CSX Acquisition of Pan Am Railways

QB 52.32 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2024 8:45 amMr. Norman, just to offer further placement within Mr. Moldover's information and what I recall was your experience riding a camp train up to Maine through Worcester,

Actually, Mr. QB, the camp was near Meredith (on Red Hill Road, Multinborough) NH, and we got there on the State of Maine, which had a GCT-Concord Pullman line. Our car was handled as part of that line. The rest of the way to camp Northbound was on Boston & Maine Transportation busses. For you bus fans, I think they looked like this.

Returning home, we boarded at Meredith. Motive power I recall was a BL-2.

And finally , can't do a "memory lane"; the Googlemobile hasn't been up Red Hill Road.

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread or what, but it seems recently that the M426/427 jobs are indeed quite large. I have no real data to present, but seemingly each train is over 100 cars, sometimes closer to 120, 130, ect

Today I saw M426 with well over 100 cars and yesterday's M426 parked from Cooks all the way out to Scarborough (old 203). On the other end L070's train was parked on the newly redone 2 track from Rigby East just past Oil Plant. Gave me some hard feelings of a few years ago when Pan Am had trains stacked up on either end and Rigby was plugged.

Didn't have a good look at the yard, but certainly things seem to be moving in the right direction volume wise. Withstanding all the 426/427 traffic doesn't have any work along the way (except there were some Ayer's up front in the form of water and Sappi traffic)

FWIW, M427-01 was a whopping 50 cars. M427-02 has yet to make it to CP 45 as of 19:40.

Edit: they finally passed at 20:44, with the usual trio of GEVOs, and 130 or so cars, blocked by the yard job working the track closest to the camera. Took 13 minutes for them to pass.

Today's M426 had 93 for Rigby.

Seems to me that we're heading for additional train starts along some length of the railroad over Barbers, as indicated in CSX's STB acquisition filing, Conrail's muscular history, reported rumors and toward future traffic potential including in what might be possible for intermodal without full overhead clearances, likely next year.

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Wed Jun 26, 2024 7:04 am Over at the CPKC Saint John Intermodal topic, Mr. Kuband (who surely has participated somewhere here at this "epic") notes that the Maine Central has clearance issues which have kept Chessie from making Intermodal (and other multi-level equipment) rates from and to Saint John, NB.

Might anyone here know the nature and scope of these clearance issues and how they might be (or are being) addressed?

172 obstructions have to be cleared and like most eastern US doublestack clearance projects will require a high proportion of public funding to get from planning to expensive completion, in this case involving 9 digits and not only Maine, but Massachusetts as well. This particular improvement project has been part of the 2 DOT"S planning over the past 20-30 years with no funding yet secured.

But, I can't think of an example over the past ~40 years where a railroad chose not to participate in a (potentially) viable intermodal market simply because they didn't have doublestack despite the added constraints until they can be removed and as long as it's feasible within train operations, leaving it for the market to decide. In this case the biggest barrier around transit speed and reliability will likely be removed within this next year, setting the stage for potential.

Simply by way of current illustration, CSX over the long-term continues to handle Port of Baltimore-Midwestern US and Port of Jacksonville-Northeastern US lanes single stack due to 22 obstructions until anticipated 2025 completion of a $466MM overhead clearance project with their 24%, $113MM contribution and the rest public funds.

Mr. QB, from your immediate, it appears single-stack container traffic is more prevalent than I lead myself to believe. Double is "the standard" on any train Uncle Warren sends by my house.

When "I come out East" once or twice a year, all I ever see are passenger trains.

Maybe when I go overseas, I shouldn't "laugh quite as hard" when I see in Austria, their twenty car single stack trains.

Hard to believe there was even a yard there (Bangor) now.

Just thought I'd throw this out there. Doing a bit of looking around on Google Earth I was surprised to see that Moran and its nearby "overflow" pier look emptier than I've ever seen it. Wondering if the auto business has dried up or moved elsewhere (Davisville?).

What could be the future for Charlestown's Mystic Pier Branch if the auto business leaves? Massport has always said it needed an oversize/heavy facility. Moran could certainly fill that bill and rail could be reactivated.

Just wishful thinking probably but an interesting observation.

Filleting and Toupee'ing trains isn't exactly the most efficient way to do doublestack, but it is feasible, as NS did (still does?) for the Ayer-bound trains until those get switched over to the B&A.

I also wonder how much less efficient spine cars really are than doublestack well cars? Sure, the train is longer for a given number of containers, but a relatively low-volume lane like that, it seems to be a minor impact.

NS does single-stack to Baltimore via the NEC (19' clearance plus a gap to the wire) and the Ayer-bound trains, CSX does it in the lanes mentioned above. It certainly can work for some lanes.

I think NS single stacks the Ayer train all the way from Chicago

Yes they do not fillet and toupet at XO anymore.

Per Elkhart IN/North East PA live cam viewing of the NS IM train 264 that departed Chicago on 7/6/24, the 10,000+ ft consist roughly breaks down to 19 double-stacked wells for Taylor (Scranton) followed by ~109 single stacked wells (with a few spines) of Ayer-bound containers and lastly about 45 double-stacked wells/spines headed for Mechanicville. This is a pretty typical 264 consist in 2024.

WRT to Toupeeing/Filleting at Mechanicville, I'm not convinced NS/PAS ever actually did this based on rummaging through my 2012 -2015 digital photo archives of the A&S main line under CP & NS ownership but I could be wrong. The Mechanicville IM yard was opened by NS/Pan Am in 2012 and what I find were 2 pairs of NS trains operating on the A&S: CP 934/935 to/from Ayer comprising single stacks/TOFC and auto racks and 938/939 to from Mechanicville comprising double stacks and auto racks. NS bought the A&S line from CP in fall 2015 and containers and autos were then handled in separate train pairs: 22K/23K for the Taylor/Ayer/Mechanicville containers and 205/206 for the auto racks. It's not clear to me why NS talked about toupeeing/filleting at Mechanicville but the story was widely propagated in corporate press materials. It will be interesting to see how NS reverts to a 934/935-like operating paradigm once it starts using CSX trackage rights east of Voorheesville.

I read something about the whole fillet/toupee concept years ago, so I assumed that they implemented it... maybe wrongly assumed? It seemed logical, if a bit complicated for loading since the Mechanicsville traffic would have to be on the top. There seems to be little international traffic on that route, so even though they can stack a domestic on top of an international, or two internationals, it appears that they just... don't.

Does anyone know what the actual clearance is up to St. John, NB? The CSX clearance map shows everything at AAR Plate E north of Ayer, which is 15'8". This appears to be wrong, as the Pan Am map shows Plate F all the way to Mattawaumkeag, with random sections of Plate H that doesn't connect to anything else at Plate H.

I don't see any good reason why CSX needs double-stack clearances to start up some sort of intermodal service if there is a market for it. Portland would seem like the most obvious spot, but then again, it's not THAT much farther north than Worcester, but it would likely reach more destinations out and back within one shift for the trucker.