Intermodal to Maine

Love it!

BM6569 wrote:Love it!

Classic B&M....night "milk train" into Boston.

gokeefe wrote:

BM6569 wrote:Love it!

Classic B&M....night "milk train" into Boston.

Even the milk trains were longer!

Rockingham Racer wrote:

gokeefe wrote:
Classic B&M....night "milk train" into Boston.

Even the milk trains were longer!

True but as mentioned "this could grow...".

This discussion has listed all of the pros and cons of extending intermodal service to Maine. The bottom line is what comes next? Will they give up altogether? What new traffic is available, now that the paper industry has just about bottomed out?

What marketing is being done to find new reasons to keep running? Could a central ramp support the needs of the remaining shippers? This would eliminate the expense in crews, power, maintenance, and taxes of all of the branches.

Engineer Spike wrote:Could a central ramp support the needs of the remaining shippers? This would eliminate the expense in crews, power, maintenance, and taxes of all of the branches.

I'll take on "the big one"....

Simple answer. "No". The Rumford Branch in particular has two of the largest remaining active mills in Maine. It would make little if any sense whatsoever to force them to move their product by truck over back roads all the way to Waterville. It would be something close to 50-100 loads per day and the does not include the paper chemical movements that would be diverted over the roads.

Sappi on the Hinckley Branch is the same problem and Madison Paper, if they ever return to using rail is likewise encumbered.

Old Town Fuel and Fiber is in the process of a full restart. What will happen there is hard to say for sure but seems likely to produce significant traffic especially with the northern railroads under new management and focused on fiber.

I would say yes.

Having personally managed intermodal out of Massachusetts into Maine markets, there are a lot of challenges running out of Mass capturing freight out of Maine. I think a ramp could be supported if properly executed in both marketing and management. I can tell you a lot of OTR stuff could be converted over to Intermodal but the service isn't available to make it a cost worthy effort. I can also tell you a lot of stuff is moving over Mass ramps that if moved to Maine would allow greater capacity for the ramps in Mass.

Also keep in mind, a lot of freight is 'same-day' or spot freight. Positioning equipment in the right area makes a huge different on having the ability to capture spot freight and right now that is tough in the Maine market.

There are plenty of non-Papermill customers.

A big movement for 53' reefer containers is coming to the Northeast so keep an eye out for that.



Also a bone to chew on for you all: http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=529000" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No chance Pan Am stops running trains on the Rumford Branch as long as the mills stay open. The branch is one of the railroad's largest sources of revenue. Without it, the value of Pan Am Railways drops drastically, as does the potential option of selling the railroad for a respectable sum. This scenario is not analogous to the rerouting of east end traffic via CMQ, because these are mills directly served by Pan Am, while nearly all traffic east of Bangor was overhead for NBSR.

Also, it would not "eliminate the expense in crews, power, maintenance". It would be far more costly to move everything by truck... that's why the loads are shipped by rail rather trucks right now.

A ramp with the right service lanes might work for other traffic, but I don't see the mills going to it. They would lose the cost advantage of rail to door and draying from the mill to/from the ramp would make no sense, logistically and cost wise.

Sorry did I miss a major point in this discussion? I wasn't trying to talk about taking paper mill traffic off rails and putting it into trucks.... But how about mills that receive most product in by rail and ship a large chunk out? Or the mills who hardy use any rail service.

Riddle me this, what do you guys think are some of the biggest users of intermodal/OTR trucking/international shipping in Maine? You may be surprised by some of the answers.

Can you just tell us if you have the stats instead of making us guess?

dnelson wrote:Can you just tell us if you have the stats instead of making us guess?

I can't tell you stats... it's proprietary information. I'm not trying to invoke a "I know more than you" discussion I'm trying to make you all think outside of the (paper) box. No doubt, papermills produce a huge amount of outbound traffic, but there are a lot of places that take inbound loads. And not all truck freight can go in a boxcar, but a lot of it could probably move via an intermodal option because if you aggregate all the little guys into a central hub (And sprinkle in some large, consistent traffic as a backbone) you can probably capture a decent chunk of freight. And Maine has a lot of trucks... a LOT of them. There are a lot of places that produce plastic products, vinyls, textiles, technology, equipment, food, beverage and anything else you can imagine that compete in a national and international marketplace. They just don't produce the volume to have rail carloads but might be able to turn 1 or 2 53' containers a day. `

Consider this too, how many trucks move out of Maine via Western or Northern Gateways? For the most part, we think of trucks moving via i95, but what about trucks moving out of the County to Trans-Can, or Rt2 across Maine and Coburn Gore into Quebec?

Or how much truck traffic uses Trans-Can from Atlantic Canada to move over top of Maine to hubs in Montreal? Let me tell you this, I will reserve my opinion on the Canadian Railway's intermodal services, but I can tell you there is a reason why CSX built their own terminal in Montreal... they expect to move serious freight out of Eastern Ontario, Quebec, Northern NY, and Northern VT.

If I'm not mistaken, isn't much of the freight previously shipped on the Madison branch not shipped by truck to Waterville where it is transferred to boxcars?

dnelson wrote:If I'm not mistaken, isn't much of the freight previously shipped on the Madison branch not shipped by truck to Waterville where it is transferred to boxcars?

A few carriers are regularly pulling out 53' containers out of there daily headed for ramps in Mass. I'm not sure if they are transloading at Waterville or not but I'm not sure where exactly they would do that. I'm willing to bet some of it goes Van trailer to warehouses in Maine/New England for crossdock into railcars.

They were transloading at the warehouse on the Hinkley Branch by exit 133 off 95 in Fairfield. Its been a year and a half since I was regulalry by there and dont know if that still goes on.

They (UPM/Madison Paper) maintain a facility in Mechanic Falls, or their website says they do anyway. I can't see Mechanic Falls, or the western foothills region, as a huge user of coated paper so I imagine the SLR handles some of their traffic as well.

And then find a Maine paper mill that doesnt regulalry use Ayer or Worcester. Pretty much how Lincoln Paper and Tissue does business. safe bet UPM is doing so as well. Can't imagine shipping large quantities of paper far by truck.