New Catenary

Yesterday I noticed that Amtrak is starting to replace its catenary with the constant tension variety. This was between New Brunswick and Princeton Jct.

jb

Just four years late and we’ll finally get only half of what was originally promised. Another piece of delightful mismanagement, years late and under delivered even after the massive delay.

In course of this misadventure, one of the Deputy Chief Engineers on the project was fired for cause after he hired a person using project funds to help him write his boo, and such other hanky panky too. Never a dull moment....

They also seem to be doing some catenary work between Washington and BWI. Not full replacement, but there seem to be some new insulators, poles, and various fittings holding up the wire.

I don’t think it’s true constant tension... they created a sort of hybrid system on the fly because of challenges faced with utility overhang and transmission (connected to but unrelated to Amtrak, too difficult to move) This also means they will not reach the intended top speed of 160mph on the raceway, but the difference between 150 and 160 only means about 45 seconds on the schedule. The whole project is a case study on how NOT to do things. It reads like a Soprano’s episode.

Without constant tension they won’t reach 150 either.

Irrespective of what you think there is actually true constant tension between just west/south of Midway and about half way between Princeton Jct. and Hamilton. They will not be prevented by lack of constant from reaching 160 mph in that segment. PJC should be a great place to see them at full speed. The rest remains as before but with upgraded stabilized suspension. Their claim is that is good for 140mph. This has been published in a design document for the project as revised and I have a copy of it lying around somewhere in my stash. I got it from Someone who was then at Amtrak.

Ironically part of the CT project failed to materialize because they failed in simple tasks like predictably drilling vertical holes in the ground for building foundations for new posts apparently!

The project is almost finished. The constant tension stops at MP 48.7, just past PJC and 2 track is the last stretch..

Thirdrail do you have any insights that you can share on what happened to this project. On the ground it has the looks of a project that just ran out of money and steam leaving all sorts of detritus lying around. Way worse than another project that ran out of money - the electrification to Boston. Fortunately that was at least able to get basic electrification done leaving lots of loose ends to tie up later.