Springfield Line PTC

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Question for Thirdrail - so PanAm, CSO and on the NEC P&W are equipping a subset of their equipment with ACSES perhaps in addition to I-ETMS?
If they intend to operate on the NEC, they will need ACSES.

I know that on NEC South there are significant segments where the tracks are being dual equipped with both ACSES and I-ETMS with information link in the back office, the I-ETMS isntallation being paid for by NS or CSX or both, as I understand it. Is there any of that in NEC North?
Not at present. Remember, there isn't a ton of "through" movement on the NEC between PHL-NYP. While there are a few feeder trains, most of them are just local freights. It would probably be cheaper and easier to have a confined fleet, equipped with ACSES for such moves.

Are all the Boston/New Haven pool Amtrak diesels dual equipped with ACSES and I-ETMS?
I'm going to make an educated guess here and say P42s will have both systems. There isn't a Boston/New Haven pool of diesel pool these days. You used to have a northeast pool of diesels that had the 9 aspect "intelligent" ADU that made them compatible on the NEC.  In addition, a small number of these diesels were modified to work with the electrics. These all had ACSES installed.

Once PTC installation began in earnest, I believe the intelligent ADU was added to all diesels, making the compatible with the cab signals on the NEC. They were all slotted to have I-ETMS installed. As for ACSES, the reason I'm saying they must have both is ACSES territory has expanded into the major interchange points, such as SPG,WTC,ALB and HAR. You would not be allowed in ACSES territory without ACSES unless the engine is exempt. Only a few P40s, P32-BWHs and a few of the switchers are exempt.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, the ALB based P32-DCM fleet has ACSES and I-ETMS.
 
A quick technical question: does I-ETMS deal with both the signal side of things (like cab signals where it exists) and civil speeds or does it only deal with civil speeds? (IE does it give you all the features that Amtrak has with cabs + ACSES or is there another piece to the freight side?)
 
I-ETMS works independent of the cab signal and can deal with a host of things including signals, speeds, terrain. It is LIGHT YEARS ahead of ACSES.
 
I wouldn't think so. It is another tool to give continuous information. That's like saying the actual signals are redundant.
 
There seems to be an ongoing issue with most trains getting an ACSES positive stop on track 2 between Spring and Sweeney in Springfield and having to do a stop bypass which has been affecting OTP. I wonder if this is something that can actually be fixed or if its going to be a permanent thing.
 
This is not uncommon (especially around terminals)  and it is something that can be fixed. However, there are various reasons for it. The specific reason will have to be identified and rectified.
 
I wouldn't think so. It is another tool to give continuous information. That's like saying the actual signals are redundant.
An I-ETMS expert once explained to me that I should think of I-ETMS as an overlay on whatever signal and track occupancy detection system is already in place (if any). Existing system takes precedence over and constrains what I-ETMS will do. So it will never supersede an existing signal indication absent human controller intervention, for example.
 
neroden said:
Apparently all of these systems are decades behind ERTMS/ETCS, whcih is not an overlay.  :growl:
Actually most ERTMS deployments on segments with an existing signaling and block occupancy detection systems in place, are overlays on existing signaling and block occupancy systems too. But I don’t see that as a major point worth arguing about. There are precious few operational level 3 deployment and none that interconnect so no one knows how hard it would be to make them interoperate.

Deployed ERTMS systems have proved so far to be very expensive and have their own serious interoperability problems, but that is the nature of the beast in complex systems. They need to be debugged and tuned after they are fielded in the real world. A neat tidy specification is not a deployed system. Europe is at least thirty years away from full deployment, but they are making good progress.
 
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ETCS Level 2 is fine of course.  CTCS, which as you know is practically the same thing as ETCS, has lots of interconnecting lines with that level of functionality.

The thing is that they were debugging these for years before the US PTC mandate, but nooo, the US freight operators insisted on reinventing the wheel.
 
Well American Exceptionalism has its consequences. We already know well that the railroads are not immune from it.

Something being practically the same is different from being the same though.

What Europe is deploying is specifically ERTMS 2 incarnation of ETCS. Also, they have pretty much decided to punt on general deployment of level 3. The good thing is they have the legal framework and a coherent plan in place and are diligently executing on it. That is very different from the PTC mess in the US. Indeed the true HSRs in the US are quite likely to go with ERTMS yet, though technically speaking they may end up not using GSM-R and hence won’t exactly be ERTMS, but may still be ETCS.
 
Word on the street is that there is a bulletin order coming soon that CTrail trains will be required to operate according to ACSES rules on the SPG line. In practice it shouldn’t be too much of an affect on them as they have an edict from the state to use PTC even though not required To by Amtrak.
 
I was on CTrail #4461 leaving Hartford at 5:05 pm on Thursday 1/30 and about 500 feet after leaving the station, the train stopped for 30 seconds and continued before getting another couple hundred feet and stopping, harder that time. The conductor was collecting tickets in my car so I overheard the engineer say something about cutting out the PTC electronically because some other way (it was difficult to hear) didn't work. The conductor said this happened the other night. After about another minute or so, we were off and speeding south. I got off in Meriden 3 minutes late.
 
I was on CTrail #4461 leaving Hartford at 5:05 pm on Thursday 1/30 and about 500 feet after leaving the station, the train stopped for 30 seconds and continued before getting another couple hundred feet and stopping, harder that time. The conductor was collecting tickets in my car so I overheard the engineer say something about cutting out the PTC electronically because some other way (it was difficult to hear) didn't work. The conductor said this happened the other night. After about another minute or so, we were off and speeding south. I got off in Meriden 3 minutes late.

From listening to the scanner at various times over the last year or so it seems the CTrail equipment does have issues with ACSES a little more frequently than Amtrak.
 
I wonder if CTrail has had any delayed/canceled departures due to ACSES difficulties yet. While they have been using ACSES for over a year, prior to the bulletin order on January 20th if the equipment had an ACSES issue at the initial terminal they would simply depart with ACSES cut-out if they couldn't correct the issue. But hopefully their "voluntary" usage prior to being subject to ACSES rules helped them get some of the bugs out.
 
I haven't seen any issues so far since that incident I mentioned earlier about 3 weeks ago, but then again I don't travel on it more than ~3x/week roundtrip.
 
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