Eastern Railroad Discussion > A Weekend Trip to North Central IL & Around the Usual

1. An e/b UP coal train rolls through Nelson, Illinois, 7/23/22.
2. The cut produced by “daylighting” a tunnel between Fort Hill and Pinkerton, Pennsylvania, is impressive, 7/25/22.  Why doesn’t it have two main tracks?
3. NS 12R approaches Antietam Station, Sharpsburg, Maryland, 7/29/22.
 
There’s more at:

https://gjptrains.wordpress.com/category/home/

Gerry

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It is my understanding the Pinkerton tunnel was daylighted primarily to accomodate doublestack traffic. There was room made to lay a second track but I'm guessing there hasn't been enough of a bottleneck problem for existing traffic to warrent building it.
Go

GPutz Wrote:
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Why doesn’t it have two
> main tracks?
>
>
> Gerry

While the new cut is obviously wide enough, the issue is to the west of there between the former Shofly Tunnel, which was also daylighted at the same time and for the same clearance reasons as Pinkerton, and Fort Hill, which is the current west end of the single track. When Shofly and Pinkerton tunnels were originally single tracked in the 60’s to allow for high cars the west end of the single track was just west of Shofly, with double track running on a narrow shelf to Fort Hill and west from there. This lasted until the early 2000’s when a derailment occurred in that stretch as a result of the shelf partially giving way. At that time the interlocking was moved west to Fort Hill. Parts of old number 2 main were left in place in various states of over the side of the hill. The instability of that stretch is the reason for the lack of double track through the cut at Pinkerton and until the traffic levels increase to warrant fixing that stretch I doubt it changes.

Scooter

Posted from iPhone

Thanks for the explanations.  Gerry