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| Re: LIRR needs to improve ROW maintenance; new dieseld (499551) | |||
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Re: LIRR needs to improve ROW maintenance; new dieseld |
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Posted by trainsarefun on Sat Oct 6 20:19:11 2007, in response to Re: LIRR needs to improve ROW maintenance; new dieseld, posted by Chris R16/R2730 on Tue Oct 2 20:17:53 2007. "If you were going to begin an electrification project from scratch, catenary would probably be the preferable mode. But both MNCR and the LIRR have large, well established third rail systems and thousands of cars designed to use such. Any new electrification on these 2 systems MUST be third rail based."Well, first off, this is my inaugural post, so a warm hello to the online community here.... That said, I think that the quoted claim is not correct, for a variety of reasons that mostly have to do with experience so far. Initially, let's look at the dual-mode experiment, which has largely failed. Only a few LIRR trains each day make the promised one-seat ride from non-electrified territory into NYP. That has to do, so far as I can tell, with the 'reinvent the wheel' approach that LIRR brought to shopping for a dual-mode locomotive, but even if that wasn't the problem, going into NYP, with its catenary lines, probably it would have been a far, far better idea to simply run catenary from the already existing lines further out. Especially given the LIRR's bad experience with third-rail based dual-mode locomotives, running catenary seems like the historically justified thing to do. Secondly, the prospect of catenary-pulling locomotives pulling/pushing bi-level coaches seems like a good way to reduce overcrowding in the long term. We know for a fact that running more trains is difficult for a variety of reasons, so one thing we can all agree on is to try and get more passengers on each train. With increasing interest in new real estate developments in so-called railroad villages, we will need to have each train carry a heavier load. Thirdly, in the long term, it is sensible, to the extent feasible - more on this, below - to have MNCR and LIRR and NJT be able to use the same rolling stock. The biggest obstacle to catenary is not fiscal; it's physical. Some questions: How to be able to run catenary in the Park Avenue Tunnel? Is it similarly a problem in the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel? And in the lower level of the 63rd Street Tunnel? This engineering challenge is the most formidable obstacle to a potentially very good improvement in the regional rail network. |
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