Pan Am PLED and EDPL

rr503 wrote:Not to nitpick, but NYC has an intermodal terminal of its own (Harlem River Yard). Problem is, no one wants to use it.

I was wondering about the available options for Poland Spring. Is Plainville more likely to be convenient for drayage than Harlem River? Seems to me that the answer might be yes. Google maps shows the drive time as 1 hour and 25 minutes from the Cronk Road, Plainville, CT (exit point from the rail yard) to Poland Spring in White Plains, NY. Also wondering if CSX Oak Point Yard or Hunt's Point Yard is an option. They both show approximately 35 minutes from White Plains, NY.

Not sure if sending these containers via SEPO and then down to New York City on a local would make any sense. Plainville seems like a "not so bad" option in many ways.

gokeefe wrote:

rr503 wrote:Not to nitpick, but NYC has an intermodal terminal of its own (Harlem River Yard). Problem is, no one wants to use it.

I was wondering about the available options for Poland Spring. Is Plainville more likely to be convenient for drayage than Harlem River? Seems to me that the answer might be yes. Google maps shows the drive time as 1 hour and 25 minutes from the Cronk Road, Plainville, CT (exit point from the rail yard) to Poland Spring in White Plains, NY. Also wondering if CSX Oak Point Yard or Hunt's Point Yard is an option. They both show approximately 35 minutes from White Plains, NY.

Not sure if sending these containers via SEPO and then down to New York City on a local would make any sense. Plainville seems like a "not so bad" option in many ways.

Word of advice, intermodal in NY/NJ is more complicated than looking on Google maps. You try to go anywhere in the 5 boroughs and you're looking at a days work. Also, drivers get paid more going into those areas due to detention... also avoid the GWB, you can easily spend 2-3 hours on/behind it.

The best thing to do is if you are going to NJ or eastern PA areas, (Breinigsville), you want to start on that side of the Hudson. Same for the other side... basic rule is stay on your side of the river or NYC if you can.

It would take drivers 4-5 hours to dray loads from Kearny, NJ to Stratford, CT, which on google maps is about 80 miles.

In my opinion I would do this, run trains to Allentown, PA if you are going to access the NJ market. Also, Nestle Waters has a huge DC in Breinigsville. We used to send 15 to 20 trucks a day from Kearny out towards Allentown and back, its pretty easy. If they want to do it themselves, run as far as they can into CT and hope they find a trucking company crazy enough to dedicate the resources towards those drays.

So Plainville, CT really is a viable option for White Plains, NY. Interesting.

What's in White Plains, NY? There is no Nestle Waters RDC there

CN9634 hit on most of the points about NYC, but also the yard itself is terribly situated, controlled by the City, and almost devoid of back up space owing to the trash transload next door.

I guess it doesn't help that CSX serves Oak Point/ Harlem River? I can't CSX wanting to help NS expand their market in NYC?

The water is being loaded by PAR not PAS it is conceivable in the future it could be destined for somewhere on CSXT.

Several views in recent times have shown the Plainville Yard well filled with cars. This condition will probably lessen as the heavy winter season tank car traffic falls off a bit for the summer.

CVRA7 wrote:Several views in recent times have shown the Plainville Yard well filled with cars. This condition will probably lessen as the heavy winter season tank car traffic falls off a bit for the summer.

Maybe/maybe not. Propane demand is way up locally. Plainville and Southington have near-endless residential construction going on with new McMansion subdivisions and a healthy house-flipper aftermarket of gut/rebuilds. Those two towns have been trying to get more gas mains laid to serve these sprawling new subdivisions, but it's been a bureaucratic nightmare with the local gas company. Both my parents (in one of those newish Southington subdivs) and my newly-minted homeowner sister (in a Plainville gut/rehab house) are antsy regulars at the endless town meetings about this. There's an adjacent subdiv next to my parents' going up with 30 new homes, and because that new development is closest to the nearest gas main they've got a fuzzy I.O.U. that they'll be first in the neighborhood to be hooked up. Over half those homes are being done up with interim propane tanks instead of oil in anticipation.

So while there's a definite wintertime spike the sheer density of these new interim installs has hit critical enough mass where it's being felt year-round. AmeriGas on the Canal Line can barely keep up with their home-delivery demand. I spent 4 days visiting this past weekend, and drive-by showed all 8 loading spots on their siding stuffed full of cars and their backlot scattered full of on-flatbed tanks worth of extra storage. Way more than I'd ever seen before this deep into spring. With what they're looking at for cresting demand over the next decade they're going to need to add another track or two onto their siding to handle it all. So I'm sure a lot of that overflow stored at Plainville Yard is because when they need to get switched, it's now more often than not they need all 6-8 cars switched at a time instead of 2-4 like years past. That other new propane customer in Terryville is probably looking at similar rate of turnover, since Plymouth is also binging on new residential subdivs (though I don't know what the home gas situation is out there; Bristol, despite bordering Plainville/Southington, is largely off the gas grid and home oil-dominated now and forever).

Relatively speaking the in-season vs. off-season spikes may be similar, but the overall propane demand in the towns immediately adjacent has soared very recently to the point where that string of tankers in the yard is probably going to be decently long at all times.

I am not sure if the amount of available space will lessen much given the new C&D facility on the Naugy appears to be nearly complete. I would imagine they would need to add additional tracks in Plainville yard to accommodate for this increase due to the new C&D.

Video by Chessiecat97:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Capc5fVO_9g" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's a shame those trains have gotten so small. They rated 3 units when I was there, 30-40 cars.

Have any customers been lost since your time with the railroad? What was the traffic from?

Or do the customers they have just not receive as much now?

Also, did they run once a week in each direction or 2-3 as they do now?

Peter Paul, Hercules Chemical, the steel company in Plainville, Tilcon, someone got boxcars (dunno name). Those are the ones I remember. If it wasn't for Amerigas expanding about 5 years ago I think CT would be toast.

There were at one time 2 different rail served salt piles in Waterbury. Carnation in Bristol was a big boxcar receiver as well.