South Shore suspending weekend service for catenary work Nov. 6-8

Written by jrood

The South Shore is alerting passengers to the last in a series of planned temporary weekend construction outages for 2010. The final weekend outage is planned for November 6-8. During this construction related weekend outage the South Shore Line will not operate trains or shuttle bus service in either direction between South Bend, Ind., and Gary Metro Center beginning 2:30 a.m. Saturday, November 6 thru 3:00 a.m. Monday, November 8.

The South Shore will
operate regular weekend train service between Gary Metro Center and Chicago.

NICTD is in the second year
of a three-year effort to modernize its overhead wire between Michigan City and
Gary. The overhead wire, or catenary, supplies electricity for train propulsion.
This $18-million project will replace more than 100 miles of electrical
conductor, some of which dates back to the 1920s. This wire is old, brittle and
subject to failure. These failures are the single leading cause of significant
service disruptions and lengthy train delays.

The construction plan calls
for the contractor to upgrade many of the components under traffic. However,
the contractor must have uninterrupted weekend access to the track in order
remove old wire and suspend new wire. Nearly all of Phase 2 work will be done
in single-track territory requiring temporary weekend service outages.

During this outage, Amtrak
will stop three additional Wolverine trains in Michigan City, providing weekend
service to and from Chicago. Reservations are required for travel on Amtrak
trains.

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