WV Statehouse Votes on Daily Cardinal

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keelhauled said:
I'd like a pony and a million dollars, but I think that has a better chance of happening than the money for 110 mph trackage in OH and IN dropping out of the sky...what's the point in making up pie in the sky scenarios? If you have to resort to that to justify doing something then your case isn't very good to start with IMO.
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Who said anything about needing Billions for a 110 mph Cincy-Indy corridor?

I'm not gonna include either a 110-mph corridor Cincy-Indy or any saved time from the NEC in my running total, tho, because they are both a few years and some Billions in the future. Still, without counting them, we're up to potentially more than 2 hours faster run times.
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The bulk of my time savings comes from CHI-Indy, costing only some $250 million for the part within Indiana, but enuff to make viable a daily Hoosier State corridor train or two. For the Cardinal, upgrading that segment alone would save 29 min X 2 for almost an hour out of each round trip.

Otherwise, some time will be saved from projects with a near time horizon, like a new Potomac Long Bridge, as well as passing sidings and such on the Buckingham Branch, and other segments which will be upgraded for their own reasons, but will coincidentally result in minutes saved for the Cardinal.

That got me to 2 hours saved without big money falling from the sky.

But I don't scoff at the idea that ponies, unicorns, and Billions can fall from the sky. After all, I was alive when passenger rail got $8 Billion from the Stimulus. I hope to see more Billions from an Infrastructure Stimulus once more, or a steady $4 Billion or so such as Obama included in his budget every year.

And as I recall, several states and potential projects simply were not ready to use the Stimulus money, and accordingly they didn't get the funds. I hope everybody is ready the next time big money does seem to fall from the sky. :)
 
If you truncated the daily Card at Wash and swapped to Superliner equip this could use the 3 sets currently used on the CL. The CL could then run single level cars and extend to NYP and use 3 sets could it not? This would not only be better utilisation of stock but also cities between NYP and WAS still have a direct train to CHI with faster service then currently.

Also a single level East Bound CL could split at PGH and drop a sleeper to be added to 42 giving more direct service to CHI from more stations

Edited : replaced view liner for superliner
 
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jis said:
Unless it is cut back to a Washington DC turn, Amtrak has been on record at times, claiming that it will require 4 consists to operate a reliable daily service, given the relatively short turning time in New York. Three consists will just get us 5 days. Just something to keep in mind. Also, it will be remarkably wasteful deployment of equipment since a consist will sit idle in New York more than 24 hours regularly. Maybe it could be used to operate something else (a six hours out and six hours back service to somewhere else, with enhanced service, to put it to good use on the day it sits idle in New York.

The NARP folks working on the daily Cardinal project do not want to do that cutback at the present time. They seem to be quite unconcerned with the wasteful equipment deployment.So

bottom line is there are a few kinks to work out yet, and I don't think people have taken full account of the equipment cost or availability.

But I do support finding a good compromise to operate the train daily and efficiently.
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Actually, there is something else that could be done: Interchange sets with another train a la the CONO/Eagle (or Palmetto/Pennsylvanian). The Cardinal-Star turn would be roughly 2200-1100 (so roughly 13 hours) and the Star-Cardinal turn would be 1850-0645 (so roughly 12 hours). That's an improvement of the Cardinal turning as itself (2200-0645 gives nine hours). If the Star isn't an acceptable "turn partner", then the Crescent would be your next best bet (2200-1400/1400-0645, so 16 hours and 17 hours), followed arguably by the LSL (2200-1545/1830-0645, so 18 hours and 12 hours...though the occasional mention of changing the LSL's schedule EB also comes to mind) since the LSL also opens up the possibility of having a "Chicago pool" and a "Miami pool" of Viewliners.

I'm trying to think of a good "six hour run" from NYP. Buffalo is too far, Albany is too short. I basically see four decent options for this: One is Boston via the Inland Route (about five hours IIRC), since using the Shoreline would require getting extra slottage. Two is Richmond (6:05-6:35). Three is Charlottesville (6:30-ish). Four is Washington. Charlottesville has a parking problem (I don't know where you'd hold the train for a hypothetical 2-3 hours), which leaves the other three. Washington has the advantage of not needing any special permission to run; you might pitch the train as some sort of sub-Acela "enhanced service" option a la the old Merchants' Limited, and I'd think you could possibly match the old Metroliner timetables since IIRC the Viewliners, Amfleets, and new bags should all be able to do 125 MPH. At that point, for the moment I'd drop the train in at the peak-of-the-peak for morning SB/afternoon NB.

One thing for me to ponder (or fume over, as it were): If you ran a Metroliner timetable NYP-WAS (2:59-3:05) and then a Meteor timetable WAS-RVR (2:10), how far could you reliably cram down the WAS turnover? I ask because I wonder how a 5:30 timetable NYP-RVR would sell. I'm not sure how much further you could squeeze it prior to Richmond-Washington work getting completed (though once that is done you might well be able to pair that with a dual-mode locomotive and get your runtime down towards 5:00).
 
ScouseAndy said:
If you truncated the daily Card at Wash and swapped to Superliner equip this could use the 3 sets currently used on the CL. The CL could then run single level cars and extend to NYP and use 3 sets could it not? This would not only be better utilisation of stock but also cities between NYP and WAS still have a direct train to CHI with faster service then currently.

Also a single level East Bound CL could split at PGH and drop a sleeper to be added to 42 giving more direct service to CHI from more stations
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HECK YA!
 
I like the CL viewliner idea. Easy to get rid of the P42 on the south end of WAS, then attach an ACS-64 on the north end (vice-versa on 29). Sleepers can be attached to 42 to NYP as mentioned. This makes for overlap from PHL to NYP though.
 
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I don't think it makes any sense at all to extend the CL to New York. Just putting extra miles on the rolling stock, specially when a section of it is already going to New York from PGH.

How many passengers want to travel from Cumberland, Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg to New York anyway?
 
jis said:
I don't think it makes any sense at all to extend the CL to New York. Just putting extra miles on the rolling stock, specially when a section of it is already going to New York from PGH.

How many passengers want to travel from Cumberland, Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg to New York anyway?
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I agree. Makes much more sense to potentially split the Capitol Limited at Pittsburgh; The train does not have to switch to single-level equipment for this to happen (Transition car; It's been done before); The Superliners should remain.
 
A Voice said:
jis said:
I don't think it makes any sense at all to extend the CL to New York. Just putting extra miles on the rolling stock, specially when a section of it is already going to New York from PGH.

How many passengers want to travel from Cumberland, Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg to New York anyway?
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I agree. Makes much more sense to potentially split the Capitol Limited at Pittsburgh; The train does not have to switch to single-level equipment for this to happen (Transition car; It's been done before); The Superliners should remain.
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I also agree. The only added stations would be Baltimore and Wilmington which both have commuter rail access to either Washington or Philadelphia. It would also really disappoint me if the Washington section became single level; I find Superliners much more enjoyable to ride than single-level equipment. As you stated, there is no reason the Washington section couldn't remain Superliner if a New York section was added.
 
I'd prefer to see the Cap converted to single-level (and potentially run to NYP), but the reasoning there has more to do with the fact that I think it would be easier to switch the Cap to single-level and order more single-level sleepers than to order new bilevel sleepers. The other, bigger reason is that if you did so it would allow through-running of some cars from Chicago to Florida (either via the Star or Meteor depending on the schedules in place at a given time, etc.) which I suspect would be a net boon for ridership (and indeed I suspect there are some pax who would pay at least an extra $50-100 not to have to move their bags, or indeed themselves, at Washington). NB Amtrak looked at this in passing during the PIP cycle a few years ago.
 
I also agree that it should be viable to run the Cardinal with three trainsets, and if Amtrak thinks it isn't, then (1) improve the tracks, since there's *loads* of low-hanging fruit there, and (2) figure out how to turn the train faster, since this is done too slowly on ALL the trains, and (3) cut dwell times at intermediate stations (Indianapolis in particular is ridiculous)

A substantial time saving on the east end could be made by creating a connection at Charlottesville so that the Cardinal can go on NS as far as Charlottesville. This should be on the Very Cheap side; I can't remember how much time it cuts but it was at least ten minutes. Woody has already mentioned the huge time savings available west of Indianapolis with relatively little work.
 
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A connection to the NS at Charlottesville would take out some expensive real estate and require another platform on the NS outer track from the station. If the connection is made from the NS inner track you risk blocking both NS tracks and may still have to deal with the real estate because of the curvature. Google Maps provides a good picture from overhead.
 

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