I think that the S.E.P.T.A. platforms have to also clear freight car width passenger cars. Bypass tracks and rails are often for oversized loads and cars that rock at higher speeds. The gap between a passenger car and a S.E.P.T.A. high level platform is wide enough that a portable bridge plate is available for wheel chairs.

AAR Plates B and C allow for a width of 10' 8" from 40" above the rail. High level platforms are usually 45" to 50" above the rail.

An FRA study in 2010 showed conventional high-level platforms used in the Northeast have a height of approximately 48-inches above the rail and are 5 feet 7 inches from track center line on a tangent track.

With a car width of 10' 8" you have a center line distance of 5' 4" for the car and 5" 7" for the platform. Statically it works but dynamically the car rocks, the wheels oscillate from side to side, MW moves the track etc. In short, you can take a chance at slow speed, but avoiding a horizontal 11'8" bridge situation.

Phil Mulligan

https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot ... m_Gaps.pdf

It’s confusing. I know for a fact that Brightline and South Shore Line both had to install gauntlet tracks to support the freight ops on their lines. However, SEPTA (and I’m pretty sure NJT) run standard 40’ boxcars past their high level platforms all the time.

While we’re on this topic, does anyone know (or know where I could find) the width/loading gauge of a Reading T1? I’ve been trying to figure out the feasibility of a return to the RDG main. Were they able to clear Wayne Junction in the 90s?

You must mean the current Wayne Junction with high-level platforms. In Ramble days, T-1's ran on the Main Tracks but not on the Chestnut Hill Branch. They went towards Reading Terminal up to, but not onto, the bridge over the Richmond Branch at Nicetown.

2102 ran to 30th St Station in Phila, but they did it the way RDG got T-1 pulled trains into Reading Outer Station: they backed the train in and did not let the engine go alongside the platform.

NOTE: Outer Station had low level platforms but T-1's were prohibited on the station tracks.

Amtrak actually eyeballed 2102 while it was there and learned the steam pipes to the booster fouled the platform at 30th St. They never got to look at anything forward of that. T-1's have the same cylinder diameter and stroke as an N&W J but on a J the jacketing bulges outward between the valve and the cylinder.

Phil Mulligan

This was really enlightening. Thank you. Wish I could’ve seen the original rambles.

One more question, when did they put the high levels in at Wayne Junction? Wikipedia doesn’t turn up very much by way of year.

FWIW, the station upgrades in 2017 included a low level platform, so hypothetically the rambles could... ramble... again.

I think the Wayne Junction platforms were part of Railworks in 1992 and 1993.

Phil Mulligan

This thread about squeezing past a tight clearance reminds me of USS New Jersey (BB-62).

She was built at Philadelphia Navy Yard* during WWII and after WWII and Korea service was laid up there. She was reactivated in 1968 for Vietnam service, reveived a major overhaul and partial modernization at Philadelphia.

Philadelphia to Vietnam is via the Panama Canal. One set of locks there was 110 feet wide in 1968. New Jersey is 108 feet wide and her 1968 displacement was 60,000 long tons.

New Jersey was the world's only active battleship and fresh from overhaul was all shiny haze gray paint. Think they got a 60,000 ton ship through a lock with one foot clearance on each side? When asked, one sailor replied "We scraped through."

They painted the sides of the ship after she arrived on the Pacific side.

Phil Mulligan

* Philadelphia Navy Yard is on the Delaware River, across from New Jersey. Many of the people who built the New Jersey lived in New Jersey.

Some years ago, I showed up at 7:30am at the Bowie State (MD) MARC station to head to work. High platform, on the NEC. Was surprised to see the door to a boxcar perched on the railing leading to the stairs to the tunnel under the tracks. It didn't take long to realize the door had been left open, had snagged the south end of the platform and apparently flipped a couple of times through the air, missing all the guide wires for the over head wires, coming to rest on the railings.

When the train arrived, I waited so I would be last to board and pointed out the door to the conductor. He mumbled WTF under his breath and called it in on the radio. When I showed up that evening, the door was gone. Last time I was at the station, the railings were still bent from the impact.

Bob

The Ft Washington station has been the subject of many strikes from freight cars headed to and from Lansdale. The high level platforms are on a very slight curve. We came into northbound FT Wash with a board sticking straight up in the air. We made the proper adjustments and went on our way, of course it was properly reported.

American battleships were specifically designed so they would fit through the locks of the Panama Canal. They just barely fit, but would make it.