NY/NJ: In a leaky underwater rail tunnel, workers race against time [View all]

Source: Associated Press

In a leaky underwater rail tunnel, workers race against time

By DAVID PORTER
March 26, 2021

WEEHAWKEN, N.J. (AP) — Seven stories below street level on the edge of the Hudson River, a race against time is being waged, foot by painstaking foot.

At stake is the health of a crucial component of the New York region’s aging and overburdened mass transit ecosystem: the North River rail tunnel, a 110-year-old tube that carries multitudes of commuters to and from Manhattan, including Amtrak trains on the busy corridor between Boston and Washington.

With a new tunnel potentially a decade away due to funding questions, Amtrak has embarked on an aggressive and expensive program to fix the most pressing problems in the leaking, crumbing tunnel before they become intractable and force an extended shutdown.

On a recent Saturday morning, workers used heavy machinery to clear away chunks of the tunnel floor after rails and wooden ties had been removed.

The goal was to get at a small pond’s worth of standing water that can degrade the tracks and wreak havoc on the tunnel’s electrical systems, sapping power or sending a false signal that a train is on the tracks.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/travel-new-york-b7d2e80abf9e50be327d3b9285d974a6


Amtrak workers perform tunnel repairs to a partially flooded train track bed, Saturday, March 20, 2021, in Weehawken, N.J. With a new rail tunnel into New York years away at best, Amtrak is embarking on an aggressive and expensive program to fix a 110-year-old tunnel in the interim. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)