New York State; it’s Railroads, Tourism, History

There are two important WebSites for New York State. New York State is somewhat of a tourist site. It opens with a picture of the Saratoga Race Track. Then sections on New York City, followed by Cooperstown, and the Adirondacks. Followed by the Catskill Mountains and the Erie (Barge) Canal. Then Albany, Schenectady, Utica and Syracuse. Finally an article on the Hudson Valley.

The second WebSite is all about New York Railroads and the NY Central Railroad.

This WebSite starts out with short stories on the many historic railroads of New York State. It concludes with many of the New York Central properties.

We hope you enjoy both WebSites.

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Train To Fort Benning, Georgia : A Recruit’s Journey

I received a letter from a follower who is writing a book on her father’s life. She is using letters home which her father wrote and had a gap on how he got from New York to Fort Benning, Georgia. Questions like what did he wear, where did he eat, where did he sleep.

Told her I would write a fictional story based on what facts I knew.

Dad’s Journey started at Albany, the capitol of New York State. Dad got “orders” in the mail to report to the Washington Avenue Armory:

Dad’s orders wanted him to appear at 07:30 hours in the morning. When he got off the Central Avenue bus he recognized several others waiting in the crowd. A sergeant who looked like a veteran of the Great War was handing out papers to be completed.

In the meantime a train had left Utica with four passenger cars. One of them was a Lackawanna car just off their Utica branch. The other three were New York Central cars off of the Adirondack Division.

Dad and the other recruits were “formed up” into a marching group, administered an “oath of office” and walked past the Capitol building to Albany’s Union Station. There was no band playing, but they were cheered on by citizens on the street.

At the Albany Station, the train from Utica had arrived and a switcher had brought three more cars and what would serve as a diner over from the West Albany Car Shop. The “diner” was loaded with box meals from the New York Central contractor, a Madison Avenue bakery.

Once the train was through New York City, the rest of the trip would be on “foreign”railroads. New York Central put good power on the train: a “Mohawk” (called a “Mountain” on other railroads……but not on the Water Level Route).

The train leaves before 11am and makes stops at Castleton, Hudson and Rhinebeck. Now the train is filled.

Next stop is Harmon to change engines to an electric one.

Now the train runs to Mott Haven then switches to a New Haven electric motor for a trip across the Hell Gate Bridge. Now they hook up a Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 locomotive headed for Washington.

In Washington DC, the Pennsyania Railroad bypassed Union Station and went directly to the huge Potomac Yard across the river. The GG1 was replaced by a modern steam engine belonging the Southern Railway (a founder of the current huge Norfolk Southern System).

Reaching Georgia, the train changed over to the Central Of Georgia Railway for it’s trip to Columbus, Georgia and Fort Benning.

Fort Benning at that time was relatively new. It had been created in World War I. So basic training housing was walking distance to the train. There was once a two-foot railroad around Fort Benning…..but the walk was easier.

Now Dad will have a better place to sleep than an old day coach

See the full WebSite on Dad’s trip to Fort Benning

High-speed rail in Ontario, finally? Not so fast

This is in response to a blog from May 25
https://penneyvanderbilt.wordpress.com/2017/05/25/premier-wynne-announces-plans-for-high-speed-rail-in-ontario/

From CBC-CA via California Rail News

The proposed plan is a massive and expensive infrastructure program and politicians have preferred in the past to get elected by promising to expand highways in their ridings, rather than rail routes.

Paul Langan, from an advocacy group called High Speed Rail Canada, told CBC News that a lack of political will is a major reason why high-speed rail has never been built in Ontario.

In his report, Collenette also cites “political willingness to support the huge investment over more than one election cycle” as a factor in limiting high-speed rail development

Calls for high-speed rail in one of Canada’s busiest corridors have been made before and went unanswered. Will it be any different this time?

Patrons Upset With Trump Administration Over AMTRAK Long Distance

The current California RailPAC Newsletter is just CRAWLING with upset riders over Washington’s handeling of long distance AMTRAK.

Pictured above, this is the eastbound California Zephyr stopping at Colfax on April 20th. One passenger got off and 13 got on including one person with a sleeper. The Zephyr this time of year runs with 3 coaches and 2 usually full sleepers. Think what they could do with more cars!

The DesMoines Register: Tell Congress to choo, choo, choose rail service. On my way home from Sacramento, Calif., last month, I saw scores of passengers board Amtrak’s California Zephyr at Osceola, Ottumwa and Mount Pleasant. And this was on a Thursday in March! Even though the train bypasses Iowa’s largest cities, it remains very popular. Yet the Donald Trump administration wants to kill the Zephyr as well as every other long-distance train. We should be improving rail passenger service, as candidate Trump said on the campaign trail.

But his administration’s budget team, giving in to the Heritage Foundation and its like, wants to eliminate service to the national system while continuing lavish subsidies to highway and air travel. Ironically, the proposed cuts would hurt the very regions which supported Trump last November.

If you don’t want to lose your Amtrak service, write or call your representatives in Congress. As author Peter Lyon wrote: “Passengers of America unite! You have nothing to lose but your trains!”

A local meeting coincides with efforts by Gov. Jim Justice and both Democratic and Republican state lawmakers to increase Amtrak passenger train service in the state and with President Donald Trump’s budget proposal to slash funding for Amtrak in “fly-over states, ” including West Virginia.

Amtrak is a federally-funded passenger railroad service that provides medium- and long-distance intercity service in the United States.

The Cardinal, an Amtrak train which runs between Chicago and New York, currently provides service in Prince, Hinton, White Sulphur Springs and other stations in southern West Virginia on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.

The “troops” are not happy campers!

Elon Musk’s idea for fixing traffic suffers from one fundamental problem

Elon Musk — the restless billionaire behind Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity — was stuck in annoying traffic and mused that one solution would be to drill more tunnels. All he’d need, really, is a giant machine…

Everyone’s trying to figure out whether Musk is genuinely serious about starting a brand-new tunnel-boring company or not. Who knows! But tunnels are fun to think about, so why not pretend he is serious and think through how this might actually work….

One obvious hitch to Musk’s scheme is that some cities are already trying to dig new tunnels to accommodate traffic — and it’s far from easy! There’s a lot of existing infrastructure buried in the ground beneath cities, from water mains to electrical cables. And the tunnels themselves often need to be reinforced. That makes tunneling slow, difficult, and expensive work.

Seattle is a cautionary tale here: Since 2013, the city has employed a massive 57-foot-diameter boring machine named Big Bertha to drill a 2-mile highway tunnel beneath the downtown area. Yet six months after work began, Big Bertha broke down after overheating. Drilling finally resumed in late 2015 — but then had to stop again after a sinkhole opened up near construction. Perhaps Musk can improve on Big Bertha. But that brings us to an even deeper problem with his idea. Building more tunnels is just not a good way to alleviate traffic congestion. In fact, it would likely do the opposite.

The “fundamental rule” of traffic: building new roads just makes people drive more
In January 2016, during SpaceX’s Hyperloop pod design competition, Musk explained why he thought tunnels could help alleviate traffic:

It’s a really simple and obvious idea and I wish more people would do it: build more tunnels. Tunnels are great. It’s just a hole in the ground, it’s not that hard. But if you have tunnels in cities you would massively alleviate congestion and you could have tunnels at all different levels — you could probably have 30 layers of tunnels and completely fix the congestion problem in high-density cities. So I strongly recommend tunnels.

Except economists and traffic experts have been studying this issue for a long time and they’ve found the exact opposite. When cities add new roads to a congested area, it usually doesn’t alleviate congestion. Instead, it just induces more traffic, as people take advantage of the added road space to drive more.

Granted, there can still be good reasons for fast-growing cities to build new roads. They just shouldn’t necessarily expect traffic jams to disappear as a result. Los Angeles got a firsthand glimpse of this after widening its I-405 freeway, a project that cost $1 billion. “The data shows that traffic is moving slightly slower now on 405 than before the widening,”

So what does help alleviate congestion? If cities really want to erase traffic jams, many transportation economists would instead recommend that they charge people to use roads when they’re crowded — a policy known as congestion pricing that has popped up in places like London, Singapore, and Stockholm.

Early research suggests that pricing really does cut down on traffic, as people decide to move their commutes to non-peak hours, shift to mass transit, or cut down on trips overall. It’s arguably even more effective if cities use the funds to provide alternative transportation options.

The downside is that congestion charging tends to be rather unpopular, since people don’t like it when they suddenly have to pay for something that used to be free. (It’s the same reason why checked-baggage fees on airplanes have incurred such a backlash.) So urban planners tend to favor building new roads and widening existing roads — or, in Musk’s case, new tunnels — even if the research suggests again and again that it doesn’t cut down on congestion.

Now, that doesn’t mean a tunneling machine would be useless! Remember, Musk also has plans to start colonizing Mars within a decade. And humans living on Mars would probably want to spend most of their time underground to avoid the higher levels of solar radiation that hits the planet.

Big Changes Ahead For The Muhammad Ali Hyperlink

Yes, our vision remains the same : provide fast and reliable transportation between Chicago and Louisville. However there are two important changes to our environment: (1) Cincinnati, Ohio has a Hyperloop project now; and (2) Hyperloop now feels that cargo has more priority than passengers.
Hyperloop One raised $50 million and hired former Uber CFO Brent Callinicos. The new round, led by DP World Groups in Dubai, brings the company’s total funding to $160 million.
Hyperloop UC, the University of Cincinnati’s interdisciplinary team, will unveil their entry for the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod competition on Monday, Oct. 17. The pod will be used during the next phase of the international Hyperloop competition to be held at a test track next to SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, in January 2017.
After months of preparation, a team of University of Cincinnati students will pull the curtain back on their Hyperloop pod, a prototype they think could reshape high-speed transportation as part of the competition dreamed up by Tesla founder Elon Musk. As CEO of the aerospace firm SpaceX, Musk has challenged the world to submit ideas — and now prototypes — for a tube-based passenger system that would allow for travel between cities at the speed of sound.
More than 60 students from Hyperloop UC — engineers, designers and marketers — have been busy finalizing designs, manufacturing parts and synthesizing segments into a seamless prototype for the January 27-29 competition when they will insert their pod for takeoff in a mile-long test track.
UC’s group is one of just 30 that has advanced to the test round of the Hyperloop competition out of more than 1,200 teams worldwide. If successful, the venture could completely shift the way commuters travel. Cincinnati to Chicago, for example, could be travelled in a half hour — all while passengers relax in a capsule that levitates through the tube at more than 700 mph.
“We are very proud of the design we have created,” says Dhaval Shiyani, Hyperloop UC President and aerospace engineering graduate student in UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS). “It hits all the marks with respect to performance, safety and scalability. Our education at UC has taught us well, and we are confident that we will be a force to reckon with come January.”
UC’s team was among 120 teams invited to Texas A&M University in January of 2016 to present their ideas, where they were then selected to be among just 30 who are moving on to the final round of competition. UC is also the only group representing Ohio universities.

Very recently Hyperloop One, (the Elon Musk organization), announced that « cargo will be implemented before passengers ».

We anticipated this with the selection of Gary, Indiana (at the international airport) as our Northern Terminal. Of course passengers will still transfer to the South Shore commuter line operated by the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District. But operating on the same right-of-way is the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad. It provides freight service between Chicago and South Bend.It has important connections to the Indiana Harbor Railroad, Norfolk Southern, CSX Corporation. It is also connected to the in-formation Great Lakes Basin Transportation. It proposes to construct a new railroad line around the metropolitan Chicago area. The purpose of the new railroad is to expedite freight movements across the nation and to provide additional capacity for growing railroad traffic.

All Aboard Florida receives FRA OK for engineering plans

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has approved All Aboard Florida‘s (AAF) final engineering plans for its “Brightline” intercity passenger-rail service in Brevard and Indian River counties, the railroad announced yesterday.

Artist’s rendering of the Brightline
All Aboard Florida

The FRA said the plans submitted by AAF comply with grade-crossing mitigation requirements. The news marks a “significant step” toward the $3 billion project, AAF officials said in a press release.

“Consistent with our initial commitment to the Treasure Coast, we provided final engineering plans that included safety improvements for FRA’s review,” they said. “The agency has now completed its review of our plans for Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River, and Brevard counties and affirmed that we are in full compliance with applicable requirements.”

When completed, AAF’s Brightline service will connect Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Service is slated to begin in 2017.

What riding Amtrak was like in the 1970s

Hard to believe that stuff that happened all in many of our lives is now called HISTORIC.

Photo at top: Northbound Silver Star in 1977

Amtrak was incorporated in 1971, and spent much of that decade establishing its operations, route network, and design and branding. USA TODAY Travel asked Amtrak to search its archives for photos and materials that show what American rail travel was like in the 1970s. From the TurboTrain to the Metroclub, be prepared for a groovy trip down memory lane!

 

 

Amtrak, U.S. transit agencies step up security after Brussels terrorist attacks

ISIS 1 over Metro Car 0

Following yesterday’s terrorist attacks at a Brussels airport and subway station, Amtrak and several major U.S. transit agencies increased their security efforts.

In response to the attacks — which left more than 30 people dead and injured hundreds more — Amtrak deployed extra officers at its stations. Additionally, the national passenger railroad’s police force is working with state, local and federal law enforcement partners to gather and share intelligence, according to a statement posted on Amtrak’s blog.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York City is working with the New York State Police and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) to elevate police presence at subway and rail stations, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a press release.

Additionally, PANYNJ increased its police presence at all of its airports, bridges, tunnels and the World Trade Center, as well as the PATH and Port Authority Bus Terminal.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority also beefed up police presence at three rail stations, including L.A.’s Union Station.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration announced it is deploying additional security to major U.S. airports and at various rail and transit stations, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said in a prepared statement.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) encouraged riders to remain vigilant and report any unattended bags or suspicious behavior.

“We all need to work together to make sure that our public transit systems are as safe and secure as possible,” said APTA President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Melaniphy.

Yesterday’s terrorist attacks in Belgium left 31 people dead and more than 200 others wounded. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks, which were carried out by two suicide bombers.

One of the bombers targeted Brussels’ Maalbeek subway station.

CNE Railway Tour 2016

Here is a sneak peek at the cover of the guide book for the CNE Rwy
historical tour starting at Waryas Park in Poughkeepsie on 3
April. Buses will roll about 9:00 AM.   The book contains 234 pages of
photos and stories about the Maybrook Line from Poughkeepsie to
Maybrook.  After lunch we will come back across the river to Hopewell Junction to explore the restored Depot and the new replica  of switch tower ss 196. Lunch is included and everybody gets a copy of the guide book.

There are still seats available for this all-day trip.  If you are
interested you can send a check for $55 to Joe Mato.

Joseph Mato CNE 2016

Joe Mato
62 Wood RD CNE 2016
Redding, CT 06896

(home): 203 938-9992     e-mail: joemato@sbcglobal.net

Be sure to include your E-Mail address so we can contact you if we need  to.