# Empire Corridor Electrification



## TheEmpireBuilder (Apr 23, 2016)

I have heard of this in the past - not sure if that info was trustworthy, or if the idea is still being considered. I heard something about electrifying the Empire Corridor for faster service, do you guys know anything about this?


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Apr 23, 2016)

Nothing in the works. The State of NY is avoiding any train talk. Unable and unwilling to finish studies, answer questions, provider public speakers. Duck and cover mode.

The governor is getting ready to run for higher office.


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## neroden (Apr 23, 2016)

The Governor is a brain-damaged moron. Governor Andrew Cuomo liked to fool around with cars as a kid in the days of leaded gasoline, and he seems to have ended up with pretty severe brain damage.

He has no chance of winning higher office. None whatsoever. He's made a *lot* of enemies by being so unbelievably stupid. (If you want one of the gorier stories, ask any local elected official in upstate NY about "Medicaid transportation funding".) Because he's an idiot, he's probably going to try to run for higher office anyway.


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## Thirdrail7 (Apr 24, 2016)

neroden said:


> The Governor is a brain-damaged moron. Governor Andrew Cuomo liked to fool around with cars as a kid in the days of leaded gasoline, and he seems to have ended up with pretty severe brain damage.
> 
> He has no chance of winning higher office. None whatsoever. He's made a *lot* of enemies by being so unbelievably stupid. (If you want one of the gorier stories, ask any local elected official in upstate NY about "Medicaid transportation funding".) Because he's an idiot, he's probably going to try to run for higher office anyway.


Is it safe to say that you aren't a fan of the Governor? ^_^


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## west point (Apr 24, 2016)

Not likely. Very expensive look at New Haven - BOS. AS well MNRR has 4 and a few miles of 6 tracks which means a lot of track miles for ~ 145 route miles. Some one can figure it but probably at least 450 track miles.

There may be compatibility problems that MNRR signal system would need to be changed to accept the 60HZ CAT.

The 13 round trips to ALB including beyond trips may be enough to justify the lower costs but -----------?


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## Hytec (Apr 24, 2016)

There is also a technical reason why electrification north of Croton-Harmon probably would never be done. Currently MNR electrification is 600VDC under-shot third-rail. whereas NEC is 25,000VAC 25HZ catenary. If NYS decided to fund electrification to ALB or BUF, first they must decide on which technology. Third-rail is less expensive, but also less safe being at ground level. Catenary is safer, but more expensive. Regardless of which technology is chosen, GE has delivered locomotives that run third-rail/diesel, catenary/diesel, and third-rail/catenary, so power would not be a problem.

The Pennsylvania, New Haven, and Milwaukee roads all proved that electrification was practical, more efficient, and less costly to operate. However, the depression, then WW-II, finally airplanes and automobiles killed any further expansion of electrification on a national scale. On the other hand, European countries did not embrace the automobile, instead electrified their railroads at national levels. Thus are reaping the benefits of less reliance on foreign oil.


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## west point (Apr 24, 2016)

Have heard that there are technical reasons for third rail not useable at higher speeds and limits HP per unit due to arcing when going thru 3rd rail gaps.


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## jis (Apr 24, 2016)

Nobody will ever do another long distance third rail electrification unless they are out of their collective minds. If the Empire Corridor is ever electrified it will be using a 25kV system.

BTW NEC electrification around New York is not 25kV it is 12kV or thereabouts.


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## west point (Apr 24, 2016)

JIS is correct. 3rd rail requires substations every 2 - 5 miles depending on loads. 25 KV CAT can have substations every 15 - 25 miles using auto transformer CAT supplies in between. As well it is easy to temporary replace any broken down substation by feeding power from the next substation.


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## afigg (Apr 24, 2016)

neroden said:


> He has no chance of winning higher office. None whatsoever. He's made a *lot* of enemies by being so unbelievably stupid. (If you want one of the gorier stories, ask any local elected official in upstate NY about "Medicaid transportation funding".) Because he's an idiot, he's probably going to try to run for higher office anyway.


If Hillary Clinton wins the election this November, that will block Cuomo from running for President until 2024. By then, he will _really _have worn out his welcome with many Democrats. So, unless Clinton appoints to a high cabinet post (He has already been Secretary of HUD) and that is unlikely for multiple reasons, he is probably going to run for re-election as Governor in 2018. Well, unless he gets indicted before then.

Since Cuomo has shown little public interest in putting a serious effort into advancing the plans for the western Empire corridor, once the current round of federally upgrades are completed, NY DOT is likely to only pursue a series of small cheaper projects for the western Empire corridor and Adirondack route north of Schenectady until the Cuomo era is ended. NY and NJ both need new Governors who will tackle head-on their states' respective funding shortfalls for public transportation, although NJ is in a far worse situation with a Governor who doesn't appear to care at all, but at least Christie is term limited in 2017.

That said, does anyone know if NYS DOT is planning to submit any 2016 TIGER grant applications for the Empire or Adirondack corridors or station projects?


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## Hytec (Apr 24, 2016)

jis said:


> Nobody will ever do another long distance third rail electrification unless they are out of their collective minds. If the Empire Corridor is ever electrified it will be using a 25kV system.
> 
> BTW NEC electrification around New York is not 25kV it is 12kV or thereabouts.


Actually, we both are correct......sorta 

BOS-Mill River: 25 KV @ 60 HZ

Mill River-Sunnyside: 12.5 KV @ 60 HZ

Sunnyside-WAS: 12 KV @ 25 HZ

Also, as said earlier, third rail is speed-limited, typically less than 60 MPH. Whereas the BOS end of NEC is rated for 150 MPH.


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## jis (Apr 24, 2016)

I doubt that MNRR will ever get to Boston though. We are talking about MNRR and Empire Corridor, aren't we? So why bring in Boston into the discussion?


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## Hytec (Apr 24, 2016)

I was merely citing electrified areas where Amtrak ran out of NYP, thus defining the complexity of any decision-making related to Empire electrification. Because Empire electrification must consider Amtrak's needs and operating environment, in addition to MNRR.


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## jis (Apr 24, 2016)

That was precisely my point. There is no 25kV electrification on Amtrak anywhere near New York. The only 25kV near New York is on NJTransit Hoboken Division and on the lower NJCL. However, that should not preclude Amtrak from electrifying the Empire Corridor using 25kV some day all the way from CP Empire to Niagara Falls.


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## ainamkartma (Apr 24, 2016)

west point said:


> Not likely. Very expensive look at New Haven - BOS. AS well MNRR has 4 and a few miles of 6 tracks which means a lot of track miles for ~ 145 route miles. Some one can figure it but probably at least 450 track miles.


If you take a look at the google maps, you can see that there are three tracks from Croton to Peekskill, and two tracks from there to Poughkeepsie except for a short section north of of Beacon. South of Croton, of course, the line is already electric.

Ainam "Maybe you were counting the actual tracks, two per train?" Kartma


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## jis (Apr 24, 2016)

It is all diesel territory for Amtrak. Amtrak P32ACDMs normally do not operate in e-mode anywhere on MNRR.


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## ainamkartma (Apr 24, 2016)

Hytec said:


> Also, as said earlier, third rail is speed-limited, typically less than 60 MPH. Whereas the BOS end of NEC is rated for 150 MPH.


Do MNRR trains run on diesel south of Croton, then? Because of course they go way way faster than 60 MPH between Croton and Spuyten Duyvil. When I was a kid and lived on the Hudson Line, we transferred at Croton from a diesel train to an all electric one, and it certainly went faster than 60 MPH on electric power south of Croton. Is the speed limit you mention a recent innovation?

Thanks,

Ainam "diesel train = Budd RDC, one big smoking section. The windows were literally opaque with tobacco slime and other crud" Kartma


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## jis (Apr 24, 2016)

BTW I did not say anything about 60mph. Third rail is generally considered to be good for upto 80 mph, and elsewhere have been used for upto 100 or 110mph. Their problem is being low voltage they have to deliver huge amounts of current and require very frequent feeds to overcome resistive voltage drops due to the huge current.


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## neroden (Apr 24, 2016)

Thirdrail7 said:


> neroden said:
> 
> 
> > The Governor is a brain-damaged moron. Governor Andrew Cuomo liked to fool around with cars as a kid in the days of leaded gasoline, and he seems to have ended up with pretty severe brain damage.
> ...


Yeah. Not since the Medicaid transportation funding business.

Brief summary:

-- In NY, due to stupid political deals made 50 years ago, the counties pay for a large portion of Medicaid out of the county budget (property tax / sales tax funded). They also have to administer Medicaid. (No other state does this.)

-- This is something like 25%-50% of the average county budget, and very little of it is under the control of the county legislators, who resent this situation to start with.

-- Medicaid has a transportation budget, which is to make sure that Medicaid patients can get to their medical appointments.

-- For decades, the upstate counties have used a portion of the Medicaid transportation budget to fund their local bus services. Medicaid patients ride free to appointments, everyone else can buy a ticket and come along. This has covered the majority of Medicaid transportation needs, with only a few patients so remote or disabled as to need special door-to-door service.

-- Cuomo, as a unilateral executive action, decreed that all counties must now use the Medicaid transportation budget strictly for taxis, and strictly through a dispatcher which he chose at the state level.

-- Many of these counties do not even HAVE taxi services, and for those that do, the taxi services often do not participate with Cuomo's dispatcher.

-- The Medicaid patients are now waiting for hours for unreliable taxi services driving in from two counties away, and are *missing their appointments*.

-- The taxi drivers don't want to do it and are not showing up on time (or at all).

-- The cost of the taxis is far, far more than the cost of the bus services, blowing a huge hole in the county budgets and forcing them to *raise property taxes* (and remember, these are poor rural counties)

-- The Medicaid transportation funding was providing the majority of funding for the bus systems in most of these counties, and with it removed, *the bus services have to be cancelled entirely.* (There's only so much property tax raising the counties can do.) So people without cars can't get to work.

Lose-lose-lose. This sort of gross stupidity benefits nobody. It's alienated every member of every county legislature upstate, Republican, Democratic, or Independent, while raising property taxes and eliminating bus service and making transportation for Medicaid patients much worse. For the benefit of nobody, except possibly Cuomo's dispatching company.

Cuomo has been petitioned by the county governments repeatedly but he's refused to rescind his diktat.

I can therefore objectively say that it is a *fact* that Cuomo is an idiot. It's not just an opinion, it's a fact. Only an idiot would do *this*.

The complete destruction of the upstate rural bus systems seems to be complete now. The result is that the only surviving bus systems are in the more urban areas where they were not reliant on the Medicaid transportation funding. This is creating a desparate population of people trying to move out of the bus-free counties into the borders of the counties which still have buses. (For example, Ithaca still has buses, but they all terminate at the Tompkins County border. Tioga County now runs, IIRC, *one bus service total*, and that one bus takes people from Tioga County to Ithaca, since that's the most important flow of commuters. Cortland County still has more than one bus line, with one bus line connecting to Tompkins County.)

Of course there is the question "What does this mean for Amtrak?". In general I tend to think the destruction of public transportation services hurts Amtrak. But it is possible that the resulting depopulation of the rural counties, with people moving into the borders served by the Syracuse/Rochester/Buffalo bus systems, will actually mean more Amtrak riders.


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## Hytec (Apr 25, 2016)

One option might be to install 11 KV @ 25 HZ from NYP to BUF, while leaving the MNRR 600 VDC third rail in place between GCT and CRT. That way Amtrak would have continuity from WAS, etc. to BUF, and MNRR would be unaffected. I understand that it would be impractical to have trains between WAS, etc. and BUF reverse direction, i.e. change engines at NYP, though push-pull cab cars could solve that. Though as said before, with the various locomotive options available to Amtrak and MNRR, the expense of Empire electrification would be a meaningless expense.


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## jis (Apr 25, 2016)

Hytec said:


> One option might be to install 11 KV @ 25 HZ from NYP to BUF, while leaving the MNRR 600 VDC third rail in place between GCT and CRT. That way Amtrak would have continuity from WAS, etc. to BUF, and MNRR would be unaffected. I understand that it would be impractical to have trains between WAS, etc. and BUF reverse direction, i.e. change engines at NYP, though push-pull cab cars could solve that. Though as said before, with the various locomotive options available to Amtrak and MNRR, the expense of Empire electrification would be a meaningless expense.


Why on earth would you do something as absurd as that? 25kV 60Hz is what should be used if the Empire Corridor is electrified, which BTW is part of the proposal for HSR above 125mph if such is ever pursued. All current Amtrak electric motive power can operate freely on 11kV 25Hz or 25kV 60Hz. Installing new 11kV 25Hz would take a significant collective brain damage since it would be inordinately more expensive and will involve import of converters from 60Hz to 25Hz, since such things are not made in the US anymore, as Amtrak has just discovered when they tried to get such for the expansion of the Metuchen substation capacity to feed the NEC 25Hz electrification.


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## Hytec (Apr 25, 2016)

Good point. Switching between 25/60, 11.5/60, and 11/25 is current technology. Time for my mandatory afternoon nap anyway.


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## west point (Apr 25, 2016)

Another thing with 25Kv 60Hz is double the voltage 4 times the power with same size CAT feeders. So to have proper back up and enable to have a substation out of service the 25Kv still needs substations about twice as far as the 12Kv. The 25Kv auto transformers will also have further distance.

BTW Amtrak is no longer 11KV 25Hz. PRR converted to 11.5Kv in the late 1940s. Then Amtrak boosted the voltage to 12Kv. Note all these voltages are nominal with a range of ~~~ +/- 10%. The increase of voltage enabled PRR and later Amtrak to increase the power on a CAT system's state of good repair since that has been going downhill. The increase was easily enabled by just increasing the high voltage power lines.

The regenerative braking systems on locos and EMUs will boost the voltage above nominal locally so other power draws take from that voltage first. If CAT voltage too high then loco defaults to dynamic braking. Actually the regeneration in ACS-64s go to the HEP first and if any left over to CAT or dynamic brakes. Would love to see that circuit diagram and its operation.


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## jis (Apr 25, 2016)

Indeed the blended regenerative/dynamic/mechanical braking logic is a piece of art, over and above just the circuitry that executes it.


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## Hytec (Apr 26, 2016)

jis said:


> Indeed the blended regenerative/dynamic/mechanical braking logic is a piece of art, over and above just the circuitry that executes it.


I assume this power conversion logic is now all solid state, and fully automatic. It's difficult to conceive of configuring a 6400 KW (5000 KW continuous) power system into the relatively small space of a locomotive, after my career spanning closet-size vacuum tubes to micron thick chip logic. It would be interesting to see how Siemens configured this system on the ACS-64. This has been an interesting thread, though slightly off the OP's initial topic.


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## neroden (Apr 28, 2016)

Yep, it's all solid state. Thyristors and IGBTs and so on. I don't know the detail.


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## Northeastern292 (Jun 15, 2016)

There's a thousand reasons why the Empire Corridor isn't going to be electrified anytime soon. For starters, catenary is a no-go because of some tunnels in Putnam and Dutchess County. Second, the cost. Also, the Governor comes from a NIMBY family-the father was behind lawsuits that was trying to block the construction of some high school athletic fields in Queens back in the 1960s.

The good news: Cuomo has pissed off quite a few statewide Democrats, including James Skoufis late 20-something in the state Assembly who has been fighting the state on annexation, Bill de Blasio (who has been fighting Cuomo since the day he became Hizzoner) Anthony Brindisi (who has been fighting to save the Adirondack Scenic Railroad, although some legislation on that would be nice). There's no doubt that Cuomo will have a challenger for 2018 (and potentially an urban Upstate Democrat) as his efforts to revitalize Upstate have been not going as well as many of us would like*. If Neil Abercrombie could go down in flames (coincidentally a native of Buffalo), Cuomo can too.



Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Nothing in the works. The State of NY is avoiding any train talk. Unable and unwilling to finish studies, answer questions, provider public speakers. Duck and cover mode.
> 
> The governor is getting ready to run for higher office.


The only higher office I could remotely see Cuomo running for is US Attorney General once (or if) Hillary gets in. That post is subject to Senate confirmation and no way in h-e double hockey sticks will the Senate, even with Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader and HRC as POUTS, let Cuomo pass.

But yes, one of the reasons that "upstate train talk" has been avoided that I've heard (outside of tourist train destruction) is if NYS were to issue a final EIS for the corridor, they would be obligated to spend money on the route. And right now Cuomo is obsessed with his pet projects (LIRR Main Line Third Track, the "new" LaGuardia Airport (terminal), the new Tappan Zee Bridge and whatever his micromanaging heart wants to do. The corridor upgrades will happen, but probably not until another gubernatorial administration.

*Yes, I know Fred Dicker is a flaming conservative and the ******* brother of Roger Stone's political ambitions, but as crazy as the man is, he has a point.


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## neroden (Jun 18, 2016)

I know personally that Cuomo has ticked off pretty much every single elected official upstate through the Medicaid transportation funding fiasco. He also ticked off nearly every elected Democrat in the state period by signing the pro-Republican gerrymander of the State Senate, followed by a bunch of other stunts which make it seem like he'd rather have Republicans in office than Democrats.

His support for the Republican gerrymander was a big F-U to the entire Democratic Party. As a result, any Democrat who runs against him in the primary and looks like they have a chance will get huge financial support from hardcore Democrats. I might even max out with $21,100 to help get rid of the turncoat.


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