George. Thanks! As usual very good info.
Track centers in NJ at present are 12' to 12.5'. Volpe research suggests that aerodynamic issues are manageable at 12.3'. Greater problem as far as safety case goes has to do with interference due to derailment or shifted load in freight. One significant possibility being considered is temporal separation of freight on NEC to address it partly, though the general derailment interference issue is not wholly addressed. In any case the whole thing is about mitigation and probabilities. So we'll see where it all goes. It sounded very much like they will settle for something like 13' to 14' at the end of the day on existing RoW. That in and of itself will take considerable amount of wetland mitigation apparently given where a lot of the current RoW is. And then there are other odd problems like communicationc able easments along the Row that could need to be moved etc.
To have built at 12 feet at any time is simply nuts. To give a prespective, the various freight car "Plates" are all 10'-8", which usually means about 10 feet over the body. The Amtrak clearance diagram is 10'-6", presumably over grab irons, and 10'-0" over what I suspect as being the body. The Dynamic Outlne, in otherword the limit of sway, etc. is 11'-4". That doesn't leave much air between trains. Think of the standard highway lane as being 12 feet wide and the maximum truck width without permits as being 8'-6".
