@CharlieL The Washington Secondary between Phillipsburg and Hacketstown was only run by Conrail until 1999 when NS took over. C&D took over in April 2019.
I don’t know if they will take over Browns, and personally I hope they don’t.
Why?
Well for starters, Chesapeake and Delaware has some of the highest prices for tariffs and services of any NJ railroad. $250-$500 per car for intra-plant switching, a $1000 charge for handling any car over Plate F and over 263,000 pounds.
If you need a door on a railcar closed, it’s a charge of $250.
Yes. $250 to close a railcar door.
Got any dirty railcars? That’s another $250 charge to whoever is responsible for the dirt. (?!)
How about the “Industry Delay” Charge? Small accident occurs or you need the train to stick around just a little bit longer?
$1000 for the first hour and $250 for every hour afterwards.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made the point.
So what about Conrail prices?
Well that’s a bit tricky because Conrail says NS and CSX provide the pricing info but I’ve heard otherwise. So let’s assume someone is dealing with CSX.
$200 for intra-plant switching regardless of what’s inside the car, vs $500 for hazardous materials under C&D
Around $165 (I think) a day for demurrage.
No tariffs on dirty cars or an “Industry Delay”
$100 or so to close a door on a railcar. (Still a bit much though.)
I won’t bother mentioning NS because their prices are higher than both C&D and CSX. Plus, most of the carload traffic into/out of Oak Island is handled by CSX anyways. Only H76 and 18/19G bring misc loads into Oak Island now whereas half of the CSX trains going in there drop cars off now.
So yeah, can’t say I expect them to pick up any customers if the prices they have are gonna be higher than what CSX/Conrail do.
Sure, the service will be better than Conrail. But honestly, who on the Southern Secondary and Freehold Industrial regularly get cars more than once a week? Builders General, Prestone, and Reed Perine. Woodhaven may need more service, but they might not want to pay the aforementioned prices. (plus additional transfer fees between railroads which can add as much as $400-$750 a car to the total shipping price in some cases!) Woodhaven pays enough as it is seeing as how some of their cars come from Western Canada and Montana.
Part 2 to this post coming shortly.