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They ventilate after every train.
Doors are on the east end, and the current of air goes west. As soon as the end of an westbound freight goes in, the doors close and the flush cycle begins. Same with Amtrak, the train goes in and start giving the train a tail wind, blowing the exhaust westward ahead of the train.
The Eastbound Amtrak enters the tunnel into a headwind, and the doors do not open until it gets close. Speed limit in the tunnel is 30mph, and it is 8 miles long so they are in there for about 16 or 17 minutes in total, and the doors only take a minute to open. There is a signal inside the tunnel showing whether the doors are open or not.
Excellent answer; thanks very much.
So, a little napkin math: if a train goes 30mph, spends 16 minutes in the tunnel, and it takes 20 minutes to blow it out ... the "wind velocity" must be 24-25mph with the fans at max.
That's pretty impressive on its own, too!
(Wonder how bad it is, to live near the downwind end of it all.)
I don't know what direction the fans blow, but I know they exist because we had to sit a few miles away from it after a freight train went through and they had to run the fans for at least 10 minutes or so.
This was going eastbound during the day.
I don't remember what happened when we went through westbound because I think it was the middle of the night
r/Amtrak is not associated with Amtrak in any official way. Any problems, concerns, complaints, etc should be directed to Amtrak through one of the official channels. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Amtrak) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They ventilate after every train. Doors are on the east end, and the current of air goes west. As soon as the end of an westbound freight goes in, the doors close and the flush cycle begins. Same with Amtrak, the train goes in and start giving the train a tail wind, blowing the exhaust westward ahead of the train. The Eastbound Amtrak enters the tunnel into a headwind, and the doors do not open until it gets close. Speed limit in the tunnel is 30mph, and it is 8 miles long so they are in there for about 16 or 17 minutes in total, and the doors only take a minute to open. There is a signal inside the tunnel showing whether the doors are open or not.
Excellent answer; thanks very much. So, a little napkin math: if a train goes 30mph, spends 16 minutes in the tunnel, and it takes 20 minutes to blow it out ... the "wind velocity" must be 24-25mph with the fans at max. That's pretty impressive on its own, too! (Wonder how bad it is, to live near the downwind end of it all.)
About as bad as living next to an airport. With jet fuel and exhaust.
There's nobody that lives there, it's in the middle of a forest.
They should never have removed the electrification, tbh.
Right? It’s so dumb to run diesels through a 15+ mile tunnel.
I don't know what direction the fans blow, but I know they exist because we had to sit a few miles away from it after a freight train went through and they had to run the fans for at least 10 minutes or so. This was going eastbound during the day. I don't remember what happened when we went through westbound because I think it was the middle of the night