An interesting idea/proposal

[Anderson]

With respect to this idea, my main thought would be to run a train BOS-ALB-NYP. Of course, with this I have to ask:

1) What would it take to make this link up with the Adirondack (even a schedule-adjusted one)? I know the problems with cross-platform transfers, etc., but making the link workable would seem to be better than not doing so. Part of this has to do with the Boston-Montreal nonsense that got coverage a while back...I'm hard-pressed to see starting a newly-built route from Boston to Montreal without making at least a good case for it being a workable market, and at least on paper the market might work (even if BOS-Montreal is probably a market better suited to an overnight timing just because of the hours involved in transit, and to make the line more workable you'd need an NYP segment to get enough traffic for it).

2) Could this be timed so that someone wanting to go to/from Buffalo would have at least a sane wait time (i.e. no more than 2 hours) before continuing on?

3) Could this be timed to work with the shuttle? Again, I know the issues of cross-platform transfers; that said, this would mainly be for the benefit of central MA residents. This is probably the least important of the questions, if just because only a handful of stations would be affected going either way.

 

[jis]

Given that the running time between BOS and ALB is around 5.5hrs, and that the Adirondack schedule cannot really be moved more than an hour at most without causing problems at the origin and destination ends, it would appear that such a connection would have to depart Boston latest between 5am and 6am (arriving ALB 10:30am - 11:30am), and arrive in Boston somewhere around 10:30pm and 11:30pm (departing ALB around 5pm to 6pm). Are those viable times, and is there sufficient traffic potential? Maybe there are people that need to take a day trip from the capital of Massachusetts to the capital of New York? I have no way of knowing. But in any case such a train would require funding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for it to happen. Afterall even the Adirondack is a 403b train.

Incidentally the westbound could provide a two-hourish connection to a train to Niagara Falls. The eastbound would not have any reasonable connection from west of Albany unless 244 becomes a Niagara Falls train, in which case there'd be a two hour connection. One reason that the schedule of the Adirondack cannot be shifted easily is that it also serves as an Empire Corridor train, which are roughly scheduled to about once every two hours between NYP and ALB.

 

[eagle628]

I just don't understand the mechanics of why it would take two hours to get to springfield via rail from boston. and why would there by delays? but maybe this is the big question of rail travel. I don't know who controls the tracks but I would assume that it is not amtrak.

Chessie-Seaboard. Who knows about as much about running a railroad as a British hedge fund can be expected to.

CSX only owns it to Worcestor, I believe, from there the state of MA owns it because of MBTA commuter trains. The delay issue is not so much the fault of the host railroads, it's that the eastbound LSL connection depends on the train being on time into Albany. If the LSL is three hours late into Albany, it'll be three hours late into Boston, there isn't anything you can do about it, since there isn't the equipment laying around at Albany to run two trains. Besides, I doubt there's more than a couple dozen passengers traveling locally on the route anyway.

 

[jis]

Chessie-Seaboard. Who knows about as much about running a railroad as a British hedge fund can be expected to.

CSX only owns it to Worcestor, I believe, from there the state of MA owns it because of MBTA commuter trains.

True. But the eastbound LSL runs on CSX tracks all the way from Cleveland to Worcester. It is not unusual for NS to hand over an on time LSL to CSX at Cleveland, and then for things to fall apart. I think that is what GML was alluding to.