Connecticut Southern (CSOR) Discussion

Larry wrote: Wish they do the whole line like this and go all the way to Willimantic.

Well, I'd love to see that too, but Manchester to Willi needs more than just ties.

Yes, it does need more then just ties, it needs vision as well. I am always looking over the line to Manchester as well as the one through South Windsor and all I see is opportunity. There are many businesses that are located along these lines that I am sure could take some freight service. Some may have in the past but gave it up do to the times as well as the service they received but with the economy the way it is they may just have a change of mind. Just after the CT CO-OP at the end of the line in Manchester is a place that is selling wood pellets. Just past them is a abandon company that with the right marketing could possibly land a new customer. Agway is also on the line and I bet they could use product. I spoke to one of the associates and they do get rail serive up in West Springfield but then it is shipped to them and their other five stores by truck. Four of these Agways are on rail lines in CT. Same through East Hartford along Tolland Turnpike, companies long gone and their buildings are for sale. We need the Governor and Politicians to help bring new customers in to these places and rail service is a major key to some of these places. Heck, I need a job right now and I bet I could work in some of these new businesses if they came to town. Customers along the S. Windsor line are Nassaus Furniture (I worked for them years ago and could not believe all the trucks they would receive from the South with furniture, that could have gone by rail) and also a Pool supply store that could do better on its chemicals I bet. These are just a few as there are many more I can name. By securing new businesses along the line and keep thinking opportunity is out there maybe we can get a customer or two right smack in the middle of Manchester and Willimantic. Then the line would make more sense to open it all the way through. Does CSOR need me to go Market them because I will if given the chance.

Larry wrote:Yes, it does need more then just ties, it needs vision as well. I am always looking over the line to Manchester as well as the one through South Windsor and all I see is opportunity. There are many businesses that are located along these lines that I am sure could take some freight service. Some may have in the past but gave it up do to the times as well as the service they received but with the economy the way it is they may just have a change of mind. Just after the CT CO-OP at the end of the line in Manchester is a place that is selling wood pellets. Just past them is a abandon company that with the right marketing could possibly land a new customer. Agway is also on the line and I bet they could use product. I spoke to one of the associates and they do get rail serive up in West Springfield but then it is shipped to them and their other five stores by truck. Four of these Agways are on rail lines in CT. Same through East Hartford along Tolland Turnpike, companies long gone and their buildings are for sale. We need the Governor and Politicians to help bring new customers in to these places and rail service is a major key to some of these places. Heck, I need a job right now and I bet I could work in some of these new businesses if they came to town. Customers along the S. Windsor line are Nassaus Furniture (I worked for them years ago and could not believe all the trucks they would receive from the South with furniture, that could have gone by rail) and also a Pool supply store that could do better on its chemicals I bet. These are just a few as there are many more I can name. By securing new businesses along the line and keep thinking opportunity is out there maybe we can get a customer or two right smack in the middle of Manchester and Willimantic. Then the line would make more sense to open it all the way through. Does CSOR need me to go Market them because I will if given the chance.

CT has on its long-range plan a study of commuter rail to Willimantic. It's being driven by the most recent failure to get the I-384 Bolton-Willimantic extension built when it got fast-tracked by the Bush Administration in '04 and then immediately collapsed again at loggerheads over the routing (this time with community support more amenable, but the Army Corps being more hostile). The safety improvements CDOT made to "Suicide 6" 10 years ago only have a 15-20 year shelf life before the increasing congestion puts the road right back where it started on congestion and unacceptably high crash risk. If I-384 can't get one more crack at a routing, CR is the literal last option to do something. I wouldn't expect action until west-of-Hartford gets some sort of commuter solution and--hopefully--the busway gets killed deader than dead before it destroys the state's chances of ever building another project. But they're determined to get some hard data in a study by decade's end before Suicide 6 goes critical again. And, truly, that's not an if but a how-soon before 6 rockets back to the top of worst roadways in the state. The big-box growth along the corridor is worrisome.

In the shorter term, they're going to have to figure out every means possible of mitigating the traumatic I-84 viaduct replacement that's going to create some of the biggest traffic jams the state has ever seen. No way to avoid a disruptive billion-dollar construction project because that thing is ready to collapse. The study completed last year recommended not even bothering with an in-place rebuild but instead trenching and straightening 84 in a cut. Cost projections came out cheaper at the 50-year range for doing the max-pain build at once instead of redoing a viaduct that would have to be redone all over again in 50 years. Only a matter of how long they can defer it with paint jobs on the current viaduct before they have to get going, so that's a find-the-money or else (an I-35W kind of or-else!). Would make commuter rail a pretty attractive short-term solution they could implement quickly if it just shuttled Manchester-Hartford with an all-critical stop at Buckland Hills and I-291/I-384. Or a mile-plus extension to a park and ride at Exit 65/Routes 30 & 83 in Vernon at the very spot where rush hour traffic starts building.

But it also makes the freight investment look very bullish. CSO being able to move more goods out of Manchester or South Windsor is a big deal when you consider how critical it is to get every single truck possible off the road while 84 is being ripped to shreds. Makes me curious if they'd be able to angle for some truck traffic transloading shaped around the 291 corridor. Would make improving the Suffield/Bradley Branches a top priority, as well as maybe trying to utilize the long J.C. Penney/Hartford Distributors siding for other expanded purpose given its location right smack at the 291/384 interchange coupled with increase usage of Manchester Ctr. and East Hartford to get the traffic spreading out on 6/44/30/83/5/15/2. The highway access they've got fanning out in every direction north, east, and southeast of Hartford--plus the southwest and northwest bypasses--is pretty sweet. The other piece of the puzzle is whither Pan Am. They hate paying Amtrak's overhead fees and have cut back to once a week to Berlin and Waterbury. The PTC mandate and their utter unpreparedness for it is going to make that route even less palatable when the Springfield Line gets ACSES in the ongoing improvements. PAS doesn't even use their Waterbury interchange with Naugy, the Derby interchange with P&W and Housy, or the Cedar Hill interchange with CSX. I'll be somewhat shocked if they're still operating that line within 5 years, or going to CT at all save for retained, but unused, overhead rights on the Springfield Line as a contingency. That's a golden opportunity for CSO, backed by RailAmerica's deeper pockets, to make a bid for the Highland and get a complete I-84 paralleling route and access to all the diverging west-of-Hartford roads...9/72/8/10. They can certainly make better use of Berlin, Plainville and Waterbury yards than PAS cares to, and that's potential big paydirt when the I-84 reconstruction happens.


Even without a likely connection to their corporate sister NECR they're in pretty good position to make themselves bigger players by getting their current infrastructure in gear and trying to position themselves a little better for getting west and/or south of Hartford Yard. And I do think long-term there's going to be momentum in favor of the Willimantic connection. Both for eastern commuter rail with the I-384 build looking like an insurmountable obstacle and fact that it is a viable double-stack route direct to Hartford. Willimantic interchange is already DS, Springfield Line can't be because of clearances (esp. clearances under electrification if that comes to pass), Armory Branch is a much thornier restoration because of encroachment in MA, and beyond RailAmerica's obvious interest in an inter-division interchange there's also the matter that P&W's going to have full DS on both its mains but can't get those goods anywhere close to its central/western CT holdings because of NEC clearances and congestion. If both Class III's had an overhead route to Hartford Yard bridging the (non-NEC) gap between the Eastern and Western CT networks it would be a big deal and breathe some life into the otherwise low-value CT freight network that west of the two north-south New London trunklines is totally shut out from the double stack revolution the rest of New England is banking on. Planting the flag on the 84/91 corridors, even as a Class III node for lack of meaningful in-state Class I/II action, makes a lot of sense. No doubt that's why RailAmerica is investing heavily in CT and P&W isn't backing away from trying to shore itself up in the nearer-term with its Housy dispute over Maybrook Line conditions and talk of thru service on the Valley Line. Neither regional carrier would bother angling for this small stuff or trying to keep their light-traffic branches well-maintained if they didn't see an avenue for much more lucrative synergies with the really big DS stuff they're doing on the mains. For that reason I think Manchester-Willimantic is one of the only potential de-landbankings in the next 25 years that got a truly good shot of actually succeeding where 95% of them never get past wishful thinking.


(But if we are engaging in wishful thinking, the next possibly futile stab at I-384 might as well add the design option to grade a new rail ROW on the extremely wide "greenway" median that got the last attempt slightly better community support. The existing ROW conveniently crosses the discontiguous expressways at both ends of the current Bolton-Willimantic gap, and would offer up a much more direct and higher-speed--HSR-speed--route while not cannibalizing the trail and also allowing the extremely difficult highway EIS to kill 2 birds with one stone. While sweetening the pot for all the warring factions they have to get on same page. Lay rail whenever it's truly needed, but in the 1-in-a-million chance the highway can ever be built don't pass up the opportunity to pre-grade it for multimodal).

Well-said, F-Line. One more thing I'd like to mention, as it seems relevant to Hartford-Willimantic commuter rail: the Hartford-Willimantic route is one of the few express bus lines that CTTransit provides service on outside of peak hours. It's not a lot (4 inbound in the morning, 6 return in the afternoon and evening), but it does lend some credence to the idea that there's a market for it. I think the possibility of commuter service could help sway some politicians and/or public opinion if serious discussions start happening about rebuilding the line.

Of course, it's probably going to be 10 years before CT starts looking at it, unless someone like RailAmerica pursues the freight part of the project on their own.

Well, I never thought I'd defend a rail trail but...
...the Hop River SP is actually one of the best maintained and well thought out trail systems I've seen.
Sadly, there are SEVERAL bridges on this line that have either been removed (over the road) or filled in (under the road.)
Reconstruction of these crossings would be in the millions.

FWIW they're currently replacing the bridge that spanned Route 316 in Andover with a pretty nice looking wooden through truss bridge. But it doesn't appear to be large enough to handle rail traffic. It's assembled over by the auto repair place and post office on Route 6 and looks like it just needs to be moved into place.

Cosmo wrote:Well, I never thought I'd defend a rail trail but...
...the Hop River SP is actually one of the best maintained and well thought out trail systems I've seen.
Sadly, there are SEVERAL bridges on this line that have either been removed (over the road) or filled in (under the road.)
Reconstruction of these crossings would be in the millions.

Well, that's why they really should make their last/best pitch at 384 with multimodal. This ROW's also on the Amtrak 2040 vision as an inland NEC candidate. Some HSR-spec grading to Willimantic would do a lot of good narrowing the Amtrak options and be a big score for making Hartford a premier NEC destination. East-of-Hartford via Springfield Line is the only part of that bypass plan that looks buildable at all...no room for a new ROW D.C.-NYC or Shoreline, piecing together the west-of-Hartford routing looks insurmountably hard at the community level, and they can't do any route (i.e. full old Air Line) that misses Hartford. Between 2 birds with one stone on the EIS and roadbed, the multiple routing options out of Willimantic, usability in the much shorter/medium term for slow-speed service that works permanently without being dependent on Amtrak ever coming to town, preserving the existing trail, and the critical freight link keeping Hartford from getting shut out of the intermodal market...I think they've got to make their best case. Very attractive option, maybe enough to push the highway build over the top. I just wish the Army Corps weren't so hard-headed. That last episode was a textbook case of the Corps making political turf wars out of their preferred builds far more contentious than the actual environmental impact differences between alternatives.

And if 384 is a temporal impossibility, the trail may simply have to go or be re-routed for the common good. When the alternative is Suicide 6 now and forever, it approaches a tipping point that hardly any potential de-landbankings in the country has yet reached. I never ever thought the highway would get to the point of having cautiously optimistic local consensus on a routing, but the north-of-Hop River one proposed 10 years ago was a breakthrough in at finally quieting the opposition to negotiable levels. Unfortunately the Army Corps would not budge from its south-of-river preferred routing that's been rejected time and again by the locals, and that was the end of that. But the desperation in those residents is getting palpable. It's not so much that the commute's horrible (though it is), it's that people really would prefer not to die on their commute on one of the most dangerous roads in the Northeast. I have to drive it occasionally, and while it's 10x better than it was pre-reconstruction it's still a positively fearful trip. I can't fathom how psychologically taxing it must be to do a white-knuckle drive twice a day 5 days a week. If their pain threshold has finally reached the improbable where sacrificing conservation land for a controversial highway routing has achieved near-consensus, it's most certainly reached the threshold where sacrificing trail for active rail is a trade they're willing to make.


BTW...384's got a pretty nice trail connector running most of its length. They don't lose bike/ped connectivity if the Manchester Ctr.-Bolton Notch trail gets displaced. Bolton-Willimantic's the tough dilemma. Which is why 384 + rail grading is the best of all options if they ever get another at-bat.

I read at LocoNotes Yahoo group that all the CSOR engines are for sale. Lease units will replace them.

Took this picture of the new CSOR Engine House the other day 12/30/2011. Looks almost complete and just in time for the real winter to set in. This is good news for CSOR and lets hope more is to come by this.

This STB filing flew under the radar the week of Xmas:

http://www.stb.dot.gov/filings/all.nsf/ ... 231523.PDF

CSO's abandoning half the Suffield Branch between MP 2.0 and 4.4. Does this mean the line is now only the Bradley Branch and no longer two-pronged?

The map provided seems to indicate that MP 2.0 is at the Suffield Street underpass, so it doesn't look like that fork is going entirely...though there doesn't seem to be any industry between the Bradley switch and the bridge. They might be cutting a deal with the town to let them remove the bridge, which IIRC is low and has sharp curves on both sides.

csor2010 wrote:The map provided seems to indicate that MP 2.0 is at the Suffield Street underpass, so it doesn't look like that fork is going entirely...though there doesn't seem to be any industry between the Bradley switch and the bridge. They might be cutting a deal with the town to let them remove the bridge, which IIRC is low and has sharp curves on both sides.

http://g.co/maps/jhbz5

Yikes...that is tight.

Nothing but a dozen houses abutting, so the whole thing must be going north of the switch. It wouldn't make any sense to retain the 3/4 mile from the switch to the bridge as a storage track with the Bradley Branch having a much more secure 3-track runaround of equal length next to Route 75 industry instead of out in the woods next to residences who surely wouldn't want anything parked there. Might be some sort of transactional formality if the town's removing the bridge and maybe eyeing a trail from there to Suffield Depot if they only turn that over. Next crossing is at the literal switch so they might not be so keen on anything town-landscaped that reaches Mather St.

I wonder if the next step is consolidation of the "main" under state ownership since it's now an awkward outer-half state/inner-half private split instead of a contiguous private line out to one branch and a self-contained state-owned branch. Looks like only 2 active customers on CSO's 2 miles, all within the first 2500 feet between the Springfield Line and Route 159. And they've been sounding the mayday about the deplorable track conditions and their inability to physically make it to Bradley much longer if they don't get some help rehabbing it. Not enough upside in holding down the property when all the value is on the publicly-owned portion and they want/need the infrastructure assistance to run there reliably. Situation that screams for a barter to the state: track ownership in exchange for track rehab at a nominal sale price.

Darn! It'll be a shame if that bridge goes, it's pretty unique and rather picturesque. If they take it out for better roadway it'll pretty much destroy its beauty. the abutments and the central pier would go.
But, on the other hand, if there aren't any customers up there, makes no sense to hang onto a 2mi branch to nowhere.

No more Huckleberry...Once Laureno-Stevenson Lumber left a few years ago it was pretty obvious this branch was doomed. I believe this is the Windsor Locks and Suffield RR, built in 1868. Suffield was very resistant to to the railroad in the mid1800s which is probably why the Hartford-Springfield line crosses the CT River at Enfield. When Suffield finally suscribed, they paid $25K of the 100K capitization and it merged into the New Haven in 1871. Good reading on the line is found in The Biography of a Town. pages 172-175. I don't recall the author, I photocopied the pages years ago.

Sadly, I have never seen a train on this line but would love to see some pictures with a K1 class or RS3 : ) At one time the line crossed Mountain Rd and delivered coal to the private school.

Probably only hope for this line would be road salt delivery for Town of Suffield but unlikely in these environmentally correct times.
I don't believe Suffield has the $$ to remove to bridge on it's own either without state or government assistance. The townpeople can't even agree on getting a proper library in town.


I had hoped if I ever hit the lottery, I would buy the line. Other than the bridge, the RT75 crossing, and neighbors it would make a real nice private railroad. Most likely now will be a trail since it borders Stoney Brook (?) Park. The Halloween storm made a mess out of this line.

What sort of trackage/yard/sidings remain in Suffield these days? I haven't been through there since the Conrail days and I wonder if it's worth a visit before it gets ripped up.