Western Railroad Discussion > NWP/SMART Main line closed until Monday morning work construction

SMART contractor Stacy-Witbeck-Herzog is installing gauntlet switches in Novato today.  They previously were working at night only to remove the "new" ribbon rail and concrete ties to put in the longer ties to except the new gauntlet tracks.  The platform for the "new" station was poured at night a week ago so as not to disrupt hourly SMART DMU  testing andf NWP freight operations. IF SMART had started regular service as they had planned for this December, all of this work would have been done at night. A contractor spokesman told me today that this work would be done Monday morning.  This means that tomorrows NWP Petaluma turn will run on Monday.  First image is looking railroad west (south towards Ignacio) showing the newly poured platform. The second shot shows the contractor installing the gauntlet switch. The 3rd picture shows the tamper at the north end of the track work tamping the newly dumped ballast.  



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/16 22:35 by weather.

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4th snd 5th shots shows track equipment on the newly installed north switch.  Last image is looking south from the original historic preserved Northwestern Pacific passenger station.  Text and Photos by Mike Pechner

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Appreciate these NWP/Smart updates, keep em comin

It looks like SMART is still going to with the backwards design of having the through freight trains diverge, rather than the slowing, then stopping passenger train.  Hopefully I'm wrong.

coach Wrote:
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> It looks like SMART is still going to with the
> backwards design of having the through freight
> trains diverge, rather than the slowing, then
> stopping passenger train.  Hopefully I'm wrong.

You are right. Why this was chosen I do not know. The rest of the world does it correctly

Posted from iPhone

I am pretty sure that the diverging route has been switched for the SMART trains stopping at the stations. The through route at Petaluma is definitely for the freight trains.

Gary

Posted from iPhone

Petaluma is currently the only station with the diverging route for passenger trains.

Due to the platform work at Novato, there were no test trains between Petaluma and Novato but all other test trains are running as normal this weekend. NWP is just switching in Petaluma today and running back to Schelville tomorrow (Monday).

Posted from Android

CPRR Wrote:
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> coach Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > It looks like SMART is still going to with the
> > backwards design of having the through freight
> > trains diverge, rather than the slowing, then
> > stopping passenger train.  Hopefully I'm
> wrong.
>
> You are right. Why this was chosen I do not know.
> The rest of the world does it correctly
>
> Posted from iPhone

It depends what the turnout speed is.   Some have made the mistake of putting in slow speed
turnouts for the diverging passenger trains.  This slows them down unnecessarily soon before the
station stop.  One road is that did that is considering changing the freight route to be the diverging route.
With many stops all those seconds add up to minutes lost.