Maryland MARC awards PTC contract

[CHamilton]

Millions approved for automated collision-prevention system on MARC trains

On Wednesday, Maryland awarded a sole-source contract to Germantown-based Wabtec Railway Electronics because it provided the system being implemented by CSX, Hovatter said. MARC operates trains over more miles of CSX track than over Amtrak lines.
The contract includes the installation of positive train control hardware on 32 MARC locomotives and 30 cab cars, as well as maintenance of the equipment through 2017.
However, Amtrak uses a different system.
Hovatter said the systems are compatible on trains traveling as fast as 79 mph, but some MARC trains reach 125 mph — and compatibility is an unknown at those speeds.
To address that issue, Amtrak and MARC plan to build a "test bed" of tracks north of Perryville in coming months to test compatibility at higher speeds, under a $700,000 grant from the Federal Railroad Administration, Hovatter said.

 

[Ryan]

If only the MTA would stick to using electric locomotives on the Penn Line and equip them with AmtrakPTC and keep the diesels on the CSX lines equipped with the Wabtech stuff.

Better timekeeping, better schedules and no money wasted on trying to make the two work together. Spend the money on ACS-64's instead.

 

[jis]

Worst case they know they can run them at 80mph anyway. Because all signal aspect and normally ACSES transponder delivered info has to be sent to the engine using radio it creates a bit of congestion in the radio segment. As long as only a few trains are involved and no high density 9 aspect signals are involved it should be ok. The radio segment used for inter working with ETM is a separate one from the one used in ACSES. Basically the ETM radio segment sends ETM messages based on back office segment information in ACSES. I have a whole slide set on it from Wabtec and Amtrak at home.

 

[Anderson]

Well, the issue that's likely is that MARC would have to redo their timetables...and if they can't even vaguely "keep pace" with Amtrak's equipment, that's going to mess with peak hour slots.