminal situations in both locations? I can imagine Cincy would be a big problem. Quite a bit of the Ft Wayne traffic swings west to Chicago. Is that a problem or is it the Detroit and Bellevue traffic which slows down?
Don, do you know anything about NS trackage rights on the CF&E between Hobart and Ft Wayne? Right now NS is running the 25A on the line frequently but I cant seem to see or hear anything else. The word is trackage rights exists for up to 4 trains daily. It sure is good to see trains on the line during the day.
ed
I agree that the biggest need is greater throughput at terminals, and also at crew change locations.
The time gained by runnming 70 mph is often lost with painfully slow crew changes and/or yarding of trains, or in the queue to get into said places.
Other bottlenecks:
Chicago. Someone said no through traffic goes there. I beg to differ. At least half, and probably more, of the traffic dragging through Chicago is through traffic. CREATE will make a difference, if it ever gets off the ground.
The St. Louis gateway needs a flyover at Grand Avenue, where UP and BNSF spend eternities waiting on each other. Also better, faster river crossing(s). The same could be said for Memphis.
Tower 55 in Ft. Worth is a HUGE bottleneck. It's a grade level multi-track, multi-railroad junction that devours trains.
Same for the Colton, CA crossing of UP and BNSF.
The Joint Line (Denver-Pueblo0 badly needs upgrading. Very little of it is CTC; it's full of stiff grades and sharp curves.
Find ways around cities.
oltmannd There's not been that drastic a reduction in train volume on the Chicago Line. What's improved the Amtrak performance out there is that mgt got REALLY, REALLY serious about trying to get the Amtrak trains over the line starting in the early fall. The Capitol and LSL have done really well the past couple of months as a result. The Wolverines are still trouble. Not much slack and there is stil too much congestion west of Porter.
There's not been that drastic a reduction in train volume on the Chicago Line. What's improved the Amtrak performance out there is that mgt got REALLY, REALLY serious about trying to get the Amtrak trains over the line starting in the early fall. The Capitol and LSL have done really well the past couple of months as a result. The Wolverines are still trouble. Not much slack and there is stil too much congestion west of Porter.
I wasn't suggesting that the place was devoid of those nasty old freight trains, but even a few less trains, and perhaps some that are shorter, help make the Amtrak OTP goals somewhat more doable.
No doubt a third track over the entire segment would be nice, but I suspect that the prospect for such is pretty slim. One assumes that somewhere in the organization there is a wish list for a piece here, a crossover there, all of which could make justifiable improvements in the flow-not just for Amtrak OTP.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
The NS wish list would include things like (in roughly this order - some mentioned before - not including Heartland corridor, which is almost done):
1. CREATE
2, A way thru or around Cincinnati
3. A way thru or around Atlanta
4. Some more track between Atlanta and Chattanooga.
5. Some more track between Atlanta and Meridian
6. A decent way to get from River Jct (Front Royal) to the Southern mainline.
7. Amtrak to provide their own track from Porter west to CP518.
8. Some more track on the Newcastle District (Cincy to Ft. Wayne)
9. Some more track on the west end of the old Wabash
Here are a few that are sorely needed.
1) BNSF Transcon--UP Sunset Route crossing near West Colton, CA. This crossing is a perpetual bottleneck and sorely needs to be grade separated.
2) Tower 55, Ft. Worth, TX. Another candidate for grade separation. Someone needs to grade-separate the east-west lines from the north-south lines.
3) Houston terminal district, Texas. Grade separate three or four lines that cross at grade, on the model of Chicago's CREATE, which would speed up traffic through that sometimes inpenetrable maze.
4) Chicago's CREATE. Expedite it!
5) NEC, Newark, NJ--New York Penn Station. Add at least one more track, preferably two.
Finally, a hokey idea...
6) Create a second Midwest regional passenger hub aound Columbus, OH. Network fingers could stretch to (in no particular order) Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Louisville, Dayton, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo. Location more centralized than Chicago's, more population centers close by.than Chicago. Mostly flat, few hills, ideal for high speed network.
My two bits...
Without question it has to be these two corridors where capacity expansion is needed in the form of Public/Private Partnerships:
(1) UP's (ex-CNW) "Overland Route" mainline between Proviso and Denison (Denison to Mo Valley could use CN's mainline as a paired track arrangement) and from Fremont to Gibbon PROVIDED that UP abandons its anti-Amtrak stance and agrees to host Amtrak between Chicaago and Omaha where it freaking BELONGS.
(2) The BNSF/UP "Joint Line" mainline between Denver and Pueblo. This one is a no-brainer for a variety of reasons.
I would suggest this as an interesting possibility for KCS in their push for capacity to get to Mexico. Starting in the Ft Worth Texas area..
Aquire rights over, or purchase, the FWWRR (Ft Worth and Western RR).
Then acquire rights over or purchase the South Orient Railroad CompaNY,Ltd.
That gets one to Ft Stockton Tx.on the KSC to Laredo,Tx, and into Mexico on KCS home rails.
Or the harder route is the recreation of the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railroad.
Hey, if sports fans get to quibble about statistics, why can't we ? I'm sure this business has just as many - probably more !
Anyway, thanks for that, and also to RWM for providing his insight. You guys have a great (pre-holiday) weekend.
- Paul North.
Paul_D_North_Jr "The combination of reverse signalling on both tracks and the speed and acceleration of the DD1's permitted the Pennsylvania to handle as many as 144 train movements an hour on the double-track line under the Hudson to Manhattan Transfer." [emphasis added - PDN] From "WHEN THE STEAM RAILROADS ELECTRIFIED" by William D. Middleton, Kalmbach Publishing Co., copyright 1974, 2nd printing 1976, pg. 130, col. 1 (top left, 1st para.). Note that this was for 850 to 1,000 ton trains, with 3rd rail power. I haven't seen anything else for the GG1's or catenary power. I also looked in Middleton's more recent Landmarks of the Iron Road - but nothing on this point there. I still wouldn't trust it, though, on a sustained basis, for safe operation with modern trains on the 1.93 % tunnel grades. It's kind of like how many people can you cram into a Volkswagen "beetle" - sure, you can do it, but is it practical ? I wonder if anyone else on the forum with practical experience will comment on this aspect, too ?
"The combination of reverse signalling on both tracks and the speed and acceleration of the DD1's permitted the Pennsylvania to handle as many as 144 train movements an hour on the double-track line under the Hudson to Manhattan Transfer." [emphasis added - PDN]
From "WHEN THE STEAM RAILROADS ELECTRIFIED" by William D. Middleton, Kalmbach Publishing Co., copyright 1974, 2nd printing 1976, pg. 130, col. 1 (top left, 1st para.).
Note that this was for 850 to 1,000 ton trains, with 3rd rail power. I haven't seen anything else for the GG1's or catenary power. I also looked in Middleton's more recent Landmarks of the Iron Road - but nothing on this point there.
I still wouldn't trust it, though, on a sustained basis, for safe operation with modern trains on the 1.93 % tunnel grades. It's kind of like how many people can you cram into a Volkswagen "beetle" - sure, you can do it, but is it practical ? I wonder if anyone else on the forum with practical experience will comment on this aspect, too ?
Railway Man The "up to" caveat is the giveaway. It's like me saying, "I can drink up a 1/2 bottle of Patron Silver tequila and 12 bottles of Negro Modelo in 90 minutes." (I really did do that ... once.) But someday you actually have to also maintain the railroad, and every so often something breaks down mechanically, and there goes your 144-trains-per-hour record. It's the absolute upper end of the theoretical limit not the practical limit. That's assuming the number is even believable and I am having trouble wrapping my head around it. (And that Patron Silver "incident" is not the cause, either!) I think I will drop Bill an e-mail and ask him about it. RWM
The "up to" caveat is the giveaway. It's like me saying, "I can drink up a 1/2 bottle of Patron Silver tequila and 12 bottles of Negro Modelo in 90 minutes." (I really did do that ... once.) But someday you actually have to also maintain the railroad, and every so often something breaks down mechanically, and there goes your 144-trains-per-hour record. It's the absolute upper end of the theoretical limit not the practical limit. That's assuming the number is even believable and I am having trouble wrapping my head around it. (And that Patron Silver "incident" is not the cause, either!) I think I will drop Bill an e-mail and ask him about it.
Aww, I read the previous posts, went to my pile of books, rummaged around for some information-only to find out you two already beat me to it! Well, not to let a dead horse go unflogged...I paged through "Penn Station, It's Tunnels and Side Rodders", the first part of which is a reprint of PRR's commemorative book describing the construction of the Pennsy's New York Extension. Surely the 72 trains/direction/hour figure would be in there? Nope, haven't found it. But, a curious number did bob up. The maximum daily capacity of the station, based on hourly capacity, is listed as 1,160 trains/day. Divide that out and you either get a station only open 8 hours per day or a capacity of 48 1/3 trains (total both ways)/hour. Maybe the 144 was, indeed, someone's "slide rule" calculation, not the Operating Department's. Ah, quibbling about minutae-that's what this hobby is all about!
As long as the book is open, to confirm your memory: Platform lengths- 4 @ 900, 4 @ 1,050 and 2 @ 1,000.
Oh, and RWM...any more details on that Patron Silver story?
Paul_D_North_JrI still wouldn't trust it, though, on a sustained basis, for safe operation with modern trains on the 1.93 % tunnel grades. It's kind of like how many people can you cram into a Volkswagen "beetle" - sure, you can do it, but is it practical ? I wonder if anyone else on the forum with practical experience will comment on this aspect, too ? - Paul North.
t.winx jeaton Carl has hit on some good needs. While my trip on Amtrak between Chicago and DC last week was on the advertised, that was due in a large part to the obvious reduction of traffic on the west end of NS's Chicago line. My two trips earlier in the year had us snaking around trains coming and going in that area and I have seen it identified as one of the most congested pieces of mainline in the country. I think a lot of people blow a 10% drop in traffic out of proportion. This doesn't even necessarily mean fewer trains! And this segment might not even be affected that much. Does anyone know for sure? Some people say that they see 1/3 less trains on their local lines, but traffic is only down around 10%.... If this NS segment runs 100 trains per day, that would only mean 90 trains now, theoretically. Thats not that obvious. I don't even think they've lost that many trains through here. I doubt coal traffic has ever been higher. I'm just saying that even though it may have seemed like you saw fewer trains, it doesnt necessarily mean traffic is down that much. Couldn't there be other factors at play?
jeaton Carl has hit on some good needs. While my trip on Amtrak between Chicago and DC last week was on the advertised, that was due in a large part to the obvious reduction of traffic on the west end of NS's Chicago line. My two trips earlier in the year had us snaking around trains coming and going in that area and I have seen it identified as one of the most congested pieces of mainline in the country.
Carl has hit on some good needs. While my trip on Amtrak between Chicago and DC last week was on the advertised, that was due in a large part to the obvious reduction of traffic on the west end of NS's Chicago line. My two trips earlier in the year had us snaking around trains coming and going in that area and I have seen it identified as one of the most congested pieces of mainline in the country.
I think a lot of people blow a 10% drop in traffic out of proportion. This doesn't even necessarily mean fewer trains! And this segment might not even be affected that much. Does anyone know for sure? Some people say that they see 1/3 less trains on their local lines, but traffic is only down around 10%.... If this NS segment runs 100 trains per day, that would only mean 90 trains now, theoretically. Thats not that obvious. I don't even think they've lost that many trains through here. I doubt coal traffic has ever been higher. I'm just saying that even though it may have seemed like you saw fewer trains, it doesnt necessarily mean traffic is down that much. Couldn't there be other factors at play?
While my quoted post was based on anecdotal observations, I did a further check of Amtrak On-Time Performance reports. Amtrak trains operating over the NS Chicago Line West End reported significantly improvements in November, 2008 as compared to the last 12 months. My other ride was on the California Zephyr and November, 2008 OTP was 66.7% compared to 26.9 for the last 12 months. Heavy summertime MOW work may have contributed to the 12 month OTP record, but I still am of the opinion that reduced traffic levels are a factor.
The 10% decline in car loadings (a little less for intermodal) is the nationwide record, but the record for any line segment is going to be dependent on the traffic mix. It should be no surprise that the automobile and related transportation equipment loads are down by 20%. Where that business and other commodity groups make up a larger than average proportion of the traffic mix on a given line, train starts or at least train lengths are probably going to be down by more than 10%.
I suspect that there may also be situations on a line with heavy traffic or a very busy yard where the difference of just a few trains more or less will make the difference between a fluid operation and a condition where things get very bogged down.
Kevin C. Smith Call me a curmudgeon but, IIRC, didn't the Pennsy build the tunnels with a capacity of 72 trains per hour? As Trains "Professional Iconoclast" once said in reply to doubts about that number, "They may have had them stacked up halfway to Montauk, but I saw it".
Hey Kevin, I have to concede that you were right on this:
The Kneiling quote - didn't he also say something like "They were lined up like streetcars at Times Square ?"
Good discussion - thanks for bringing this up and challenging me on it. Plus, not many others appreciate the wisdom of JGK !
Interestingly, there is a little capacity issue here in Northern Indiana that has been addressed.
This summer the Chicago Ft Wayne and Eastern experienced a FRA inspection in which nearly 30 slow orders (10mph) were placed. The track speed was normally 40mph. CF&E is owned by Rail America. The line was rehabbed this summer/late fall and track speed is now up to 40mph again.
Rumors were flying that part of the quid pro quo was that NS would be granted trackage rights between Ft Wayne and County (Hobart, In). This line is the former PRR mainline to Chicago which parallels the NS's former NKP line.
Earlier this month (Dec 1 actually) NS began running a train a day on the line. I have seen and photographed the NS25A several times on the old Pennsy. Further rumor has it that NS will have rights to run 4 trains daily over this line.
At this point the NKP line doesnt seem too congested, but this should be a great resource for them when the economy returns. This is a great safety valve as it allows them to move trains from the ex NYC Elkhart line (Porter line mentioned earlier) to the NKP/PRR routing thru Ft Wayne. It has been mentioned the capacity issues for the Porter line. NS added the CP trains (10 daily) thru Butler, a couple of years ago.
I would think that capacity in the form of secondaries and even branch lines will be explored. Perhaps in a few years a line such as the TPW will see increased traffic, or even the ex B&O St. Louis - Cincinnati line.
Meanwhile, I enjoy watching those double stacks roll thru town on the Pennsy, although it does concern me seeing those top containers sway a little due to the stick rail.
RWM and others...is there any concern for running stack trains on stick rail? Are there any dynamic forces involved with double stacks which would be a concern for a secondary main such as this?
The running of the 25A train makes great sense as it is swimming against the current of Chicago bound morning trains (233,235, 230, plus local L41 and the steel turn 323 are all running westward).
rrnut282 Maybe I'm wrong but, I thought the biggest challenge dispatchers face in getting a train "over the road" is finding an out of the way place for it to wait until its turn in the yard/terminal without plugging up the line?
Maybe I'm wrong but, I thought the biggest challenge dispatchers face in getting a train "over the road" is finding an out of the way place for it to wait until its turn in the yard/terminal without plugging up the line?
That is not a problem. We simply stacked them up on the main line until the yard took them. Until they took them, they couldn't run any more trains, could they! We referred to it as "jamming them down their throat."
If you go about parking trains in sidings to make the yard fluid, then the main line isn't fluid either. And if you are going to go about parking trains, it's best not to park them on sidings, because then you run out of crews and power very quickly, which means the yards are right back where they started -- plugged because now there is no way to depart trains.
Main line capacity enhancement is all well and good; however, when you really look at the infrastructure of today's railroads, the true limiting factor is terminal capacity. Trains arriving at a destination must be handled....either broken up and delivered to industry, or delivered in interchange to one or more connecting roads. During the 80's and 90's, the carriers in addition to performing 'plant rationalization' on their main lines; also performed it on their terminals to 'right size' them to the traffic level they were handling at that time...since then traffic has boomed (prior to the current collapse) and getting all those trains over the road more efficiently, just highlighted the terminal inefficiencies. No capacity enhancement project can overlook the capacities of the terminals to which the anticipated traffic is destined.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I think Kneiling's observation of Balkanization is no longer operative. In his day there wasn't a tremendous flow of goods and commodities over long distances. There were no massive flows of 40' boxes and PRB coal spanning 1/2 the continent, much less 1/2 the distance around the globe. In Kneiling's day the average move of lumber by rail was 300 miles. Now moves of 3,000 miles are commonplace.
There are some projects such as you mention where fixing a single interlocking has a very high cost-benefit ratio. But we've done most of those that are low-cost or simple. I know of quite a few single interlockings where a fix would have very high benefits, but the cost in these cases is in the $250 million range.
I like your analogy of hub and spoke, though perhaps a better way to look at it is many hubs with interlaced spokes, and the hubs are not where the trains cross but where the traffic begins. Think of the U.S. as Los Angeles, Houston-Beaumont-Baton Rouge, the PRB, North Jersey, and Chicago, and a lot of spokes interlacing them, secondary hubs such as Seattle-Tacoma, Atlanta, Norfolk, and Detroit, and crossroads such as Kansas City and Memphis. The last mile is always the ugly mile.
The case in point in my $1.5 billion example is a spoke leading out of a hub that due to geography there is no choice, except maybe tunnelling for 40 miles at $200,000/foot.
This reminds me very much of one of John Kneiling's columns, which I'm pretty sure was entitled "Balkanization" - that the U.S. economy was really 10 to 15 separate regions, which are pretty much defined by the same criteria above.
Interestingly, John also advised that often improving service (most often with him = cutting hours or even minutes from the in-transit running time for one of his "integral trains") with the best benefit / cost ratio was little projects. For example, upgrading an interlocking - not the big expensive ones like adding another track for many miles, which would be out in the countryside as you note above. Now, cutting minutes from 1 train's cycle time isn't quite the same as improving capacity by enabling more trains to get past a certain point or over the line segment in a given time period - but they are related, in that better speed / cycle time/ celerity benefits all trains ("a rising tide raises all the boats" kind of thing).
However, when I think about this in "hub-and-spoke" terms, what you're advocating is fixing the hub or terminal areas, not the spoke or line-haul areas (generally). That seems counter-intuitive at first - isn't the capacity constraint affecting getting over the line out in the country ? However, on further reflection, I realize that no, it isn't - we've seen time and again that the trains do just fine out in the country - where they get delayed is the 1st mile/ last mile kind of thing at the terminals - the run's not done until the train ties up in the yard. So this makes sense.
In an earlier post you mentioned evaluating a possible $1.5 to 2.0 billion for a 3rd track in an urban area, and I was wondering "Why put it there when it'll cost so much ?" Now I can begin to see the rationale at work. Thanks for the insights.
Suggestion: Don't look out in the countryside for projects, look in:
That brings your focus into the South, the three coasts, and Chicago and the Great Lakes population belt, doesn't it? Everywhere else either has declining or static population and economic development, or is highly concentrated urban areas (see #1 above).
There is very little desire or need for alternatives to Chicago. Traffic goes to Chicago now because it needs to go to Chicago. If it doesn't need to go to Chicago, it already doesn't go to Chicago. It's not a case of everyone pining for an alternative "if we only just had one, but gosh, we don't, so we'll suck it up and send the trains to Chicago."
Paul_D_North_Jr rrnut282 [clip] 1. Triple-track the ex CNW from Proviso to Rochelle. UP needs a bigger parking lot 2. Triple-track the EJ&E through the western suburbs and let any and everyone use it for run-through trains. Both of these are funny, and good. I'd also thought of the 1st one for several different places - kind of a "cure-all" - make a place to park the lower priority trains so they don't get in the way of the more important ones, keep them from clogging things up further, and provide a basis to start to sort things out. A 5 of 10 track yard in a farm field about 3 to 5 miles out from any termial would be a good start. The 2nd one is not one I'd thought of, but very good - I agree with the sentiment, too. rrnut282 3. Finish the SF transcon two-track project. 4. Upgrade the I-5 corridor on the Left Coast. Not sure which line would be the best bang for the buck, but something needs to be done in that area. [clip] 3. is almost done - see above. 4. is also not one I'd thought of, but another very good one, and the comment, too. - Paul North.
rrnut282 [clip] 1. Triple-track the ex CNW from Proviso to Rochelle. UP needs a bigger parking lot 2. Triple-track the EJ&E through the western suburbs and let any and everyone use it for run-through trains.
2. Triple-track the EJ&E through the western suburbs and let any and everyone use it for run-through trains.
Both of these are funny, and good. I'd also thought of the 1st one for several different places - kind of a "cure-all" - make a place to park the lower priority trains so they don't get in the way of the more important ones, keep them from clogging things up further, and provide a basis to start to sort things out. A 5 of 10 track yard in a farm field about 3 to 5 miles out from any termial would be a good start.
The 2nd one is not one I'd thought of, but very good - I agree with the sentiment, too.
rrnut282 3. Finish the SF transcon two-track project. 4. Upgrade the I-5 corridor on the Left Coast. Not sure which line would be the best bang for the buck, but something needs to be done in that area. [clip]
4. Upgrade the I-5 corridor on the Left Coast. Not sure which line would be the best bang for the buck, but something needs to be done in that area. [clip]
3. is almost done - see above.
4. is also not one I'd thought of, but another very good one, and the comment, too.
I was trying to put some thought into it and still get in something funny at the same time. I'm glad someone took it the way it was intended. BTW #5 was just a personal favorite line that I have worked on in the past. I don't see it going to two tracks for a long time.
I liked your analysis of the timing of trains in the tubes. I've got to get there and see that for myself someday.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.