Amtrak to complete First Street Tunnel upgrades in October

Amtrak in October will temporarily suspend service at the A-Interlocking track point within the First Street Tunnel in Washington, D.C. for infrastructure upgrades. The "Pause for Progress" project will result in safer, more reliable rail service through the tunnel.

A-Interlocking is a critical track and control point within the tunnel; it is responsible for routing all Amtrak and Virginia Railway Express (VRE) train movements between Washington Union Station and Virginia, Amtrak officials said in a press release. The outage will begin after the end of service on Oct. 16 and conclude before service resumes on Oct. 26.

The existing switches and crossovers at A-Interlocking are beyond their service life. Trains traveling through the interchange point are subject to a 10-mph speed restriction that impacts operations. The nine-day, coordinated service outage is designed to address those limitations and prevent larger, unplanned service disruptions, Amtrak officials said.

During the outage, crews will replace outdated switches and crossovers, rehabilitate the tunnel track base and install modern electric switch systems. The Northeast Regional, Carolinian, Cardinal, Floridian, Silver Meteor, Palmetto and Crescent Amtrak services will be impacted by the outage.