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First, the removal of 5 miles of old track along the 27-mile Waterbury Branch will require the busing of passengers from April 25 to May 3. Bus schedules will approximate the train schedule, and notices will be posted at stations and online at www.ct.gov/dot and www.mta.info/mnr. The Waterbury Branch has stations in Naugatuck, Beacon Falls, Seymour, Ansonia and Derby/Shelton.
Second, to accommodate the final phase of interim repairs to the 110-year-old, four-track Devon railroad bridge over the Housatonic River, additional service modifications will be required.
This 1,067-foot movable bridge must be replaced in the future, but requires interim repairs to sustain reliable service. Completion of the Track 3 work on the Devon Bridge is a prerequisite to the next and final phase of CTDOT’s overhead catenary wire replacement, a $106 million upgrade that is on target for completion in 2017.
Customers who usually transfer to main line trains at Bridgeport will instead get off the Waterbury train at a new, temporary Devon transfer station, cross the bridge and wait for a train at Track 1.
Northbound customers will be dropped off for main line trains at the Devon Transfer and board a waiting train for the trip to Waterbury and stops in between.
The temporary station will have lights and a public address system. This six-month, $1 million phase of work involves steel repairs, a new wooden deck and new miter rails on the Track 3 span. When the bridge work on Track 3 is completed, CTDOT will take the adjacent track, Track 1, out of service for wire replacement. This will leave three tracks in service to minimize disruption to the New Haven Line. Track 3 will be out of service for six months during the work on Devon Bridge.
Because Track 3 is where trains from Waterbury merge onto the main line, accommodations will have to be made to branch line service during the six-month track outage.
A new, temporary transfer point will be built where the branch and the main line connect, at a piece of track called the “wye.” Two four-car-length platforms will be built, one on the branch and one on top of Track 3, with a walkway connecting them.
Because main line trains will be making an extra stop at the Devon Transfer, about a minute of running time will be added to scheduled trip times on those trains.
This change will be reflected in the Metro-North new schedules effective April 26.
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