Service won’t start on the South Shore Line’s new West Lake Corridor until late this year, General Manager and President Michael Noland said Wednesday.
“We discovered that an element of the contractor’s work that should have been done along the way wasn’t done,” he told the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District’s board of directors during their meeting in Chesterton.
While inspecting the new rail line being built, railroad officials discovered stray voltage from the overhead power lines for the electric trains was going into the rails and the ground. The voltage must stay within the railroad’s right of way.
Amid concerns over the possibility that that stray voltage could corrode metal, including utility equipment nearby, F.H. Paschen Ragnar Benson Joint Venture will install isolation pads to keep that stray voltage within bounds.
“We won’t be doing anything until that’s resolved,” Noland said. Only then can the system be powered up.
“One of the things that’s going to be a challenge is the supply chain,” he said. This is something that other electric rail lines use across the country, including Metra, but it’s a specialty item. Acquiring the volume of material and the haste to install it complicate the purchase of the isolation pads.
Board member Carl Baxmeyer, who represents St. Joseph County, asked if the isolation pads could be purchased from multiple vendors to get the quantity needed.
That wouldn’t be an issue as long as they are available when needed and meet specifications, Noland said, but it’s more likely that a factory will do a special run to produce enough of them.
The West Lake Corridor is a design/build project, so this is something F.H. Paschen Ragnar Benson Joint Venture will have to figure out, Noland said.
In March, Noland had told the board he expected service to begin by Halloween, but hopefully sooner. That was before he learned about this complication.
Munster trolley crash
Christin Nance Lazerus/Post-Tribune NICTD contractors moved a beam into place Monday, Dec. 11, 2023, at a railroad bridge located at Broadmoor and Manor avenues in Munster. Opening of the West Lake Corridor has been delayed until later this year, officials said Wednesday. (Christin Nance Lazerus/Post-Tribune)
A more positive note came from the bridge construction this week in Munster.
Tuesday night and Wednesday, crews worked to put the permanent bridge in place under the CSX tracks.
CSX granted a 24-hour outage, “which for a Class 1 RR is damn near an act of God to get them to do that,” Noland said.
“When you get the outage and they give you a schedule, you’d better stay within that amount of time,” he said. “It’s a very well-coordinated event.”
“This was a major issue for a number of years to get this finished,” Noland said. The South Shore Line originally planned to begin service this month.
With the bridge in place, workers now have to build out the underpass so riders will be able to access the parking lots.
“That’s track work in that area that has to be finished up,” plus station work, too, Noland said. “This had to happen first. Celebrate the successes when you have them.”
Along the Double Track NWI route, the project is so close to completion Noland can taste it.
The Michigan City station and parking structure is expected to open in June. That and a few signatures are all that remain on the project.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
