Pan Am Southern / Patriot Corridor Discussion

Sounds like crew/power short.
Really gotta wonder what NS thinks of all this..

What a joke. Last night this morning AD-2 backed off more cars on the Conn River runner on top of the others they left there two nights ago for a total of 103 cars.

Rjed canned at buckland. MOED canned at wet portal. Rjed canned at Hoosick jct. MOED canned at ferry st.

Total meltdown. The darkest of Fink Sr days weren't this bad. I imagine that NS is buying time to see what happens with the D&H before deciding on what to do with PAS.

Assuming anything to do with the word "reason" can be applied to the PAR/S situation, might the reason involve crew-crunch because of retirements and/or newbies not staying around? It seems a bit early in the month for Hours of Service day-counts to be an issue.

newpylong wrote:... I imagine that NS is buying time to see what happens with the D&H before deciding on what to do with PAS.

It is appalling to see PAS become increasingly unable to deliver freight to its customers in a timely manner. And it's not like the business has grown significantly in the past few months. It just seems like the physical plant is less able to handle the static volume of operations since PAS since train speeds on the D3 mainline outside MBTA owned territory are sub-40mph.

NS had better decide on D&H soon or else shippers might abandon PAS. There's no point in NS acquiring D&H, having little customer base south of Albany except for the Scranton area, as D&H revenue depends heavily on PAS terminating/originating intermodal/autos/carload fright. Maybe NS would be better off acquiring 100% of PAS and leaving D&H as is, or, if CP is committed to selling the D&H south of Albany and NS can't afford to, maybe NYS&W, R&N, and/or G&W, will step in if NS can maintain the PAS business.

22K has been canned at Royalston all morning...

I wonder if they are simply overwhelmed with trackwork and between the Portsmouth Branch, Downeaster work and other projects they are unable to keep up with normal everyday work on the main line.

The mainline is now not an issue. 1 10 MPH restriction between East Deerfield and Mechanicville - rest is 25 and 40 mph.

Lack of crews, lack of good power, lack of switching capacity at the core regional yard (Deerfield) and derailments in said yard halting production. In other words, more of the same old.

It's good to hear that speeds are up west of E Deerfield for the most part. But as of 2-3 weeks ago, it still took about an hour for freights to go the 12 miles between Gardner and Wachusetts. I don't know what the speedo situation is between ED and Gardner. Clearly PAS is waiting on MBTA completion of Westminster to Fitchburg work as well as signal/track improvements eastward to Willow Rd in Ayer that might enable less PAS v. T train interference. And, although it's not PAS track, the Stony Brook branch is still sub 25mph.

Question: why does an EDPO or other train that has been crewed at ED need to be recrewed at Royalston, Gardner, or Fitchburg? Are the crews just moving a train 50 miles and parking it and then getting taxied to another parked train to move that train a few more miles down the road? Hopefully it's not because the crew has outlawed moving a train only fifty miles.

Two more ops questions:

1. Assuming 22K and 23K use NS crews between Binghamton and Mechanicville (May be bad assumption) and furthermore assuming the Bing-M'ville run takes 7 hours, what would it take to extend the NS' crew run to E Deerfield freeing up some PAS crews? This assumes the M'ville - ED run can be made in 4 hours or so.

2. Once the Conn River upgrade is done by early 2015, would it make sense for CSX/PAS to move the Selkirk-ED traffic via Springfield? Could be a quicker run than today's CSX local interchange with RJED/EDRJ. Plus could save a few PAR engines and the ED - Springfield run could be a one crew turn. Wheat and ethanol (and maybe crude) unit trains could still run via Hoosac Tunnel with its more favorable eastward grades.

johnpbarlow wrote:It's good to hear that speeds are up west of E Deerfield for the most part. But as of 2-3 weeks ago, it still took about an hour for freights to go the 12 miles between Gardner and Wachusetts. I don't know what the speedo situation is between ED and Gardner. Clearly PAS is waiting on MBTA completion of Westminster to Fitchburg work as well as signal/track improvements eastward to Willow Rd in Ayer that might enable less PAS v. T train interference. And, although it's not PAS track, the Stony Brook branch is still sub 25mph.

Question: why does an EDPO or other train that has been crewed at ED need to be recrewed at Royalston, Gardner, or Fitchburg? Are the crews just moving a train 50 miles and parking it and then getting taxied to another parked train to move that train a few more miles down the road? Hopefully it's not because the crew has outlawed moving a train only fifty miles.

Even if the entire main was 10 mph, if a fresh crew gets on their train on time, they can still make their destination assuming no equipment failures or going in the hole for 4 hours. The problem is, a crew will show up, they won't get power for hours, their train isn't made up, they get moving and get put in the hole 20 miles too early because the optimal meeting spot has a canned train there already, etc and so on. Now they need to find a crew to go move that train from Gardner to Ayer, then that crew will only have a few hours left, etc. It's a big domino effect. Speed restrictions only add to it, but aren't the cause.

When PAS first started. The main was track speed. The yard crews would make up the trains, test them, and put the power on for the road crews. The road crews would show up and get on the power and haul a$$ to their away terminal with time to spare. Trains ran with 5 or a 100 cars. Not a canned train to be seen. What's going on now is the polar opposite.

Besides the operational challenges of keeping a reliable loco roster, they need to have a deep spareboard. Instead of doing so, they use schedule jobs as the spareboard because the board isn't deep enough. They have been doing this as long as I have been around. Instead of calling a spare crew to recrew trains, they will have the next regular crew go get it, then their own train won't move. Another domino effect. A terrible way to run a railroad - not to the fault of operations who is running it the best they can for the most part.

johnpbarlow wrote:Two more ops questions:

1. Assuming 22K and 23K use NS crews between Binghamton and Mechanicville (May be bad assumption) and furthermore assuming the Bing-M'ville run takes 7 hours, what would it take to extend the NS' crew run to E Deerfield freeing up some PAS crews? This assumes the M'ville - ED run can be made in 4 hours or so.

2. Once the Conn River upgrade is done by early 2015, would it make sense for CSX/PAS to move the Selkirk-ED traffic via Springfield? Could be a quicker run than today's CSX local interchange with RJED/EDRJ. Plus could save a few PAR engines and the ED - Springfield run could be a one crew turn. Wheat and ethanol (and maybe crude) unit trains could still run via Hoosac Tunnel with its more favorable eastward grades.

Yes 22/23K and 206/205 use NS crews. It's about 7 hours no stops Bing to XO. The biggest stopping block from running NS crews east of XO is simply that NS does not have trackage rights. ST jobs are protected in that respect - having an NS crew go east of XO usually causes a sh*tstorm. If they wanted to change that the two railroads would need to work out an operating agreement extending trackage rights. When PAS filed for creation with the STB I could have sworn there was a clause that said if their intermodal was not handled on time they could exercise trackage rights. I haven't been able to find it since.

Moving interchange to Springfield would not work for two reasons. 1 - the longer the cars are on PAS the more they get paid, so they would never go for it. 2 - operational challenges. West Springfield yard is across the river (west, ha) from the Conn River mainline. Any PAS crew going there would need to be qualified in the territory, Amtrak (though they might be able to get away with just having an Amtrak schedule) and CSXT rules. It's hard enough getting people and keeping them qualified to go down to CT. This would be a nightmare. Going to RJ they only need to be qualified on the D&H which they need to be anyway.

newpylong wrote:When PAS first started. The main was track speed. The yard crews would make up the trains, test them, and put the power on for the road crews. The road crews would show up and get on the power and haul a$$ to their away terminal with time to spare. Trains ran with 5 or a 100 cars. Not a canned train to be seen. What's going on now is the polar opposite.

Besides the operational challenges of keeping a reliable loco roster, they need to have a deep spareboard. Instead of doing so, they use schedule jobs as the spareboard because the board isn't deep enough. They have been doing this as long as I have been around. Instead of calling a spare crew to recrew trains, they will have the next regular crew go get it, then their own train won't move. Another domino effect. A terrible way to run a railroad - not to the fault of operations who is running it the best they can for the most part.

It is frustrating that PAS has not been able to keep the Patriot Corridor up to the standards that were set in 2009. PAS had both the 2010 and 2011 work seasons to reinforce the work that ST and NS did to the line in 2009 by installing many more ties, adding flexibility in the form of building the Pawnal siding, crossing improvements, more welded rail installation, all of which to be used to sustain the track speed. Even the Downeaster route has suffered this same fate, line was built up by NNEPRA, then let go. It is not going to get any better anytime soon as the railroad has been strained to complete the Brunswick extension and the Conn River projects while other work projects throughout the rest of the system are put on the back burner. Then there is the reliability of the locomotives. All of this is translating into how the system is operated today: crews simply board trains and just advance them to the next point, then either hand the train off to another crew or tie it down. One has to wonder how much it costs to fuel all of these locomotives either running at slow speeds or parked somewhere, car per Diem charges, taxi cabs, many crews running around and hotel costs to keep the railroad going verses running a maintained scheduled railroad.

newpylong wrote:Besides the operational challenges of keeping a reliable loco roster, they need to have a deep spareboard. Instead of doing so, they use schedule jobs as the spareboard because the board isn't deep enough. They have been doing this as long as I have been around. Instead of calling a spare crew to recrew trains, they will have the next regular crew go get it, then their own train won't move. Another domino effect. A terrible way to run a railroad - not to the fault of operations who is running it the best they can for the most part.

The tough nut for PAS, as it had been for the B&M and then Guilford, is that as you look at the operation it's not a big money-maker where there's a clear "slam-dunk" for any owner to liberally spend money. The length of haul is short with a good chunk of the traffic overhead to other carriers which yields relatively low revenue. I'm even skeptical that NS, whose success partly comes from good "bean-counting" and because of the financials, would make a drastic move because of PAS hiccups. Additionally, I would imagine there's an understanding that it's gonna be a long uphill slog for PAS with setbacks like what has been reported about new hire attrition coupled to summertime vacations, etc. Pulling back to put this in perspective, these situations are not unheard of with capital-intense, low margin, tightly-managed operations (with tough-to-recruit/retain labor characteristics) found in railroading or even in the less-than-truckload trucking industry.

QB 52.32 wrote:
The tough nut for PAS, as it had been for the B&M and then Guilford, is that as you look at the operation it's not a big money-maker where there's a clear "slam-dunk" for any owner to liberally spend money. The length of haul is short with a good chunk of the traffic overhead to other carriers which yields relatively low revenue. I'm even skeptical that NS, whose success partly comes from good "bean-counting" and because of the financials, would make a drastic move because of PAS hiccups. Additionally, I would imagine there's an understanding that it's gonna be a long uphill slog for PAS with setbacks like what has been reported about new hire attrition coupled to summertime vacations, etc. Pulling back to put this in perspective, these situations are not unheard of with capital-intense, low margin, tightly-managed operations (with tough-to-recruit/retain labor characteristics) found in railroading or even in the less-than-truckload trucking industry.

Yet, somehow, VRS, P&W, NECR/G&W, NBSR get by in the same geographic/economic environment with similar traffic profile (except for the PAS intermodal business) and partial public funding for their infrastructure needs.

QB 52.32 wrote:

newpylong wrote:Besides the operational challenges of keeping a reliable loco roster, they need to have a deep spareboard. Instead of doing so, they use schedule jobs as the spareboard because the board isn't deep enough. They have been doing this as long as I have been around. Instead of calling a spare crew to recrew trains, they will have the next regular crew go get it, then their own train won't move. Another domino effect. A terrible way to run a railroad - not to the fault of operations who is running it the best they can for the most part.

The tough nut for PAS, as it had been for the B&M and then Guilford, is that as you look at the operation it's not a big money-maker where there's a clear "slam-dunk" for any owner to liberally spend money. The length of haul is short with a good chunk of the traffic overhead to other carriers which yields relatively low revenue. I'm even skeptical that NS, whose success partly comes from good "bean-counting" and because of the financials, would make a drastic move because of PAS hiccups. Additionally, I would imagine there's an understanding that it's gonna be a long uphill slog for PAS with setbacks like what has been reported about new hire attrition coupled to summertime vacations, etc. Pulling back to put this in perspective, these situations are not unheard of with capital-intense, low margin, tightly-managed operations (with tough-to-recruit/retain labor characteristics) found in railroading or even in the less-than-truckload trucking industry.

NS, or any other company for that matter, doesn't make a $150M investment into a joint venture company to just give it up.