J.D. Lang wrote:Thanks F-Line for your in depth analysis. The whole thing that has irked me to no end was the passenger money play. What I think has been lost in all of this is that CT. should do what it can to preserve freight service in what I believe is a valuable and viable freight corridor. There is some important freight service that needs to be preserved and made dependable. The lumber reload in Hawleyville, garbage in Danbury, BD in Canaan, Specialty minerals in Canaan, Sheffield plastics to name a few. Reactivating the Maybrook from Danbury to Derby Jct. would also be in the state’s best interest as far as having a possible deadhead detour route for MN trains in case of problems on the NHL. Letting P&W run their stone trains on the Maybrook and with the Belle Dock in NH having tracks re laid to the terminals may provide a future source of traffic. A decently run corridor with class 2 track could bring in more possible freight to the Danbury area such as propane because many homes in this region have switched over from oil to propane. This winter has proven that suppliers do not have the capacity to supply the demands.
It is such a shame that this cat and mouse game between the HRRC and the state has to carry on this way. I believe preserving this corridor should be a high priority for the state DOT but they seem so enamored in the passenger side of things that I see they are not very interested in improving the viability of rail freight service in this part CT. as an alternative. There is nothing that I can see in the new 30 year plan that even mentions this. The longer that the state does nothing to help this situation the worse the service will get and if they ever do finally get around to owning everything what’s left may not be attractive enough to find someone willing to take on the service. There are many people around here that would love nothing better than to see a wild and scenic rail trail along the Housatonic River. The state DOT needs to re examine some of their priorities.
J.L.
Don't forget Newtown transload, which HRCC pissed away by being absolutely obnoxious neighbors who didn't give a crap about safety. If P&W were running the show they would probably be able to bring something like that back into operation. If not Newtown (because I doubt the rich NIMBY's are ever going to trust a railroad again) then somewhere else. That's I-84 and US 7 trucking relief in a place where the traffic is just awful (and here's Malloy proposing to widen 84 between Exits 3-8 when it was already widened once in the late-80's), and the ability to deliver the goods cross-state. They really don't need to go fishing for a whole lot of online business if they can score a small transload anchor or some yard dropoffs (do they even have rights to more than a parking spot at Cedar Hill? If not then being able to drop anchor in Danbury is something that fills a need they sorely lack anywhere west of the mainline in Groton). There's stone business out there, and P&W hauls a hell of a lot of stone through the neighborhood. And just that little bit ends up being good enough for a profit at minimal expense, and a modest growth track for padding that profit. Class 1 crap track is good enough for the pretty short jog out of Derby where they've got more slots to play with vs. swimming against MNRR traffic to South Norwalk. You're not talking anything more than what they did to get the Valley Line in Wethersfield back to operable condition. Hell...P&W
was willing to do the work itself if HRCC simply deducted the cost from their trackage rights fees. But HRCC wouldn't budge on the fees, HRCC promised them they'd get around to the repairs themselves...and HRCC lied through its teeth so it had to go through the STB. Derby-Danbury is arguably the
most stable piece if you maneuver it to the right hands.
Berkshire's another matter. P&W has zilch to gain from it. I can't even see CSOR having any interest there if they--say--were to pick up PAS's rights out to Derby and get within an overhead rights agreement of their own shot to Danbury-north. All of those carriers already have far superior CSX interchanges and complete north-south corridors from Mass Pike-to-I-95. The 'potential', such that it is, from Berkshire Jct. to Pittsfield, is the kind of thing a CNZR-like mom-and-pop sets sights on as a fixer-upper. A public face like Beliveau or Priscoli who can sell the pants off the railroad and sell a coherent 'corridor' plan to the local Chambers of Commerce about how the company plans to make it self-sufficiently work...can run lean enough to eke a profit on basically donationware equipment, surplus rail hardware, the tiniest flecks of new online business, and their own guile...be good neighbors who punch above their weight with old-fashioned face-to-face customer service...and still have some modern ideas for growth like prioritizing transloads and yard-centric freight villages over the online biz that frankly isn't there, and working those interchanges hard (uptick CSX's revenue intake in Pittsfield and even even a don't-care colossus like Jacksonville will tip its hat and give credit where credit's due). You look at what G&U, for example, has been able to do just with a yard- + modern transload- centric business plan (I think they literally have ONE pre-existing online customer) and impressing the hell out of CSX at the interchange. Check that thread on New England Railfan...the earliest pages then skip ahead to now. Everybody thought Priscoli was barking insane in 2008 sinking $10M of his own money into that 98% dead operation, dead and four-fifths OOS corridor, fallen flag in the making. 5 years later he's making real honest-to-God profits, has a mainline that'll be end-to-end restored in a couple months with
new territory CSX is outsourcing to them, and scoring one incremental but key tactical win after another getting that transload side built up. That's the model to look to here. It's been done in post-industrial CT recently; it's being done today. The Armory Branch and Griffins Secondary were out-of-service for years and years with both studied by Federal Inmate Rowland's asphalt-lined administration for more busway stupidity. A.J. worked 'em like a rented mule back to life. It doesn't take very much if you're smart and can run it right-sized enough where literally any +1 carload of new revenue anywhere is enough sustinence to pocket a profit and proceed one step forward to chasing the next +1 carload.
As long as the Berkshire Line has
that much going for it...and it does...there will always be potential. It's just going to take a few more years to wait Housy out. They're not going to go quickly. The leverage is in the ability to outwait them. And that leverage looks quite a bit better than it did a few months ago now that they don't have shell companies and shell ownership in multiple states to play the con and everybody is starting to move on from this brief passenger distraction that was their best...last...snake oil pitch pitch.
Can MA charge these fixes back against the purchase price? Wonder what the cost would have been at the bankruptcy auction...