Boston Yard 8 Closer To The End

There's not much produce traffic anymore. Tailed off for a few years now. Even under
CSX, car counts for the market were down.

D

Overhead clearance restricts equipment to the very old 53-foot mechanical refrigerated cars which UP has been retiring. Traffic has shifted to intermodal trailers/containers and/or to other receiving locations that can handle state-of-the-art high-cube railcars. At some point in the not too distant future traffic will completely dry up when all of the cars are retired.

I have always wondered why all the produce cars are UP and have been less and less common in recent years.

Where is the clearance issues that is preventing the modern cars from coming in?

And when you mentioned trailers/containers does that mean the produce is being shipped by truck from another rail receiving facility?

I believe the clearance issues restricting use of the modern high-cube refrigerated cars are likely under I-93 in the FX interlocking area and quite possibly on the NEP lead as well. But, it's been a while since I've been down there so I'm sure someone qualified on the physical characteristics of that area would be able to provide better information. Besides the clearance issue, there is a 263k weight restriction into NEP as well.

My mentioning of trailers and containers was of the intermodal variety once moving via Beacon Park, now via Worcester. What's left in the old lower-capacity reefers directly serving NEP are potatoes, the highest-density (lbs/cu ft) of the perishable commodities with lighter-density lettuce, celery, oranges, apples, pears, cherries, carrots and onions having migrated to truck, intermodal and higher-capacity railcars over the past ~40 years. (As a side note of interest and highlighting their age, some of those old reefers are of BAR potatoe-service origin, if they haven't already been retired)