Gateway Project/New York Penn Station capacity improvement

shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
jis said:
Sometimes they abandon them underground, but more often they disassemble them and retrieve them for use elsewhere.

For example in the boring of the East-West Green Line of the Kolkata Metro, they retrieved most boring machines and some were redeployed elsewhere in the project.

One was a particularly strange case. Between Esplanade and Sealdah at a place called Bowbazar, an area occupied by many over 100 years old ramshackle buildings, one of the boring machines struck a massive aquifer, which drained into the bored tunnel until they managed to seal it behind the boring machine. But enough water pored into the tunnels to cause subsidence above which brought down about a dozen buildings over a period of time. All the residents were rescued and housed in temporary housing while they started cleaning up the mess underground. Eventually they dug down a shaft from above and retrieved the entire boring machine, and deployed another one from the other end to dig to the shaft. It took two years to rescue the tunnel which was completed recently. Ironically, the original plan was to place the tunnel under a road on the surface, but the local residents for whatever reason rose up in arms and prevented that and forced it to be routed under a residential area, which of course finally all collapsed into the subsidence. People need to think hard about what they are doing before forcing technically unsound courses upon projects as such can come back to bite one in their own rear ends.

You can see the block that was wiped out by subsidence and is now occupied by the rescue shaft which is about to be filled in after the tunnel underneath is completed and the second boring machine coming in from the other end is disassembled and pulled out through the shaft. It is the empty block marked "Metro Work in Progress (Green Line)":

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bowbazar,+Kolkata,+West+Bengal,+India/@22.568256,88.3617903,173m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x3a0277abc30987bb:0xea24dd255f2b25b2!8m2!3d22.5668237!4d88.3614764!16s/m/02z9k9x?entry=ttu

Hopefully nothing like this will come to pass in digging the new tunnels in New York. Incidentally while digging the original tunnel;s there were a case of a blowout or two when the roof of the tunnel gave way, but each was sealed and the project rescued. The new tunnel ceilings are much deeper down from the river bed than the original tunnels. That is why the big curve was required to give more liner space to hold the gradients within limits.
Click to expand...
Fascinating - Kolkata looks so intriguing. Must get off my duff and go.
 
This tunnel boring machine ran into a ten-foot anchor last year: https://www.cbbt.com/news/project-connect-spring-2024/ It took 10 months to fix the machine, which will delay the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel project about eight months. The pictures are worth a look if you are interested in tunnel boring machines. "Anchor's away" as the Va. Pilot put it: https://www.pilotonline.com/2024/05...tunnel-after-old-ship-anchor-delayed-project/

Beachcombers with their metal detectors must have some feelings about this "find."
 
Last edited:
west point said:
Actually, since higher voltage conductors are going to be on some poles the work probably did not have any choices?? If your pay attention of the present track it appears that poles are much farther apart.
Click to expand...
I don't think the pole distances have anything to do with what sort of catenary will be installed. It has more to do with the need to place the poles on the pillars that support the bridge. This is done quite often in India too.
 
jis said:
An interesting article about how the arches of the bridge are being manufactured and how they will be brought to site on barges and installed

https://www.northjersey.com/story/n...-arches-barged-down-hudson-river/74999418007/
Click to expand...
This method is a repeat of the work when the 3 spans of the RR bridge was replaced over the Mississippi river at St. Louis. The engineering videos of the three spans being replaced at St louis were very informative. Hoping there will be a similar video for Portal North. Having to maneuver the new span past the Amtrak swing bridge may take careful work by a few tug boats. Tell the contractor -Please Please do not hit the swing bridge.
 
Just a quick question about capacity at Penn and this project—when they claim 48 trains per hour, does that mean 24 in each direction? Or 48 in each direction (ie 96 total)? I know the current tunnels claim 24 per hour in “bidirectional capacity” and I thought that meant 12 through each tunnel (12 inbound, 12 outbound per hour etc), but am I mistaken or what exactly is the true capacity right now and what will it be once these new tubes are complete?

I ask because I noticed that between 5:00pm and 5:59pm during the week, there are 19 scheduled trains (16 NJT, 3 Amtrak) that use the tunnels. That’s not even including the Amtrak trains using the empire connection which there is atleast 1 during that window. That’s seems to be comfortably over the 12 train max (if that is the max) but also notably below the 24 train max (if that is the max) during the busiest time of day.
 
They mean 48 in peak direction, with 2 tubes each way. That is a stretch, unless they rebuild the signal system. A slot is basically 3 minutes, so 20 TPH.

BUT, there is no place to put those trains other than Penn Station South, and head back to Jersey, like to a new Boonton Yard, equivalent to Midday Storage Yard the LIRR has in LIC, north of Sunnyside Yard for Grand Central Madison trains.

Thru running fans want to retain the 1910 NYPS footprint for all eternity, rip out some station tracks, widen the platforms, to throw them over the wall to the LIRR to deal with, don't bother them with the sordid details. When pigs fly. LIRR main line east of Harold is 3+1 peak direction and that interlocking is the most congested in the contient as it is. They don't understand that.
 
It is 24tph through each Hudson tube. But simultaneous operation of both tunnels at full capacity far overloads A interlocking at the NYP end. So effectively it is close to 24tph in the rush direction and maybe 6-8 in the opposite direction in reality.

The East River tunnels are more fluid and again theoretically 24 in each but in reality it is something less. I am not sure what the latest actual numbers are.
 
jis said:
It is 24tph through each Hudson tube. But simultaneous operation of both tunnels at full capacity far overloads A interlocking at the NYP end. So effectively it is close to 24tph in the rush direction and maybe 6-8 in the opposite direction in reality.

The East River tunnels are more fluid and again theoretically 24 in each but in reality it is something less. I am not sure what the latest actual numbers are.
Click to expand...
Got it thank you, but is there a reason why they would only schedule 19 trains total during the peak of rush hour? Seems like they are leaving excess capacity there if so, which is very surprising.

Lastly, are the plans to improve A interlocking capacity set along with this gateway tunnel, or is there an ongoing battle with that?
 
It is likely because they can only get 19 reliably through A interlocking which is the limiting bottleneck. The tunnels are not the limiting bottleneck. Once the trains arrive at the NY end space has to be found for them on platforms and routes have to be found from the tunnel track to the platform. It is a complex choreography that is beyond simple minded but learned sounding analysis we are sonprone to here among us.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top