Video Captures Amtrak Train Hitting SUV in Andover MA

 (SOURCES: https://www.necn.com/on-air/as-seen-on/video-captures-amtrak-train-hit-suv-in-andover/3050097/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bmw-struck-by-amtrak-train-in-andover-woman-injured/ar-AA1gP6KP) 

An SUV was struck by an Amtrak train Saturday in Andover, Massachusetts, injuring one woman -- and it was all caught on camera.

Andover police say they responded to the incident on Pearson Street at Railroad Street around 9:20 a.m. and found a BMW X1 with significant front-end damage.

One woman was taken to Lawrence General Hospital with minor injuries, police said.

Amtrak says no passengers or crew members on the train were injured.

Surveillance video from a business nearby captured the terrifying moments as the Amtrak train slammed into the front-end of the SUV. It appears to show the driver going over the tracks as the crossing arms start coming down. The driver then backs up and continues to back up further when the train then collides with the SUV.

According to police, the driver was stopped on the tracks waiting to enter the intersection when she saw the crossing lights turn on and the gates come down. Police say she panicked and tried to back up before the front of her car was struck by the oncoming train, causing her to spin around.

Neighbors who spoke to NBC10 Boston on Saturday night said while they didn't see the moment of impact, they did see the aftermath and were glad to hear that the driver wasn't seriously hurt.

"I heard the train honking. It does that sometimes but lately it seemed like it's been more frequently and then I saw some police cars go by, so that's when I looked out the window and saw that the car had hit where the signal goes down," one woman said. "The entire engine was exposed, everything, it was just kind of compressed... It looked pretty bad."

Back in July, investigators say an 85-year-old man was killed by an Amtrak train near the Andover station. Prosecutors say the pedestrian was waiting for a southbound train to pass before being hit by a train going north -- right after the southbound train cleared the intersection.

Authorities say Amtrak police are investigating what happened Saturday in this latest incident.

Amtrak Service Restored Between Burlington, Vt. & NYC

 (SOURCES:  https://www.necn.com/news/local/all-aboard-amtrak-service-restored-between-burlington-vermont-nyc/2794853/

https://media.amtrak.com/2022/07/amtrak-and-the-vermont-agency-of-transportation-announce-ticket-sales-for-the-newly-expanded-ethan-allen-express-service-in-burlington-vergennes-and-middlebury/) 

After nearly 70 years, Vermont’s most populous community once again has passenger rail service to and from New York City.

The newly-expanded Ethan Allen Express connects downtown Burlington and Penn Station.

Secretary Joe Flynn, who leads the Vermont Agency of Transportation, said restoring service took decades of prep work, and more than $115 million in corridor investments — using mostly federal funds.

"I think it makes Burlington more complete," Flynn said in an interview with NECN & NBC10 Boston. "I really do."

Amtrak’s CEO, Stephen Gardner, said he is seeing interest in rail travel rebound to near pre-pandemic levels.

Damaged Amtrak #102 modeled at Springfield MA Show

Spotted at the Springfield MA mega-train show, Amtrak #102, which was damaged in an October 2015 derailment in Northfield VT.  

(cell phone photo by Wayne Hart)

The real locomotive can be seen HERE

Several Hurt After Amtrak Derailment in Vermont

'Down we went': Several hurt after Amtrak derailment in central Vermont | Fox News

Rock Slide Derails Amtrak Train in 'Freak of Nature,' Leaving at Least 7 Hurt | NECN

Amtrak Blog - amtrak-vermonter-train-55-at-roxbury-vt

http://www.wcvb.com/news/amtrak-train-derails-in-vermont/35659842

http://www.wcvb.com/news/images-amtrak-train-derails-in-northfield/35661992

Amtrak Downeaster in Recovery Mode After Dismal Year

(SOURCE:  Portland Press Herald, Tom Bell)


For the first time in four months, Downeaster trains returned to normal schedules Saturday, signaling what supporters hope will be a new era following the service’s dreadful performance over the past 15 months.

“The great New England passenger rail nightmare is over!” exclaimed TrainRiders/Northeast, a pro-rail citizen group, on its Facebook page.

A nightmare it was.

When the rail service’s books closed June 30, it reported an annual on-time performance of only 30 percent – less than half the Amtrak national average of 71 percent. In May, the Downeaster’s worst month, not a single train arrived on time. In June, fewer than 8 percent arrived on time. In addition, 13 percent of trains – 488 trains in all – never made it out of the station in fiscal year 2015 because their trips were canceled, mostly due to construction.

Two bridge repair projects in Massachusetts last spring and this year’s harsh winter caused numerous delays and cancellations, but most of the woes were due to a massive tie-replacement project that took months longer to complete than anticipated.

Passengers responded by finding other ways to travel. In all, the service had nearly 100,000 fewer riders than the 536,524 in the previous fiscal year, an 18.2 percent drop.

One former fan is Kristina Egan, who lives in Freeport and travels two to three days a week to Massachusetts.

Before the construction began, Egan rode the Downeaster all the time because she enjoys its smooth ride and roomy seats. But after missing several meetings in Massachusetts, she switched to the Concord Coach Lines bus.

“I can’t afford to miss an important meeting because I like the train better than the bus,” said Egan, who heads Transportation for Massachusetts, a group that advocates for transit funding.

Another is Anthony Zeli of Portland, a longtime fan of trains who now rides the Concord bus to Boston if he needs to get somewhere on time. The train, he said, is only suitable for a “lazy and enjoyable weekend trip.”

A CREDIBILITY PROBLEM
Winning back disgruntled rail passengers is now the goal for the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which operates the Downeaster. Once touted as a national model for how regional rail lines should be operated, the service is in recovery mode. The rail authority plans to lure back passengers by stepping up its advertising efforts, which had been put on the shelf during the construction project, and launching promotional fares, such as a 25 percent discount for travel on the midday trains, which were the most disrupted by the construction.

In the end though, marketing specialists say, what matters to the public is performance.
Amtrak and the rail authority have a credibility problem, said Karen DeMitto of Portland, who depends on public transportation because she does not own a car.

She said Amtrak employees who staffed its toll-free line didn’t seem to know what was happening with the service whenever she called to ask if a train was running. She said rail authority officials, in communications with the public, consistently underestimated how long the construction project would last.

“It was always, ‘Maybe next week it will be fixed,’ ” she said. “I was trying to get to Brunswick for the last seven weeks. Every week they said next week might be better, but it wasn’t.”

Any time a transit agency is experiencing major problems, it needs to tell the public what the problems are, why they are occurring and when they will be fixed, said Kenneth Hitchner, a former spokesman for New Jersey Transit who now manages public relations for Creative Marketing Alliance, a firm in New Jersey.

“When you are selling a service, it’s always about managing expectations,” he said.

But the delays and cancellations are symptoms of a deeper problem, said Dennis Bailey, who owns a public relations firm in Portland. The entire Amtrak system is plagued with decaying infrastructure because of inadequate funding, said Bailey, who last year worked for a Brunswick group that opposed the rail authority’s plans to construct a layover facility in Brunswick.

“They are not going to spin their way out of it,” he said. “There are some real issues they are going to have to resolve to match their PR.”

SINGLE-TRACK BLUES
It wasn’t always like this. For years, the Downeaster was seen as a model for expanding rail service elsewhere in the country. Its customer satisfaction rates, ridership growth and on-time performance were regularly among the highest in the Amtrak system.

The Downeaster’s woes began in April 2014, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority began to rehabilitate three railroad bridges spanning the Merrimack River in Haverhill, including a bridge the Downeaster uses.

Then, in May of that year, rail inspectors determined that harsh winter weather and heavy snow melt had destabilized the ground under about 27 noncontiguous miles of track, mostly between Portland and the New Hampshire border. Because the Downeaster operates on a single track, trains were canceled or delayed to give the crews time to make repairs.

Last winter’s harsh weather caused numerous delays and cancellations. In February, a southbound train was stranded in a remote area of North Berwick because of an engine problem. The train eventually arrived in Boston more than six hours late.

The weather delays were compounded by a project to replace 30,000 rail ties on the 78-mile line that Pan Am Railways owns between Portland and the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border. The rail authority bought the ties for $2.3 million, and Pan Am paid for the equipment and labor to install them.

Pan Am replaced 8,000 ties last year. This year, however, the “tie gang” – the Pan Am crew that removes the old ties and replaces them with new ones – didn’t begin work until late May. The project was delayed by a number of factors. Some heavy equipment Pan Am needed for the project was delivered late by the manufacturer. Amtrak tried to send heavy equipment to Maine, but the shipment was delayed by an Amtrak derailment on May 12 in Philadelphia.

Now that the tie-replacement project is finished, the rail authority plans to increase its marketing effort. It has $520,000 to spend, including $40,000 carried over from last year’s budget.

The authority plans to use television, print and search-engine advertising. The message will be the same as in recent years, which is to highlight the “high quality, high value” experience of the rider, said Natalie Bogart, marketing director of the rail authority.

She said the authority won’t be talking about how it will overcome its recent poor on-time performance because a large segment of the target audience never rode the train before or encountered a problem.

“There are a lot of people who have been disrupted,” she said, “but a lot of people didn’t know anything happened.”

Patricia Quinn, executive director of the rail authority, said she’s confident she can get those who have abandoned the train to give it another chance.

“We are going to be more reliable than we have been in a long time,” she said. “It will take some time, but we will have to earn that reputation back.”

Promotions are a nice gesture, but passengers will return if they trust the service, said Wayne Davis, who heads TrainRiders/Northeast, which successfully lobbied the state in the early 1990s to establish the train service.

“I think just delivering people on time is the most important thing we can do,” he said.
Egan, who now rides the bus to Massachusetts, said she will be looking at the service’s performance carefully before deciding to take the train again.

“I need to see a couple of weeks of close-to-perfect performance and an explanation of why all the delays happened over this past year and how they are not going to happen over the next year,” she said.

Maine Train Advocate Aays Downeaster Engineers Vigilant About Speed Limit

(SOURCE:  Portland Press Herald - Dennis Hoey)

The leader of a train advocacy group in Maine said an accident like the fatal crash in Philadelphia on Tuesday night is unlikely on the Amtrak Downeaster because engineers on the service between Brunswick and Boston are vigilant about not exceeding the line’s 79 mph speed limit.

Wayne Davis, chairman of TrainRiders/Northeast, said Wednesday night that the Downeaster can go up to 125 mph, but the current track configuration can not safely accommodate speeds higher than 79 mph, and only in certain sections.

The train that crashed in Philadelphia, killing at least seven people and injuring more than 200, had been going 106 mph before it went off the rails on a curve where the speed limit is 50 mph.

Davis wouldn’t speculate on why the engineer in Philadelphia was traveling more than twice the speed limit, but said Downeaster engineers are keenly aware of the 79 mph rule and know where they must go slower.

“An engineer is not about to mess with federal law,” he said. “No one in their right mind would exceed the (79 mph) speed limit.”

All Amtrak engineers are monitored by GPS tracking systems, according to Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which contracts with Amtrak to operate the Downeaster.

“Keeping to the required speed limits is something that is strictly monitored and enforced,” Quinn said Wednesday night. “They take these regulations and rules very seriously. There are many checks and balances.”

She wasn’t aware of any Downeaster engineers being cited for speed violations.

Despite Tuesday’s tragic crash, Davis remains convinced in the safety and efficiency of rail travel and would someday like to see the Downeaster be authorized to travel up to 110 mph. He believes that, with the proper upgrades, running faster trains between Brunswick, Portland and Boston would increase ridership.

“All it would take is for Congress to allocate the money,” Davis said, acknowledging that the rail line would have to undergo major improvements, such as a new signaling system and track upgrades. “It’s our goal to someday raise the Amtrak Downeaster speed to 110 mph. Time is money to people.”

By making the trip from Portland to Boston much quicker – it now takes the Downeaster about 2 hours, 25 minutes – more people would take the train, Davis said. The 110 mph speed could reduce the trip to two hours. An express going that speed and making two stops would arrive in just over an hour, Davis said.

TrainRiders/Northeast is a nonprofit that was formed in 1989 to bring modern and efficient passenger rail service to Northern New England.

Quinn is skeptical that the funds needed to upgrade the Portland to Boston rail line to allow higher speeds will become available in the near future.

“It’s not something we are pursuing,” she said.

CT Senators Vow to Block High-speed Rail That Bypasses State

(Source:  CT Mirror)

Washington – Both of Connecticut’s U.S. senators on Friday vowed to stop a proposal approved in the House of Representatives this week that would require Amtrak to study the feasibility of a new high-speed train from Washington, D.C., to Boston — with no stops in Connecticut.

“High-speed rail without stops in Connecticut is a nonstarter,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in a statement. “I will strongly and steadfastly oppose any proposal for high-speed rail that uses Connecticut tracks but bypasses Connecticut stations.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said, “I cannot and will not support any efforts that seek to abandon the existing Northeast Corridor rail line – and the hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents that rely on it every year.”

The furor was caused by a provision, sponsored by Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., that was included in a House bill that would authorize the spending of nearly $8 billion to shore up Amtrak for the next five years. It would require Amtrak to evaluate a new non-stop service between Washington, D.C., and New York and between New York and Boston in six months.

The bill passed the House this week. But Congress has not approved an Amtrak authorization bill since 2008, and it’s not clear the Senate will act on the House bill this year.

If it does, Blumenthal, who sits on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that would have authorization over an Amtrak bill, said he’s ready to take on Mica’s proposal.

"The New Haven Line is the busiest rail line in America for a reason — Connecticut residents demand and depend on robust rail service,” he said. “I will work vigorously to stop in its tracks any effort to ignore our state's critical needs, and I look forward to working with my colleagues in the delegation who share my concerns about this issue."

The study that would be commissioned if Mica’s proposal is included in a final Amtrak bill would be just the first step in a very long process. But Murphy said he is ready to stop the high-speed rail effort in its tracks in the Appropriations Committee if there’s an attempt to fund the plan at the expense of the New Haven line.

“The existing corridor needs upwards of $50 billion in investment over the next 20 years just to keep up with projected demand,” Murphy said. “I sit on the Senate Transportation Appropriations subcommittee, which decides where federal Amtrak funds can be spent. I will fight any attempts to rob Peter to pay Paul by investing in new rail service that forsakes the New Haven Line – and the countless jobs it helps support.”

Mica’s proposal would require Amtrak to study the estimated trip time, ridership, revenue, total cost, capacity “and other metrics” for the new service as well as the impact on existing Amtrak and commuter rail services and on the Northeast Corridor.

Amtrak would have six months to complete the study, and the rail company’s Board of Directors 90 days to consider implementing the service.

A spokesman for Gov. Dannel Malloy said earlier that the governor would also move to block any high-speed service that did not stop in Connecticut.

After his proposal cleared the House, Mica said he’d consider a plan that made one stop in the state.

Downeaster slowed by track problems - TRAINS Magazine

Downeaster slowed by track problems - TRAINS Magazine

Contract Awarded for Maine Amtrak Downeaster Layover Facility

(Via the Trains.com Newswire)

BRUNSWICK, Maine – The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority has authorized the award of a design-build contract for a layover facility in Brunswick for Amtrak Downeaster service trains. The contract was awarded to Consigli Construction Company of Portland and will cost about $12 million. It will take up to 18 months to complete.

The facility will be constructed on property owned by the authority between Church Road and Stanwood Street, and will provide an enclosed facility to service trains during the day and overnight. Trains are currently serviced outdoors adjacent to the Portland Transportation Center on Thompson’s Point. Before construction can begin, an environmental assessment must be conducted, and the Federal Railroad Administration must approve the design and location.

Once the Brunswick layover is complete, the Downeaster will make one additional daily round-trip between Brunswick and Boston without increasing the current frequency of train movements. Presently, trains travel between the Portland and Brunswick at the beginning and end of each day. The Brunswick facility will eliminate the need for trains to idle outside for hours each afternoon between runs, enabling them to be brought inside and shut down for servicing. The 60,000-square-foot, two-story building will be large enough to accommodate three complete Downeaster train sets plus additional locomotives.

The authority said it has secured a funding source for the new facility. The Portland Transit District became an urbanized area after the 2010 U.S. Census, so it now qualifies for a release of federal formula funds.

The Boston-Portland Downeaster was extended to Brunswick in November 2012, with early ridership exceeding the rail authority’s projections.

Riders Making a Go of Downeaster's New Maine Stops

(SOURCE: Portland Press Herald - By Tom Bell tbell@mainetoday.com)

FREEPORT - Hannah Tyce, 18, of Augusta needed a big favor from her mother: pick up her boyfriend, who happened to be without a car in Boston. The solution?

Amtrak's Downeaster, which could deliver the boyfriend to the new train station in Freeport.

"Without this train, this wasn't going to happen," said the mother, Jane Maguire-Tyce, who on Wednesday drove to Freeport to retrieve the boyfriend.

Also aboard the train, a middle-aged couple from Saugus, Mass., who came to Freeport to spend the day shopping, a 25-year-old New Hampshire woman with two young children visiting her parents in Brunswick, and a 67-year-old woman from Naples, Fla., visiting her children and grandchildren in Waterville.

When Amtrak extended the Downeaster to Freeport and Brunswick last month, nobody could predict how the public would use the service. It's been more than 50 years since these two towns have had passenger train service.

Now, after nearly two months of service, it's becoming a bit clearer how the train is going to be used, at least during this time of............ READ WHOLE ARTICLE

Aging Charles River Rail Bridge Closes for Repairs

SOURCE:  Boston Globe - Carolyn Y. Johnson

The graffiti-covered railroad span that threads diagonally under the Boston University Bridge will be closed to most train traffic for two weeks, after an inspection found some of its crossbeams need to be replaced.

Many people are unaware that the 90-year-old railroad bridge across the Charles River is in use at all, but it is a critical piece of transportation infrastructure. It is part of the little known Grand Junction Railroad, which starts in Brighton and wends its way through Cambridge, Somerville, Everett, and Chelsea, connecting train lines that go to North Station with the ones that lead to South Station.

The freight line’s tracks are also used by Amtrak and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to shift engines and coaches for maintenance.

The repair work has begun, according to MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo. In the meantime, the train systems that use the bridge have come up with alternative plans to ensure no interruptions in service.

Two weeks ago, a visual inspection of the bridge found signs of movement in its trusses, according to Scott Farmelant, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co., a contractor that operates the MBTA’s commuter rail service. A bridge engineering inspection firm was brought in, and on Wednesday, Farmelant said, the bridge was closed to freight cars and locomotives. He emphasized there is no public safety threat, since passenger trains do not use the bridge, and said the closure will not affect commuter rail services.

Pesaturo said in an e-mail that seven of the bridge’s 44 crossbeams need to be replaced. Repairs are expected to take about two weeks, and the cost of the project had not been finalized.

In preparation for the bridge’s closing, Pesaturo said, a number of organizations and companies have worked together to devise solutions.

Amtrak, for example, will do routine maintenance on its Downeaster trains, which provide service to New Hampshire and Maine, at the MBTA’s facility in Somerville, and the commuter rail company will perform maintenance on some of its equipment at the Amtrak facility in South Boston.

Cliff Cole, a spokesman for Amtrak, said the bridge is used to transport locomotive engines to Amtrak’s maintenance yard, and the repair project will have no impact on Downeaster schedules.

“Amtrak has been working around the closure by maneuvering the equipment through different detour routes,” and pursuing an agreement to have equipment maintained at different sites, Cole said.

Pan Am Railways and CSX Corp. reached an agreement to “transfer freight rail trains in the Worcester area,” Pesaturo wrote.

The bridge is not completely closed; empty commuter rail coaches can still be transferred over the bridge.

But in an illustration of just how important the bridge is, Farmelant said, two commuter rail locomotives would be transferred this weekend to the ­MBTA’s Somerville repair facility by taking a roundabout route through the Worcester area.

The transfer, which would normally involve crossing the Charles on the BU span, will utilize tracks that go through Ayer and then back east on the Fitchburg commuter rail line to Somerville.

“The system ultimately is wholly dependent on aging infrastructure,” Farmelant said. “This shows how critically important these investments the governor and others keep talking about into our infrastructure are.”

UPDATE: the bridge was reportedly back in service as of 1/11/13

Amtrak Downeaster Rolls to Brunswick, Maine

SOURCE: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-09-13/amtrak-downeaster-rolls-to-brunswick-maine

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Amtrak's Downeaster is ready to roll northward to Freeport and Brunswick with the service kicking off on Nov. 1, ahead of Thanksgiving travel and holiday shopping, officials said Wednesday.

Banners announcing the new service and schedule adjustments were installed in stations along the route on Wednesday, said Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority. Tickets for the new service go on sale on Oct. 1.

"It's a huge milestone," Quinn said Wednesday. "Really, the service expanding to Freeport and Brunswick was always part of the plan. When we inaugurated the service in 2001, it was supposed to happen in a couple of years. To make it finally happen is pretty exciting."

The Downeaster is coming off a record year with 528,292 passengers.

Initially, two of the five daily roundtrips between Portland and Boston will travel to Brunswick. The expanded service is expected to add 36,000 more passengers each year, Quinn said.

Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman said the expanded rail service "coincides with record ridership demand on both the Downeaster and rail travel throughout the country."

Expanding the Downeaster northward to Freeport, home to L.L. Bean's flagship store and outlet shopping, and Brunswick, home of Bowdoin College, required improvements to more than 30 miles of rail, rehabilitation of 36 crossings and construction of two station platforms. Remaining track work will be completed in weeks.

Most of the track upgrades were funded through $38.3 million in federal stimulus dollars.

"We are proud to deliver this expanded service on schedule and on budget," said Martin Eisenstein, chairman of the Northern New England Rail Authority's board, who praised the partnership with the Federal Railroad Administration, Pan Am Railways, Amtrak and the Maine Department of Transportation.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, who helped secure the original funding that got the rail service started, said the project will be nearly complete with the expanded service.

"This route will be an indispensable economic boon for Maine," she said.

The Downeaster serves eight communities in addition to Boston and Portland: Old Orchard Beach, Saco and Wells in Maine; Dover, Durham and Exeter in New Hampshire; and Haverhill and Woburn in Massachusetts.

Amtrak to Replace Two Bridges on Northeast Corridor November 5-6, 2011

(via Trains.com Newswire)

WASHINGTON – Amtrak will replace two bridge spans on its Northeast Corridor at Stonington, Conn., next week. All through service between New York and Boston will be suspended from 4 p.m. on Nov. 5 through noon Nov. 6.

During the outage, Amtrak will replace the spans, which are more than 100-years old, using barges to remove the existing structures and float in the new bridges. This marks the final stage of a multi-year $22.1 million project, funded in part through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Amtrak said it will not provide alternate transportation, and recommends passengers reserve space on trains that will operate prior to the corridor closing.