by roberttosh
Did a little driving around the Biddeford/Portland area on Tue and just wanted to pass along some tidbits. Correct Deck at Biddeford had 7 Plastics Hopper cars in the siding, but no Centerbeams. Nissen (or whatever they call themselves) had two tankcars, but no Flour cars; I guess that's still going by truck. Saw at least one empty centerbeam at Wood Structures (the one off the mainline) from the Rt 111 overpass. Was surprised to see 2 loaded centerbeams at Gillies and Pritties siding just west of Rigby (they never seem to have cars on their sidng) and saw several Boxcars at the nearby Merrills warehouse. Rigby didn't look as dead as I expected with several long cuts of cars in the middle of the yard. There was one switcher working the East end. There was also a long string of empty Centerbeams stored in the yard. The new siding heading west from the yard is completely laid out with the switch installed too just East of Winnicks Neck road. Track still needs to be ballasted and tamped though. Signal poles are up at that switch and at what's now the crossovers at Cooks, but no lights. Clearly still some work to be done before this new track is in service. Saw a WB leave Rigby @ 2:00 PM with two engines and maybe 70+ cars (lots of boxcars, tanks and covered hoppers) and an EB with maybe 50 cars and 2 engines come by somewhere between 7 & 8:00 PM (mainly boxcars). Also saw what looked like the Biddeford switcher heading back to Rigby just before the EB freight and just after an EB DE went by, with 7 empty centerbeams (that's quite a few) and an empty Cargill Tankcar (am guessing from Nissen). Pretty cool to see 3 EB trains within 20 minutes or so. Guess that's about it.
