Amtrak’s Keystone Service takes passengers between Harrisburg and New York, with stops including Lancaster, Philadelphia, and Trenton, NJ. The project to replace the track between Harrisburg and Lancaster began in March.

Ray Lang is the Amtrak Vice President of State Supported Services says it’s an important project to upgrade and modernize the Keystone line.

“It's $122 million capital project. So, it's big and it's replacing the ties, the ballast and the rail, and it's at its own pace. And we're looking forward to completing this project.”

The Project is expected to be completed in November. Lang credits the project being completed in time due to working on the project during the day.

“It's a very innovative project the way that we're doing the work, because historically you tend to tend to do this kind of track replacement projects at night, during the evening, and then do so by putting up these large light posts, these lamp trucks, basically that light up the railroad so that the employees can work. We're doing this largely during daylight hours and primarily because the topography of the land there is very hilly, very narrow in some places, and right away is very narrow. And so, it's very difficult to put those light posts up and light up the railroad. And so, it makes it's easier to do this during the daytime. But what we have really done is we shut down one of the two tracks on that line during the daytime and are doing that work and limiting the number of trains that go through there while the employees are actually on the railroad relaying ties and ballast. And that has meant that we've had to truncate some of the services so that not all of the trains during the daylight hours go between Philly, Lancaster and Harrisburg. Most of them are largely the midday trains are largely Philadelphia just to Lancaster with bus bridges providing a link between the Lancaster Station and Harrisburg. And for those, passengers need to travel all the way through.”

 

 

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