PL-1 Job Central Connecticut PAS Pan Am Southern

More details of the back and forth between PAS (and Naugatuck RR, too) and city of New Britain re: paying the bills resulting from the December derailment:

http://www.centralctcommunications.com/ ... 52d1f.html

NAUG has no involvement in the New Britain incident. City attorney's initial allegation of such was erroneous, as was the Mayor's same allegation.

Wasn't NAUG the originating carrier of the overloaded cars? That implicates them.

Driving over the Plainville yard yesterday afternoon there was a large pile of sand in the middle of the yard. Does anyone know what they are doing?

Continuation of the yard rehab they were doing before ground freeze? They've been replacing lots of track and repairing the excepted-track runaround at the back to the Pequabuck River bridge for the increase in LPG tanker carloads. They're squeezed for space near the yard switches so want to be able to shove the line of tankers further back when they're switching in the yard.

Don't know if they plan to rehab all the way alongside Robertson Airport, but this might be the year they cross the Pequabuck. They'll need a lot of roadbed pack and ballast for that, because the track on the other side of the bridge has been OOS ever since the line was cut back from Cheshire 23 years ago and surely has some washout issues at the river bank after 2 decades worth of periodic Pequabuck flood events.

Just saw the PL-1 engines running south through meriden toward new haven, just behind cso-4. Not sure where or what they were going to pic up.

Came back north about 1 1/2 to 2 hours later with nothing in tow. Seems like a waste of fuel.

I saw those, too, while down at Cedar Hill. They came in on the heels of CSO-1, and pulled onto the lead into Cedar Hill. They waited until the southbound Vermonter passed, then came back north. Someone on another board thought it was for crew qualification. Does PAR have plans or the ability to interchange at Cedar Hill?

They have the legal ability to go to Cedar Hill, so their exercising their overheard rights and crew qualifications.

Amtrak is very strict on keeping up qualifications and i thas been about a year since they last went down there. Have to keep them up.

Has a second job started in Plainville, or is PL1 now an evening job? I was visiting my parents, and it seemed like they were whistling crossings all evening long. There is also a FB group about Plainville. Some were complaining about whistling at night. They wanted the town to enact a quiet zone. I posted that there are very stringent federal laws about that. Two major crossings, on the canal are crossbuck, with the train crew providing flag protection. Gates would be millions, and grants would be unlikely, unless there was a safety concern, due to frequent accidents. Additionally, the West Main crossing has no sight lines, as it comes out of the alley between the former Subway, and the diner.

I'm surprised West Main still doesn't have active protection, since that's State Route 372. When they did up Town Line Rd. (CT 177) and Birch St. (CT Secret Route 532) with flashers in the early-90's those being state-control roads was the rationale.


Broad St. has such immaculate sightlines from a full half-mile away in each direction that a flashers installation would be wasteful there...but that's the one the town is lobbying to do up because of the elderly driver that ran the crossing several months ago and plowed straight into PL-1.

I heard about the accident on Broad St. I'm just curious of the new schedule. The people in town would cry more if dozens of LPG trucks went through town, and the heating bills went up, due to higher transportation costs. I was just explaining why they have to whistle, and why there can't be a quiet zone.

What accident? I posted on the Pan Am Yahoo group about a short (EDPL?) that went south and then came back north about an hour later last night, south was between 7:30pm and 8pm, north was just past 8:30pm. Power was a lashup of P&W 2009 and MEC 352, and besides the tanks I couldn't see the rest of the consist too well. Do you or anyone else know what that was all about?
Peace,
Jonathan

FRA finds that Pan Am's lack of track maintenance caused the New Britain derailment last December:

Excerpt:

City officials were notified that the Federal Railroad Adminis-tration determined that the cross ties in that area of track had rotted and widened, causing the track itself to widen - a potential hazard that in this case caused a derailment. The railway was issued a violation of federal track safety standards as part of the findings of the months-long investigation, Stewart said.

and

The news that the FRA has come to a conclusion on what caused the derailment is a double-edged sword for city officials, Stewart acknowledged. On the one hand, the city can now seek reimbursement from Pan Am Railways, which owns the tracks, for the nearly $80,000 in expenses incurred in the cleanup of the derailment. On the other, the conclusion brings up questions on how to prevent a similar derailment from happening.

City of New Britain will likely be referred to Pan Am's head of accounts payable, Helen Waite, as in go to Helen Waite.

http://www.newbritainherald.com/NBH-Gen ... derailment