CSX Acquisition of Pan Am Railways

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Plenty of International traffic from Asia and Europe is on the Horizon for CSX/CP/NS. CSX didn't buy ST just to go after 25mph running with 30 car trains xD. The mills are not a stable long term investment.
You guys would at how much Mellon and CSX are spending on this transaction in the courts. CSX and CP had a meeting with shippers in Portland not that long ago. After CSX, CP head of marketing spoke explaining the very real markets that are presently available on either side of the border. Get ready for oil, racks, stacks, grain, ethanol etc to be zooming across the Maine Border. Time to modernize New England

CN9634 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 31, 2021 8:35 am
The comment on majority of Irving traffic going to NY is a huge mis-categorization. First off, they produce a variety of products from Lumber, to pulp, paper, tissue, ect. Each market is different. Lumber sticks around mostly locally although it can go to Toronto and the Midwest, every now and again some loads make it far west. Paper and pulp goes all over the place, their pulp is the northern blends of NBHK and NBSK, which they have either contract or spot market sales. Some goes to their plant in Georgia, while the rest can go anywhere and everywhere. Paper will go to Toronto, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Chicago, Minnesota/Wisconsin in particular, Texas, California, Mexico to name a few major points. You can see Irving cars all over the continent especially now that they've beefed up their 50'HC fleet.
https://pub-saintjohn.escribemeetings.c ... entId=8150

As you pointed out, most of the lumber stays in the Eastern US, so that traffic, which is a major part of their franchise, is in serious jeopardy of diversion to CSX. The Paper & Pulp does go everywhere, but a large percentage of it goes to the Eastern US, which again will be in major jeopardy. CP can still hang on to the traffic that goes West of the Mississippi, but now they are going to be competing for that traffic against a much more formidable carrier in CSX vs Pan Am, so even that business will be much tougher to hang on to. Pretty much the only pulp and paper traffic they can really bank on going forward is stuff terminating on the CP, which I don't believe there is very much of. In terms of their other big commodity, LPG, they now pretty much own the Bangor market with multiple terminals, but you can be sure that CSX isn't going to settle with being fenced out and will be looking to develop a terminal of their own in that area as they can move LPG from the Marcellus single line much more economically than CP can from its' origins, so again that traffic is in jeopardy. Ditto for LPG going up to the county. No matter how you slice it, the fact is that the CSX acquisition of Pan Am is going to inflict some major damage in CP's carload business, which again is already only averaging a less than impressive 30 cars a day across the Moosehead.

GTIKING wrote: ↑Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:06 am CSX didn't buy ST just to go after 25mph running with 30 car trains xD. The mills are not a stable long term investment.

Get ready for oil, racks, stacks, grain, ethanol etc to be zooming across the Maine Border.

The mills are not going away, have switched to growth products and are actually increasing production. Current train size is a lot more than 30 cars and will only grow with improved single line service into Maine and the Maritimes. I don't see CSX being interested in anything you mentioned other than potentially CBR.

Just remember originating carrier gets first stab at the routing… ethanol originates on CP, LPG and crude originates on CP, grain and potash… CP…. CSX has a lot of destination freight, especially in their New England franchise. Maine and NB gives them an excellent load origination point, will allow them to street turn their containers they are otherwise repo’ing empty back west.

If you don’t think a lot of paper terminates on CP you should look at the Quad footprint in Wisconsin… truth be told a lot of it is on CN with haulage rights to CP, but it’s within a few miles of the interchange. Wait til CPKC is a thing.

My point is, I think both can thrive in their own developments here. And let’s be honest, Guilford tried to accomplish a good/fast/cheap way of life, none of their projects were well capitalized so they only ever scratched the surface of any potential. There is plenty to go around in the aforementioned ‘Atlantica’ market. I look forward to the next few years seeing actual trains and train service. It’s already been great seeing what CP has accomplished thus far, can’t wait to see CSX modernization.

My double post violation also would be to add another thought-- the importance of shortlines. With two of the regionals being scooped up the past two years, the niche opportunity and service carload growth shortines bring to the table will be even moreso. It's known that Class I's chase trainload growth whenever possible, and cast off smaller serviceable items to shortlines just for traffic handover anyways.

I think you see that with the SLR all-of-a-sudden being interested in their line to Portland again to the dismay of the rail-trail folks, getting another 5-year deal to try to make something happen. I can see an LPG or transload guy moving to East Deering, then Eldridge can finally utilize the $90K they spent on having their switch reinstalled just before SLR pulled the plug in 2015.

Lastly, now we know that Finger Lakes has put on the pause for the Rockland Branch, I've heard rumor of another suitor emerging, one who already has some switching operations here in Maine and has three ex-CP GP9s en route. Just a rumor, but we'll see what happens... the Rockland Branch (or Low Road) may serve to be a valuable development area for customers that CSX deems unworthy of their attention. I could see whomever takesover Rockland also getting running rights straight to Rigby on CSX's request to keep those valuable crews on the big freights.

Yeah for those asleep Maines paper market bottomed out between 2012-2013.

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The mill traffic will never come back to what it was, many of the mills PAR serviced were merged and relocated to the Midwest and South East in 2012. Right after that CSX stopped utilizing their overhead rights to keag and traffic continued to plummet landing us to our current state of the railroad

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This is 2021 not 1942. Most things are digital now and I do not see the mills coming back to Maine.

I am bothered you don't see the elephant in the room. As I said before, a class 1 railroad just doesn't go about buying a dumpy regional that needs substantial investment if there was little to no traffic to be generated. CSX is sitting on a nice pile of cash right now post PSR and they wouldn't be foolish to throw it away during their recent growth phase.

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You don't do that for 50' boxcars.

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It was a constant parade of traffic and adding to the excitement was the constant game of leap frog they played on account of too many trains not enough crew.

Last I checked you still can't make digital cardboard boxes, packaging/wrapping paper, release paper, toilet paper, paper towels, etc and that's where the mills are concentrating their efforts now, which are growth markets. In terms of CSX clearing the line to Keag for DS service, can you please show me where you read that?

GTIKING wrote: ↑Sun Oct 31, 2021 2:40 pm [false information deleted]

It was a constant parade of traffic and adding to the excitement was the constant game of leap frog they played on account of too many trains not enough crew.

Not sure where you are getting your figures from but there hasn't been more than 2-3 scheduled round trip manifests a day west of Rigby since the 70's or early 80's. They never came close to running all those symbols at the same time.

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I'm not spoon feeding this to you guys anymore.Put your ear to the ground and do your homework. Look at the bigger picture.
Sorry, Ports & Rails or whatever blow hard tabloid doesn't count.

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I grew up on the main. Just about heard and caught everything that passed the house.

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As someone who worked in Billerica at the time period, I can vouch that those symbols weren't all in use as daily symbols simultaneously. Symbols changed, extras ran when needed and carried one-off symbols, and for a period of time Rigby was closed and bypassed shifting all the switching to East Deerfield. EDRU/EDWA/EDNM replaced EDPO while SEWA replaced SEPO during this time (and their respective westbound symbols). The Deerfield job ran 3-sided and every destination ran every 3rd day, in theory at least. So instead of a daily EDPO you had EDRU one day, EDWA the next, and EDNM the day after. AYPO had been an as-needed symbol until more recently when water traffic started up and then the new arrangement with CSX.

By 2011-2012 or so they were back switching in Rigby and everything had reverted to "PO" symbols.

GE wanted nothing more than to make money and saw a potential opportunity - probably because in talking with their larger customers on NS and CSX they both probably bemoaned the fact that Pan Am was just stealing their units. That continued long after 2010.

Yes, symbols change all the time, and in terms of daily manifest train counts it's been 2 (sometimes 3) each way West of Rigby for decades now.

GTIKING wrote: ↑Sun Oct 31, 2021 2:40 pm [false information deleted]

It was a constant parade of traffic and adding to the excitement was the constant game of leap frog they played on account of too many trains not enough crew.

These jobs were not all run simultaneously / daily and the main reason Guilford ran so many trains is because their power was sh*t and they had no telemetry! They would run 3 jobs East of Deerfield because they couldn't haul more than 40 cars over the hill, I know I made the trains up. There's a reason their tonnage was always "3999".

Soon after PAS formed and the NS power began on the manifests the tonnage went up and the jobs down. It happened again when the C40s came.

I don't recall ever running 100 car slurry trains. 50 to 60 or so was the norm. One per week until Bucksport closed.

I lived up in Bangor area that time frame. I think I can recall about 2008 or 9 we had the RJMA unit pipe trains about once a week for a year, that was pretty neat. Then it was WABK/BKWA maybe three times a week? WAMA/MAWA also I think three or so times a week. Then NMED/EDNM at least 5 days which really was just an extension of WAED/EDWA (bypassing Rigby as mentioned). Then of course you had trains canned all over the place and crews being taxi'd wherever. Fun times. The POSJ/SJPO trains were great, in conjunction with CSX we really watched the traffic balloon.