What would happen if the NEC shut down?

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I can imagine that number being somewhat reasonable if you count lost productivity for time spent in traffic. Goods will be delayed as people turn to the roads and planes.

Even delays have an impact on certain groups. While bars and restaurants may thrive during delays, most other stores take a bath. Please allow a brief "fair use" quote from Penn Station delays leave shops struggling

Commuters are not the only ones feeling stranded at Penn Station — several businesses inside the transit hub said their bottom lines are suffering because customers skip shopping stops when their trains are delayed.

Penn Wine & Spirits sees a roughly 40 percent dip in business when commuters contend with train delays, as Long Island Rail Road passengers did Tuesday, according to the store’s sales consultant José Vilchis.

He said interruptions to rail service are significant enough to cut into the shop’s clientele about once or twice a week.

“People just stand out there for hours and hours,” Vilchis said. “A lot of people are more worried about where they want to head to instead of buying a bottle of wine.”

Nearby, Carlton Cards loses 20 to 30 percent of its business when trains run behind schedule, according to its manager, Vijay Sampat.

The sales slump grows most severe when the waiting area near the LIRR grows crowded and officials have to seal off the area, Sampat said.

“Nobody could come in,” he said. “We were dead here: no customers at all.”
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That is just delays. Imagine the trickle down effect if the corridor shut down completely. That's a huge loss of purchasing power from the impacted workers from Amtrak, NJT, MARC, VRE, SEPTA, Metro-North, CDOT, MBTA, NS, Conrail, CSX and the suppliers of equipment/parts to those railroads. As examples, what happens to the people that make the railroad ties and signals? The parts for the catenary? How would a loss of the NEC impact the various electrical suppliers that feed the NEC? How many jobs are created because of them?

This is more than the commuters. This is everything from the dispatchers, to the IT personnel that support their systems, to people that mop the floors in the now closed stations, to the FRA inspectors that patrol Amtrak facilities.
 
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Thirdrail7 said:
I can imagine that number being somewhat reasonable if you count lost productivity for time spent in traffic. Goods will be delayed as people turn to the roads and planes.

Even delays have an impact on certain groups. While bars and restaurants may thrive during delays, most other stores take a bath. Please allow a brief "fair use" quote from Penn Station delays leave shops struggling

Commuters are not the only ones feeling stranded at Penn Station — several businesses inside the transit hub said their bottom lines are suffering because customers skip shopping stops when their trains are delayed.

Penn Wine & Spirits sees a roughly 40 percent dip in business when commuters contend with train delays, as Long Island Rail Road passengers did Tuesday, according to the store’s sales consultant José Vilchis.

He said interruptions to rail service are significant enough to cut into the shop’s clientele about once or twice a week.

“People just stand out there for hours and hours,” Vilchis said. “A lot of people are more worried about where they want to head to instead of buying a bottle of wine.”

Nearby, Carlton Cards loses 20 to 30 percent of its business when trains run behind schedule, according to its manager, Vijay Sampat.

The sales slump grows most severe when the waiting area near the LIRR grows crowded and officials have to seal off the area, Sampat said.

“Nobody could come in,” he said. “We were dead here: no customers at all.”
Click to expand...

That is just delays. Imagine the trickle down effect if the corridor shut down completely. That's a huge loss of purchasing power from the impacted workers from Amtrak, NJT, MARC, VRE, SEPTA, Metro-North, CDOT, MBTA, NS, Conrail, CSX and the suppliers of equipment/parts to those railroads. As examples, what happens to the people that make the railroad ties and signals? The parts for the catenary? How would a loss of the NEC impact the various electrical suppliers that feed the NEC? How many jobs are created because of them?

This is more than the commuters. This is everything from the dispatchers, to the IT personnel that support their systems, to people that mop the floors in the now closed stations, to the FRA inspectors that patrol Amtrak facilities.
Click to expand...
I would think that if Amtrak shut down the NEC they would try to get as much work done while boycotting. I think with enough money and men, every bit of track on the whole NEC could be replaced in 24 hours. I think that Amtrak could perform some serious work, especially with high traffic areas that often can't be maintained because there is a train going through every three minutes.
 
I do not think there is enough equipment, trained man power, and overhead cable for the electrical to totally redo the NEC in a year.

The thought is what happens if Amtrak totally closed down, not for Day, week, but forever. How NJT and others would not be able to use anything belonging to Amtrak like track or stations.
 
thats why I said enough money and men, Amtrak don't have tons of money and men. Now if NS and CSX pooled their recources, then Amtrak might have a chance of getting some work done. Unfortunately, Amtrak probably can't get NS and CSX to do all that work for less than a few billion dollars
 
I didn't try to say it would be, but with lots of money, men, and machinery, you could get lots of work done. It might take fifteen million people and 140 billion dollars, but you could get it done in a day. Anything is possible.
 
"Anything is possible" is the attitude of a naive person who has no experience of real life. :) It is good to be a dreamer, but it is not good to be guided by one that is not moderated by realities.

There is also the issue that you cannot assign 9 mothers to create a baby in one month either. It takes nine months or thereabouts, no matter what. :p
 
Even money and manpower have to give way to physics. There are certain things (like installing concrete anchored catenary poles ) that would take time. You still would have to allow the concrete to set before you can attach the poles to the base. Then,. you have to install the poles and string the wires. That is a time consuming process.
 
Save for unusual circumstances the NEC is not shutting down so this post is dealing with an unlikely scenario. The only partial shutdown will be at NYP where switch repair.will occur in July and Aug. Albany trains will originate at GCT while the Crescent will depart at WAS. Have not heard about the Cardinal as yet. I believe that 3 NEC trains will be cut from the schedule. The repairs will impact LIRR and NJT the most as they account for over 90% of traffic at that station.
 
I said possible. Not likely. The chance that everything goes smoothly and works out just as planned IS as likely as someone inventing the transporter from Star Trek, or me becoming president.
 
norfolkwesternhenry said:
I said possible. Not likely. The chance that everything goes smoothly and works out just as planned IS as likely as someone inventing the transporter from Star Trek, or me becoming president.
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Don't under estimate the possibility of you becoming President! There's plenty of examples of this "Impossible Dream" coming True in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Terminally Dumb!
 
Thirdrail7 said:
Even money and manpower have to give way to physics. There are certain things (like installing concrete anchored catenary poles ) that would take time. You still would have to allow the concrete to set before you can attach the poles to the base. Then,. you have to install the poles and string the wires. That is a time consuming process.
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This does make me wonder, though. Even accounting for things like concrete doing its thing, there's still a hypothetical cadence you could meet.

Let's say it takes a week before you can attach the poles and it takes a day to make said a pair of footings for each pole. You could build one pair a day from January 1 to December 24, start installing the poles on January 8, and complete the December 24th cat pole on December 31. One crew could do 716 cat poles in a year under those hypothetical conditions.

Extremely rough calculations give me around 20,000 poles, which translates to 28 teams of really hard working dudes, who probably had to luck into some of the best weather ever and probably some of the toughest management since the days of the Pharaohs.
 
railiner said:
Speaking of "impossible"....there was this.... http://cprr.org/Museum/Southern_Pacific_Bulletin/Ten_Mile_Day.html

:)
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Yep. Ten miles. By a literal army of construction workers who had been at that task for five years with a management pushing them to maximum speed. With the roadbed graded in advance, supplies staged, and extra horses and workers available for all of the critical jobs. Ten miles.

I'm not taking anything away from the Central Pacific's workforce, believe me. They set a record which still stands 150 years later and, to my knowledge, is in no danger of being broken anytime soon. Still...how many miles are we talking about on the NEC?
 
Based on the latest track laying machines what would be the distance any could do in 24 hours ? The New Haven >< Springfield double tracking machine is an example.
 
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