Passenger Trains > A few MARC Penn Line questions

I recently had an hour to watch trains along the Amtrak line in Odenton MD, while waiting for a plane from BWI. MARC and Amtrak ran quite a few trains on the three track main line. Odenton is between Baltimore and Washington, just south of BWI.

Lots of activity.  MARC ran an HHP-8 (4910) on one train, I didn't realize the unit was still in use.  MARC ran a deadhead with a curious (to me) mix of equipment and power.  Two diesels pushing on a long train of low level cars and multi-level cars.  (NJT hasn't been able to mix its single and ML cars, ever). I figured they might break the equipment into two trains, but they came north as a regular train, still together.

"Due to scheduled maintenance from 3pm to 7.15pm, operations will change."  OK.  The northbound trains (toward Baltimore) ran on the southbound tracks (toward DC). The southbound trains ran on the northbound tracks.  The company was great about announcing it, and people got up to go to the other side. This applied between New Carollton and somewhere north of BWI.  Curious time to do scheduled work.

Saw a guy nearly get his head handed to him by an Acela. He was walking toward me on the high level platform, with his earbuds in.  The nb Acela was running on the sb track (track 3?), coming up behind him at 100 (??). Leaning on the horn, he couldn't miss the train. But he did. The guy spun around, literally pushed aside by the bow wave of the train, maybe 2 feet away.  He was still cussin' when he passed me.

Saw several leased ACS-64 electric units. 

MARC has bi-levels and multi level cars. While they tend not to mix with each other, a Sumitomo single level car can be in either consist of ther other two. The Brunsiwck line seems to be multi-level, never bi-level.  

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> MARC has bi-levels and multi level cars. While
> they tend not to mix with each other, a Sumitomo
> single level car can be in either consist of ther
> other two. The Brunsiwck line seems to be
> multi-level, never bi-level.  

Thanks

There was a lot of talk on TrainOrders a few years ago about how rotten MARCs HHP-8s were and that they were going to get rid of them forever.  But at that time MARC was actually working on a program to fix their faults so they could hopefully have a second life.
Google Earth (don't know the photo date) shows a long line of stored Amtrak HHP-8s at their yard in Bear, DE.

Please don’t hold me to any of this as I don’t pay much attention to MARC, as it’s not a major interest of mine. Having said that, I think four of five HHP-8s have been rebuilt. All initial indications are the rebuilds are pretty resoundingly successful. I have heard some rumors that Amtrak’s HHP’s might be being eyed for something similar, but that is nothing more than rumor. I would not expect it to come to pass.

Posted from iPhone

Amtrak was told by their owner/lessor/whatever to store them serviceable - IOW, put the pantographs back on them.

Posted from Android

The Brunswick Line typically operates with both Multilevel and Sumitomo Cars while the Camden and Penn Lines operate with everything, including the Kawasaki Bilevels.

The MARC HHP-8s seem to be doing well. Being that they probably cover a fraction of the mileage that the Amtrak ones used to and the MARC ones have few issues, I'm sure that they won't be going anywhere anytime soon. It would be nice though if the Penn Line was an all electric operation. However, the Charger units work very well on the Penn Line and have better acceleration over an MP36 hauled consist of six or more cars.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/19 17:09 by Passfanatic.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Due to scheduled maintenance from 3pm to 7.15pm,
> operations will change."  OK.  The northbound
> trains (toward Baltimore) ran on the southbound
> tracks (toward DC). The southbound trains ran on
> the northbound tracks.  The company was great
> about announcing it, and people got up to go to
> the other side. This applied between New Carollton
> and somewhere north of BWI.  Curious time to do
> scheduled work.

The "scheduled work" is a continuous outage on track 1 for the undercutter and realignment of the track for upgrade to 125mph.  The reason for the left hand operation in the afternoon is so that the MARC trains can make the platforms at the stations using track 3 rather than have the delays by trying to use bridgeplates across to the track one side..  Morning is normal operation and afternoon is reversed.  They altered the midday schedule to work around this as well.
 

Thanks for that info. I figured there was work somewhere nearby when I saw the track equipment on the Academy spur.

Lot of equipment.

Posted from Android