Another day trip to Philly

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Joined
Apr 5, 2011
Messages
6,091
Location
Baltimore. MD
Just decided I wanted to get out of town for the day, and also see how the NEC is doing now that they seem to have restored hourly Northeast Regional service. When I went to the app to buy my tickets they day before the trip, I saw most Northeast Regional coach fares were $32, which is not bad at all, though a few peak period trains were $65. Trains were showing at 70 to 90 percent full. I went up on the Vermonter, as I didn't want to rise at the crack of dawn, and I took business class to take advantage of the 2x1 seating, so my tickets were considerably more expensive. I came home on NER #129, also in business class, as I want to jack up my AGR TQP to ensure I make Select Plus in 2023, and I have no sleeper trips planned.

My drive to Baltimore Penn Station at 8AM was a real change from even a month earlier. People must be heading back to the office, because I-83 was jammed in its usual 8-9 AM pre-Covid manner. The garage at Penn Station was also pretty full, but I did manage to snag a space on the first level. The facade of the station is covered with scaffolding in preparation for the renovations, and when you get down to the platform, you can see construction on a third platform is moving ahead, and they're also hard at work putting up a high platform to serve track 3. Considering that the current station serves the existing traffic pretty well, I can only wonder what they're going to do with the extra capacity. And I can only hope that the station addition that they're going to build over the parking lot will include a Metropolitan Lounge.

I picked up a bagel w/schmear and a Boston Creme donut at Dunkin in the station, as the cafe car has neither of these delicacies. Then I waited for the train, which came in about 7 minutes late. The schedules in general are being slowed down a bit, due to track work. The transitdocs train tracker showed the train doing 35 mph in an area between Bowie State and Odenton where it usually goes 110-120 mph. There was also track work going on north of Perryville, which has closed down a track and caused some slow running. Looks like they're replacing rail and ties. It's going on through the summer, because they cancelled the early morning Acela 2150, which means we're taking 2152 an hour later when we take our vacation at the end of July.

The business class had only 2 free seats after I boarded. The car was full of what appeared to be actual business people wearing suits and such who were using laptops and having conversations involving business buzzwords. I had to wait in line for my free coffee and fruit cup (not free). They're also taking cash again, and in my case I had to use it because the attendant said he was having problems getting the wireless credit card system to work. (About 20 minutes later, when I was eating, he announced that he could take credit cards again. I enjoyed my meal as we bounced along at a bit less than 200 km/hr, slower as we passed through the work zones. Last week, on my flight the South Carolina, the pilot said it was going to be a bit bumpy, so he kept the "fasten seat belt" sign on the whole flight, and we didn't have drink service. But really, this Amtrak ride to Philly was a good bit more bumpy than that flight. The weird thing is that I was anxious about turbulence the whole flight and didn't relax until we touched down, whereas the bumpy Amtrak rode didn't bother me at all, or at least it didn't give me any anxiety. That's kind of irrational when you realize that if you drop 50 ft. suddenly in turbulence, you're still over 30,000 feet from anything you can crash into, whereas on an Amtrak train going 200 km/hr, you're a lot closer to things you can crash into.

Anyway, we got into 30th St. Station fairly quickly, even if we were maybe 10 minutes late.

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Welcome to Philadelphia 30th St. Station! More to follow
 
Thanks for the nice report! Looking forward to part two. Spontaneous trips are great.
they seem to have restored hourly Northeast Regional service
It's certainly incredibly difficult to figure out what has been added or changed without timetables.

But really, this Amtrak ride to Philly was a good bit more bumpy than that flight
Yikes, that's really sad and frustrating.
 
I had made no plans for my day. I was going to do the flaneur thing and just kind of appreciate whatever I saw. When I got to Philly and sort of went with the flow, and went to the upper SEPTA level, where I looked at the regional rail trains departing, saw one for Norristown, and decided that's where I would go. When I was in High School taking joyrides on SEPTA circa 1970, the reading Railroad ran an express train to Reading and Pottsville called the "King Coal Express." It wasn't indicated as such on the timetable, but they had it posted on the departure board at the gate. Unlike the other diesel trains the Reading ran, which were RDCs, this one consisted of well-worn streamliner coaches with reclining seats. I recall that it left Reading Terminal at about 5 PM and got into Norristown in time for me to catch a Silverliner local back into the city and get home in time for dinner. (We ate dinner after 7 usually.)

On this trip, I could get back to town using the P&W (Norristown High Speed Line) and subway (The Market-Frankford Subway-Elevated, also called the "Frankford El.") The train I rode a 4-car Silverliner 4 set, and off I went. We popped out of the Center City tunnel and before too long, got to the Temple University station, which was much more elaborate (two high level island platforms) than the North Broad St. station, which used to be the big deal because it allowed connections to the Broad St. Subway and the PRR North Philadelphia station. Now it's just a pair of short low-level platforms, and not much else. The fancy station building from 1929 is still there, if being used for something else.

The Norristown Line next passes through the East Falls and Manayunk neighborhoods, which, when I lived in Philly, were considered at bit downscale. I never really spent much time there. However, in recent decades, the place has gentrified quite a bit and the old mill houses and such have been cleaned up and otherwise rehabilitated, plus lots of new housing is being built. Further on, there are lots of nice views of the Schuylkill River, and you can hardly believe you're in within the border of the City of Philadelphia. A little further on, and we get to the suburban town of Conshohocken, which seems to be having a building boom of apartment and office buildings right adjacent to the station, which at this point, is just a trailer. Given all the transit-oriented development, the frequency on this route is barely adequate, and I hope it gets increased some time soon.

Finally, we got to the Norristown transportation center, which was the end of the line, as they're doing work on the short extension into town, and the service was provided by buses. I walked up the street toward the Montgomery County Courthouse (which is where they held the Bill Cosby trial), but it was kind of windy and cold, so I retreaded back down the hill, and went to the P&W station to wait for the next train. (Those run on 30-minute headways.) I will say that my impression of Norristown is that it's a little more beat up than Media, the county seat of neighboring Delaware County.

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Here's the regional rail station at the Norristown Transportation Center.
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A P&W (well, really SEPTA NHSL route 100) car heading over the Schuylkill river bridge towards the Norristown station.
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It's almost in, which is good, because it was a bit cold and windy that day, and I was happy to get inside the car and find a seat.

These cars have reasonably comfortable seats and huge windows, but I do miss the old "Brill Bullets." These cars originally went up to 70 mph, but after some crashes back in the 1980s or 90s (?) they dialed them back to 55. We went more slowly, because there was a good bit of track work going on, but on the few stretches where we did get up to 55, it was a pretty exciting ride. Once we passed Bryn Mawr, where I used to get on as a kid, it was kind of fun watching the scenery that was at the same time familiar, yet strange, because I've been gone for a long time. In any event, we eventually got to the 69th Street Terminal, where you had to change to the El if you wanted to get to Center City.

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A couple of SEPTA Kawasaki LRVs for the Sharon Hill or Media Trolley lines sitting at 69th St.

-More to come
 
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