Illinois High Speed Rail updates
 

so uh, when are the new trains coming for chicago-stl. anyone know? this project is (seemingly) annoyingly low information at this point.

There is a whole website dedicated to it:
http://www.idothsr.org/

Work is supposed to be complete this year.

the project seems to have been behind schedule for the majority of the project timeline on that site. looks like they've updated it more recently. seemed like the whole thing was floating dead in the water for a while, except for the scattered track improvements i've actually been seeing. i haven't heard anything about new locomotives/cars in a while.

http://www.idothsr.org/images/key_milestones.png

looks like idot is holding an update meeting this week in alton, il, which should be helpful.

it would be nice (in a perfect world) if this whole thing were treated more like a heavy duty regional project than a piddly idot project with scattered small town meetings (instead of annual updates in st. louis/chicago or whatever) once every three years. this goes more to our national infrastructure/spending priorities than anything having to do with the state of illinois.

dumb stuff like this keeps happening:

"ROCHELLE, Ill. — Another 100 workers have lost their jobs at Nippon Sharyo’s Rochelle manufacturing plant leaving an unknown, but likely small, number of workers at the facility.

“This difficult decision is the result of ongoing technical complications with the design of one of our prototype cars that have caused significant delays in the production schedule, as well as other challenging business considerations,” Nippon Sharyo officials say in a recent statement."

http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire...-nippon-latest

the whole damn order is canceled if they can't fix whatever the hell is wrong with the prototypes by september and we get no trainsets, since the 1/2 billion dollars goes back to the feds. that money isn't coming back with this administration.

The Belleville News Democrat covered the Alton meeting:
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/article144297399.html

This is something I posted in the high-speed rail subject in the transportation section.
Btw it's been nice to drive by the Siemens plant lately..:)

yeah, i have witnessed the same just outside of st. louis, including a decent amount of building demolition adjacent to tracks and grading for more gradual turns/grade. so track work is indeed progressing.

^ Ahh thanks buddy!:tup:

Here's something of interest that was in yesterdays railwayage mag:
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/...tml?channel=41

is it done yet

http://www.idothsr.org/media_center/...s/p1010415.jpg

http://www.idothsr.org/media_center/...s/p1010417.jpg

idothsr.org


not sure what this means...the website isn't really up to date at all other than some photos of events...

amtrak still showing travel times of 5h 25m to 5h 40m stl-chi...bah.

What's it supposed to come down to?

4.5 hours. So basically driving if there's light traffic.

I've seen the new Chargers running on the Hiawatha a few times. Not sure if they're actually pulling the train, or just running as dummies for testing purposes...

They've been running those Chargers up here on the Cascades line for awhile now. Hands down the best way to get between Portland and Seattle.

4.5 hours with current fares? That's pretty competitive to drive when you have to consider parking rates

The Chargers are in use. The cabbage cars are still attached. The new locomotives are amazingly quiet and don't belch up a ton of soot when under load.

Would really love to see them replace the Metra F40s but that won't happen.

however, for those of us driving in to chicago on a friday night, this has never happened ever. 5.5-6 hours to logan square from west st. louis seems like it was pretty normal when i used to make that drive a lot. 7 hours wasn't entirely beyond the pale. leaving chicago on a sunday, yes.