Keystone Corridor - High-speed Corridor

High-speed Corridor

In 1999, the Keystone Corridor was formally recognized as a "designated high speed corridor" by the FRA, as part of the TEA-21 transportation bill. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will fund half of the project's costs, and Amtrak will fund the other half.

The goals of this project include:

• 90-minute travel time between Harrisburg and Philadelphia on express trains
• 105-minute travel time on normal trains
• Raising track speed to 110 miles per hour (180 km/h) where possible
• Increasing the number of daily round trips from 11 to 14
• Replacing diesel trains with electric on Keystone service

A summary appears in an FRA report.

Construction on the USD $145,000,000 project began on March 7, 2005 and was completed in Fall, 2006. Amtrak's press releases have summarized the improvements as:

• Installation of 80 track miles (128 km) of new concrete ties
• Installation of more than 40 new track switches
• A new signal system between Lancaster and Harrisburg
• Upgrade of 16 existing bridges and culverts
• Upgrade of overhead electrical wires (catenary)
• Upgrade of electrical substations to support use of electric locomotives.

The installation of concrete ties also included replacement of the old jointed rail with new continuous welded rail (136 RE), track surfacing, and alignment. Track surfacing is adjusting the vertical profile of the two rails, leveling the rails on straight track and introducing superelevation (banking) in curves. The 80 miles (130 km) are broken down as:

• 25 miles (40 km) on track 4 from Park (Parkesburg) to Cork (Lancaster) interlockings
• 25 miles (40 km) on track 1 from Cork (Lancaster) to Park (Parkesburg) interlockings
• 15 miles (24 km) on track 3 from Paoli to Overbrook
• 15 miles (24 km) on track 2 from Overbrook to Paoli

Amtrak replaced the signal and communications system and rebuilt the overhead catenary wire and upgraded electrical substations to provide the power needed to operate several electric trains simultaneously on this line. Since October, 2006, Amtrak, having sufficient Acela high-speed trainsets, started using electric push-pull trainsets for the first time since the mid-1990s. Using AEM7 locomotives and former Metroliner m.u. coaches modified into a push-pull cab-coach (with the locomotive "pulling" westbound trains and "pushing" eastbound), the electrified service is currently used on the Harrisburg-New York Keystone service, while the Genesis diesel locomotives are still used for the Pittsburgh-New York Pennsylvanian service. Like the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak trains use, between Paoli and Overbrook, the high-speed inner rails for normal operations.

Three at-grade crossings with roads remain as of 2009, and all three will be eliminated in a separate project. In July 1999, PennDOT budgeted USD $9 million for this project to eliminate all three crossings; however, these funds were later used for other projects. One of the crossings is in Elizabethtown and another in Mount Joy. The third, between Mount Joy and Lancaster, has been blocked off using fencing and jersey barriers. Additional funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will be used to complete the elimination of all three at-grade crossings in 2010.