"Up North" Gawking (District 1 sightings)

codasd wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 12:28 pm 'This is the area I was talking about. What are they going to put way up there? https://youtu.be/pFu3KjEBF34?t=388'

I had the same thought when I first viewed the video. That is a big grade up to those building. Unless they use some of the hill as fill for the siding extensions. Is there any need for a transload facility in that area or an LPG facility?

There is no prospect for LPG customers up there. You have Dead River in Millinocket which is only doing a fraction of the business they did under CMQ. Then in Bangor you have Pine Tree, Dead River, and HO Bouchard now. Then Dead River also has a facility in Houlton, and VL Tammarro has a plant in Calais. Add in that part of Maine is sparsely populated, and I highly doubt anyone would make money off an LPG transload.

Its also worth adding that the Poland Springs bottling plant in Lincoln is officially dead. There were to many hurdles to over come with building a bottling plant on a superfund site, even though the water is being trucked in. It sounds like the laminated lumber company which wanted to build originally in Millinocket officially withdrew the plans for the proposed site in Lincoln recently as well.

Which it doesn't pertain to the discussion about Mattawamkeag, but the Whole Oceans salmon farm in Bucksport is likely dead as well. They have been pushing off the construction since 2020 and have taken an obnoxious amount of money from the town and state which has been tossed to the wind. I was told the permit expired and the town refused to reissue the construction permits due to the delays and the fact that they owe Wardwell Contracting several million for utilities work which was done for the site 4 years ago. I think the Belfast fish farm got shot down by the NIMBY's as well, which I know both were discussed here eons ago, with the potential for the occasional carload of fish food. While also on the topic of the Bucksport Branch, I believe the dirty dirt business is done. Word is the project ran out of funding before they could finish the last phase of the site clean up. AFAIK they still need to dredge the Penobscot from the site south, as high amounts of mercury have been found. And really the only other business, PERC (trash handling facility) has been sold for the 3rd time in less than 8 months. The new owners said they hoped to reopen by 2025, but I have a feeling between the work needed to keep the plant operational, and the new law banning trash companies from disposing out of state C&D material and trash (AKA how the trash plants made profit) I have a feeling its just going to become the newest abandoned mill site.

The only other potential customer in the area would be Cianbro and they are adamant about using trucks and barges to move the steel they use. Even despite the skimpy tie job CSX did last fall, OT-1/NM-1 was still derailing almost every trip. I think the branch is washed out in a few places as well, since the roadmaster opted to stuff several collapsing culverts with ballast, instead of replacing them. But its been a few months since they even patrolled the branch last. There are still lots of trees down on the tracks, which I think are from the wind storm in January. At this point I think its safe to add the Bucksport Branch to the "dead" category.

NIce to see those reports from a month or two ago with car counts on the RUmford branch back up to normal, assume that is still the case and a sign that the mill upgrades are finally complete?

I think thats more due to the jobs taking multiple days to do a round trip on the Branch. I think they are only averaging 2-3 per week. Its doubtful they are that way from the mill coming back online, when they have idled machines last month.

That's a common train size with Jay being gone. Still decent tonnage for one customer each way.

Video posted yesterday on Facebook page shows 92 cars headed to Keag.

LP in New Limerick has been ordering a lot of centerbeams as of late. MNR has them stored in preparation for the upcoming construction season from Millinocket to Fort Kent. However 99% of that traffic goes via CN, LP makes the product here and it gets shipped to NY to get finished and painted. CSX moves a few carloads once every couple of weeks, which are sold as unpainted material by a supplier I want to say in the southeast.

CPF66 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 11, 2024 4:02 pm LP in New Limerick has been ordering a lot of centerbeams as of late.

This one train had 43 of them. What a difference a year makes on this track.

Its not uncommon for this time of year, the mills always start leasing more cars in anticipation for the summer construction season. A few years ago I remember seeing Pan Am move close to 75 to NMJ in just one train. Although CSX is stealing some lumber off CPKC, considering the service shortcomings and high rates on CPKC's end. The larger trains the past few days have been due in part, to the interchange being screwed up. Saturday CSX plugged the yard at Keag and EMR already had cars sitting at Kirby on Monday, which is when CSX dumped another big train on them. The EMR crew ended up timing out before CSX was done breaking up the second inbound. And with two 9K foot trains on EMR that night, EMR 120 had to make a 60 car pick up at Kirby so 121 could fit into the siding. I believe that limited what CSX could take east on Tuesday (I think they only had 10-20 cars). To my knowledge the backlog has pretty much been cleared at this point. EMR ran a few extras and I think CSX sent NM-1 up ahead of the WAMA or whatever its been called these days, so the yard would be cleared out. But on Monday they had the two yard tracks, and the main plugged and CSX had spotted cars between the crossings on the main and on all of the old Permatreat tracks.

This over subscription of the keag interchange supports the view that at least part of the ROW clearing in Winn is for yard capacity expansion

I forgot to add, part of the issue on Monday is that CSX has been trying to run longer trains to Mattawamkeag which include a live interchange with EMR, so that train length factors aren't a problem. When Pan Am wanted to reopen the interchange between 2020 and 2022, the original plan was for EMR to base a crew at Mattawamkeag, which would use the Pan Am power to get the train to Bancroft where they would swap trains with another EMR job out of McAdam. But about the time that was being finalized, Irving opted to only use their own locomotives. Which that decision was made after CP royally screwed them on horse power hours. During a container rush, Irving didn't have enough power to keep up with demand, so they were using run through power from CP. The only issue with that was CP was sending over all the clunkers that they had at Saint-Luc which had to be repaired before they could head back to CP. Which I believe as part of the agreement Irving ended up getting stuck with the bill. It probably wouldn't have been as big of a deal, if CP wasn't charging them astronomical rates for junk power.

Todays east bound was only 15 or so cars, all empties. 5 will be dropped at NMJ for Irving.

Its also worth noting Irving doesn't appear to be getting clay slurry via Searsport anymore. The past few weeks G13 (Searsport Local) has only had 2-3 cars for GAC and 1-2 for Dead River at Searsport. Likewise, there have been a few 5 car blocks of the UTLX and SHPX slurry cars Irving leases, which have been going to Rigby. I am not sure if those cars are being loaded at Portland or if they are going to OMYA. There have also been acid cars that go to GAC which are now going via CSX the past few weeks, which doesn't seem like much, but thats probably 20 cars a week that CP is now loosing.

It seems like Sprague has stopped receiving clay slurry in Portland as well. I haven't seen any tank cars at Yard 6 in several weeks. I was under the impression that most of those WFRX tank cars were shuttling between Portland and Rumford

Hearing more rumors of a startup intermodal operation out of Maine this year (not specific on Rigby or WTVL but I'd guess Rigby). One would assume a single stack operation would tack only existing intermodals out of Worcester to get going, and could snag some JB Hunt and Schneider business on the upstart. We shall see.

From what I read on-line, Maine is having a trash disposal/recycling crisis - perhaps it will join other New England states and start shipping municipal waste to out-of-state landfill facilities?