In November, The Star-Ledger ran an excellent piece, complete with photos, about PSCC and all that goes on there. From the article:
PSCC is located roughly 0.3 miles east of Penn Station and the dispatchers there have control over all of Amtrak-owned territory around Penn Station. LIRR trains travel through HAROLD, F, C, JO, KN, and A interlockings around Penn Station, with HAROLD and F being in Queens, C and JO being east of Penn Station, and A and KN being west of the station.
"Inside the Penn Station Central Control center, dispatchers stare at the 75-foot-wide screen showing movements of trains from the Philadelphia outskirts to Long Island and try once more to do the improbable:
"Funnel 1,200 trains a day through century-old tunnels into a maze-like station that has subways down below and is corked by Madison Square Garden.
"'This ballet takes place every day,' said Drew Galloway, chief of Northeast Corridor planning and performance for Amtrak, which owns the station and rents to NJ Transit.
"Two blocks west of Penn Station, there is a small world that commuters never see.
It’s lit up with a 10-foot-tall display board in the primary colors of red, green and blue, plus yellow and orange, to signify train movements and tracks.
"It’s inhabited by rows of dispatchers, whose eyes are constantly focused on the board, dealing with external factors that can produce some of the worst commuter entanglements in the world..."
PSCC is a team effort among the three railroads. While it's Amtrak's station and Amtrak's territory, the dispatching duties are shared amongst the railroads. Half of the year the LIRR takes the lead, one quarter of the year NJT sits in the saddle, and Amtrak takes care of everything in the remaining three months of the year. It can be quite easy to tell who's in charge at times, as LIRR trains will be given more favorable movements while Amtrak or NJTransit trains get left in the dust or vice versa.
I have never been in PSCC, but I have traveled through its territory countless times. It is quite a maze of twisted steel running rails, overhead wires, and third rails, all enclosed in a very tiny space squished under Madison Square Garden.
In the coming weeks, our final round of interlocking walkthroughs will unravel the confusion that goes down around Penn Station. It's truly a mess, and it's truly amazing that everything flows as smoothly as it does. I bet it is remarkably difficult to get everything to mesh nicely with such limited resources, but day in and day out, they get it done.
I highly recommend you read through the Star-Ledger piece, as it is very good. Trains.com also has an interesting slideshow that shows a portion of the 75-foot wide board at PSCC over the course of 45 minutes during rush hour. Seeing all the trains slide back and forth is an interesting sight for sure.
Tomorrow's Interlocking Walkthrough will feature A interlocking, which is West of Penn Station and one of the craziest of them all, so be on the lookout for that!
So the dispatches aren't professional enough not to give their own agency favors? Sounds like a sad state of affairs.
ReplyDeleteIt's a practice quite common in railroading...the host railroad sets the rules and quite frequently their trains get priority, It is not uncommon for an Amtrak train to get stuck on a siding on a busy freight line out west while host railroad dispatchers run slow freights ahead of it.
DeleteBut such are the complications involved in the host vs. tenant railroad relationship. Sometimes it's good to be the host railroad (train priority, getting to set the rules), and sometimes it's good to be the tenant (less worry about maintenance, someone to put the blame on).
The way I understood it is that Amtrak and LIRR take turns running it, and NJT merely provides a liaison.
ReplyDeleteThe whole point is to not show preferential treatment except for Acela.
You are correct. NJT only gets to watch it all unfold. Amtrak and LIRR take turns (half a year each) supervising the theater, and overseeing both railroads' dispatchers.
DeleteDispatchers (or signallers over here in the UK) have to make split second decision, get them wrong and they cause delay. They may wrong regulate something but the impact isn't felt until 100 / 200 miles down the line. Also setting up the wrong route either means fixing it as you go along or in some instances, where a train needs to access a certain platform or route, taking the route back (i.e. unsetting it) and this is typically on a time out as a safety precaution, three or four minutes before the new route can be reset.
ReplyDeleteIn the UK trains used to be regulated based on priority, High Speed Express would get first go, local passenger second, high speed freight third, empty coaching stock next and so on. Following privatisation this was removed and trains are regulated based on whether they are on time and this has improved regulation. On time freight has been put out in front of late running passenger services. Certain long distance services are given higher priority at key junctions (interlockings) to ensure they stand a good chance of reaching destination right time.
Controllers from all companies work to ensure the best interest of the railway is maintained and the most efficient service is provided, it means some lines are winners and losers but it evens itself out most of the time. Non-revenue earning services, (empty stock moves, ballast trains, things planned at short notice) tend to go last as delaying them doesn't attract industry compensation though everything is planned so if the network is behaving itself everything should run to time.
I'm lucky enough to visit Control Centrals and Signal Boxes occasionally as part of my job and they truly fascinating places with dedicated individuals. What amazes me is how calm everyone and everything is even when it's all going wrong.
In the diagram, what the heck is the "mall platform" in the middle of the interlocking?
ReplyDelete"Mail Platform" Amtrak used to move mail for the USPS but that practice has be stopped.
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