The southeast corner of Downtown Fort Worth. I-30 and the former Texas & Pacific (now UP) run left to right. I-35W, the former ATSF (now BNSF), the former SP (now UP), and the former MKT (now UP) cross them.
This the Texas & Pacific station, with its 1931 tower, now end of the line for Trinity Railway Express commuter trains (you can see one departing) to Dallas and TEXRail trains to DFW airport. The commuter rail tracks are alongside, but not connected to, the freight tracks.
This is Fort Worth Central Station, where TRE and TEXRail connect to Trinity Metro buses. North of here the commuter trains dive under BNSF and UP, keeping them separated from the busiest freight lines. Amtrak stops here, too — that’s the Heartland Flyer on its midday layover.
This is Tower 55, which handles about 100 trains a day. That's an at-grade crossing -- while something like this BNSF coal train is moving north-south, nothing can move east-west. up.com/cs/groups/publ…
Both the rail and freeway junctions were recently rebuilt; I-30 and the interchange were completely replaced in 1993-2003 (including moving the freeway from in front of the T&P to behind it) and the rail junction was upgraded with additional tracks and new signals in 2013-2014.

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More from @christofspieler

1 Jan
Transit Twitter poll: is the South Shore Line “the last (US) interurban?”
Option 1: the South Shore was built as an interurban and it still carries both passengers and freight on more or less its original route. That’s unique.
Option 2: The trains are commuter rail equipment, the Chicago end is commuter rail, so the South Shore is commuter rail that just happens to run down a street a bit. (In other words, how is the train on the left an interurban when the trains on the right are commuter rail?)
Read 6 tweets
31 Dec 20
A westbound South Shore Line train passes through Michigan City, IN, on its way from Chicago (about 60 miles west) to South Bend (about 30 miles east.)
Say “South Shore” and someone will say “Last Interurban!” Interurbans were rail lines that used streetcar technology — short electric trains with self-propelled cars, not locomotives — to connect cities. The US built 15,000 miles of interurban track from about 1900-1920.
Interurbans were common elsewhere, too: Canada, Central Europe, Japan. (This is the former OEG near Heidelberg, Germany.)
Read 15 tweets
31 Dec 20
Natchez Trace Parkway Arches, south of Nashville, 582 ft precast concrete segmental arch bridge, 1994.
At the time it was a revelation — a lot of US cities and highway departments looked at this (and some of the new cable stayed bridges opening around the same time) and thought “Oh wow — bridges can look beautiful!”
The term “signature bridge,” which was silly to begin with (why should we pick only a handful of bridges to look good?) and has now been stretched beyond all recognition, became a part of DOT talk.
Read 6 tweets
30 Dec 20
Norfolk Southern freight heads south near Burnside, KY on the“Rat Hole,” a section of the line from Cincinnati to Chattanooga. Image
This railroad, first built 1869-1880, was extensively rebuilt in 1959-1963, reducing curves, flattening grades, and replacing tunnels with huge rock cuts like this one — it’s a rare example of large scale post-WWII engineering on the US freight rail system. Image
It’s not easy to build through country like this. Image
Read 4 tweets
28 Jun 20
As we talk transportation, urbanism, cities, and racism, Transit agencies, and the transit industry, should not assume we are the good guys, or, as @Jay_Pitter put it, “bringers of solution.”
I’m not singling out transit here. It has not been nearly as destructive an implement of racism as the construction of the US freeway system, and today transit agencies tend to be much more thoughtful about their impacts on people of color than highway agencies.
But race is always there in transit discussions (here's what I said about that in Trains, Buses, People.) And whether we talk about it or not (we usually don’t), it's often the direct or indirect motivation behind transit decisions.
Read 24 tweets
31 May 20
Two lessons for transit agencies in the past several days:
(1) Make a plan to never strand riders
(2) Think about an agency’s relationship with the police
First: It is never OK to stop service in the middle of a day with minimal or no advance notice. Transit agencies have a responsibility to try to get people who rely on transit home. (Canceling service w/ advance notice can be OK if employers, schools, services shut down, too.)
Absolutely: Marches and police blockades can block buses. It’s dangerous for drivers to be in the middle of arson or vandalism. And it can be hard to figure out what to do in the moment -- if an agency is not prepared in advance, it may have limited options.
Read 17 tweets

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