Amtrak relocates to SPUD May 7 (includes old topic)

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jebr

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"The Last Great City of the East," St. Paul, MN
Officials with the Regional Rail Authority said construction of a short track spur from the depot platform to mainline tracks that Amtrak shares with three freight lines will require careful coordination with the freight companies and the Federal Railroad Administration, including complex updates to a signalization system. The details have taken longer to work out than they expected, and construction is still in the design stage."The heavy volume of freight just to the east of Union Depot -- five percent of the nation's volume -- combined with the intermixing of three large railroads, has led to the development of a complex signal system for the area," said Josh Collins, a spokesman for the Regional Rail Authority. "Once the design work is completed and approved, which we expect to happen by early spring, crews will be able to complete the connection between the completed Union Depot tracks and the freight tracks."

Magliari said his office never publically announced when Amtrak would begin to pick up passengers at the depot, and he called previous announcements from the county or other sources "speculation." He reiterated the company's commitment to move into the century-old transit hub off Kellogg Boulevard.

The existing Midway Station off Transfer Road, which is Amtrak's sole stop in the Twin Cities, "served us well," Magliari said, "but this is going to be a much better facility for our passengers, because there's going to be connectively to the light rail and inter-city bus."
Source
 
Still watching this project with great anticipation........ I think it's simply a case of the local interests underestimating how much effort it would take to coordinate the trackwork with three different railroads.
 
The Empire Builder's extended evening stop at Midway Station is fantastic one night a year -- the opening night fireworks of the MN State Fair.
 
I'm impressed that the renovation of the Union Depot train station has been going on for years, yet the design work necessary to connect Union Depot to the tracks hasn't been completed, much less any construction. This really shows how poor the county's project management skills are, since one of the key aspects of a train station, at least in my view, is have trains stop at it.

At least the bicycle repair shop is opening this spring at the trainless train station. Isn't it?
 
It sounds from the article like they're completely resignalling the junctions in the area, rather than just "patching in" the new tracks. This was *not* the original plan.

The area's overdue for a resignalling. It will probably also mean a change in dispatcher responsibilities -- the mainline tracks in this area currently have three dispatchers, with the handoffs being in inconvenient locations, which is just a bad situation. Every railroad involved has to sign a dispatching agreement.

If they're doing that, they're probably also prepping it so that minimal signal work will be necessary if the planned track changes (in the "East Metro Rail Capacity Study") are built -- since those would also require resignalling all the junctions in the area. In fact, if we're lucky, they may actually be *building* some of the East Metro Rail Capacity Study recommendations -- since these mainly benefit freight, the freight haulers may be willing to pay for them.

Given that I'm not surprised that this is taking longer than expected.
 
In the early days of the railroad. When two railroads cross the last one to build would be responsible for the safety of that crossing. Tower, signal, and personal to operator it. Of course the amount of trains crossing at that point would define the type of signal used. Smash boards and having all trains stop work on some lines, this location is a bit more busy.

I would think the designers/planners were outside of there knowledge base, about what is needed to connect the tracks together.

Same type of issues down in Miami.

.
 
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I would think the designers/planners were outside of there knowledge base, about what is needed to connect the tracks together..
Isn't the whole point of project management that you bring together people with all the necessary skills andf knowledge and help them coordinate what they're doing.
 
The freight railroads may have simply taken a pessimistic view to the political/finiancial viability of the project and waited to invest any of their money until the station was a done deal. Remember Wisconsin/Scott Walker rug pullers are right next door.
 
Well, we might not have any trains at SPUD, but this weekend there will be an attempt to create the world's largest Lite Brite.

This morning Mrs. Ispolkom noticed that the switches on the west side of the station (which connect tracks that are unconnected to anything) had been carefully swept clean after last night's snow. Why, I wonder...
 
In the early days of the railroad. When two railroads cross the last one to build would be responsible for the safety of that crossing
This is what created the problems at St. Paul Union Depot. There are several criss-crosses (UP crosses north of CP, then south again; CP crosses BNSF repeatedly) with dispatching responsibility being divided up just as it was a hundred years ago. Apparently the decision has been made to untangle it.
 
In the early days of the railroad. When two railroads cross the last one to build would be responsible for the safety of that crossing
This is what created the problems at St. Paul Union Depot. There are several criss-crosses (UP crosses north of CP, then south again; CP crosses BNSF repeatedly) with dispatching responsibility being divided up just as it was a hundred years ago. Apparently the decision has been made to untangle it.
Hey mon, and Ispolkom too - yeah the various ROW down in the swamp between Hoffman (a giant interlocking - not like the famous "Zoo" but fairly complex with at least a 5-track crossover in the main part and then the Division Street and -- yeah)

"Several criss-crosses" yup -

But how the new depot plan didn't recognize the possible problems? -- no yo se.

Hoping the various roads agree - they probably will - but there will need to be at least a few new signals and switches installed down there in the swamp.

Me, like for the last 30 years, I go down there between the big sewer and the 3-4 railroads, I'm just curious and I walk there from time to time.

The smell is not very bad any more and what the various roads dispatch is interesting to me, me an old trainspotter or such.

SO - the new SPUD is really cool but won't connect to any of the UP, CP, BNSF lines in the sewer pit between Hoffman and Robert Street and Mississipi Street.

Until the unspecified private negotiations between Amtrak and the 3 (or more) ROW owners down there in the swamp get done.
 
Officials with the Regional Rail Authority said construction of a short track spur from the depot platform to mainline tracks that Amtrak shares with three freight lines will require careful coordination with the freight companies and the Federal Railroad Administration, including complex updates to a signalization system. The details have taken longer to work out than they expected, and construction is still in the design stage.

"The heavy volume of freight just to the east of Union Depot -- five percent of the nation's volume -- combined with the intermixing of three large railroads, has led to the development of a complex signal system for the area," said Josh Collins, a spokesman for the Regional Rail Authority. "Once the design work is completed and approved, which we expect to happen by early spring, crews will be able to complete the connection between the completed Union Depot tracks and the freight tracks."

Magliari said his office never publically announced when Amtrak would begin to pick up passengers at the depot, and he called previous announcements from the county or other sources "speculation." He reiterated the company's commitment to move into the century-old transit hub off Kellogg Boulevard.

The existing Midway Station off Transfer Road, which is Amtrak's sole stop in the Twin Cities, "served us well," Magliari said, "but this is going to be a much better facility for our passengers, because there's going to be connectively to the light rail and inter-city bus."
Source
The " three freight lines" are the BNSF, UP , and CP.

And they have been using the shared tracks down by the river with not much problem for the last 40 years or more.

Maybe they all are hoping to get some subsidy for the two switches it will take to get Amtrak into the new SPUD
 
Amtrak link coming to Union Depot
Work to install and connect new tracks that will carry Amtrak trains to St. Paul’s Union Depot is about to get under way.

The Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority on Tuesday approved a construction agreement with BNSF Railway that will allow work to begin this spring or summer on new signals and tracks needed to bring the passenger rail cars into the recently renovated Lowertown transit hub at 214 E. Fourth St.

The new infrastructure is needed because tracks that were used to bring passenger trains to the Union Depot were taken out after the depot closed in 1971 and the surrounding land was converted to a parking and storage area.

County officials expect the new equipment to cost around $2.3 million. Funding will come from the $243 million Union Depot renovation budget, which includes money from Ramsey County, state bonding and the federal government.

Josh Collins, spokesman for the Ramsey County Regional Rail Authority, said the work is due to be finished in time for Amtrak to move from its Midway location and begin operating out of the Union Depot as early as October.
 
The University of Minnesota Press is about to publish a fascinating new book on the St. Paul Union Depot written by John W. Diers. He has spent years doing the research and writing for this book and it includes excerpts from interviews with people who used the Depot. The Ramsey County Historical Society helped arrange these interviews. John Diers is a member of the RCHS Editorial Board and along with Aaron Isaacs is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Twin Cities by Trolley: The Streetcar Era in Minneapolis and St. Paul (2007).
- Historical presentation and book signing by John Diers, author of St. Paul Union Depot, 3:00pm on Saturday, May 11, 2013 in the St. Paul Union Depot Waiting Room.
 
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I think of Frank Zappa and the vegetable song "Rutabaga rutabaga" (lots of rutabagas and sugar beets west of here in NODAK) The Moorhead Minnesota high school teams are the "spuds" (nearest - very near - AMTK stop is Fargo - the flood plain stop the high school mascot is a potato.) Yup us Minnesota peeps (some Irish potato famine flee'ers )-

Minnesota ain't Idaho - but yeah - we got SPUDS - let's hear it for SPUDS !

The work on the connection to SPUD has an auspicious start - looks like the long cold pre-spring here is over on the very day the work starts.

Me go walk the (wildlife refuge, swamp ,sewer, heart of the wye, many railroad properties, Superfund spots ) where the track work is happening.

Try and see how the work fits with the published planned rail projects from MSP east.
 
According to one of the conductors on the EB, the 807/808 will have to be disconnected/reconnected at the midway station due to the lack of space at the SPUD. So, they may have to stop at midway anyways. Anybody else heard of this?
 
Got no clue about that - there is a long tail track from the new SPUD that looks like it could hold several cars -- I'll visit the area soon.
 
I think by lack of space he means lack of a storage track. That would mean that the extra cars (807/808) will be disconnected at St. Paul and than hauled back to Midway for overnight storage. That's my best guess as to what the conductor was talking about.
 
There is actually an extra storage track at SPUD, from the photos distributed by Ramsey County. It's connected only on one end. Apparently it's there at the request of Amtrak.... and yet from the same source, Amtrak still plans to disconnect private cars and 807/808 at Midway. So I don't know what the extra track is there for.

There may still be something else preventing it from being used. There's not much headroom on the west side to do switching using the road engine without fouling the mainlines, and there's not going to be a switching engine there. I don't know how the switches are going to be set up when they finally finish rebuilding things.
 
If I may offer a hypothesis, if MN is on any level serious about an additional CHI-MSP train, you'd probably want the storage track for that, so they may be keeping the disconnect at Midway so they don't have to negotiate their way back into that track later.
 
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