New Hampshire Northcoast Railroad (NHN) Discussion

They can (stressing "can") run five days a week between Ossipee and Tri-City
They have been running south to Dover on Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday and Thursday.
They have been running north from Dover to Ossipee on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Safetee wrote:I’m a little hazy about what happened when but I do have an interesting story about that piece of track. In the late 80’s I was doing consulting work for both NHN and SD Warren. SD Warren had a cogen plant in Westbrook, Maine that was eating about a hundred or so trailers a day of woodchips many of which came from Ossipee via Currier trucking. Westbrook wanted to see truck traffic cut down, so I approached people at SD Warren about running unit trains of chips in difco dump cars from Ossipee to Conway and down the Mountain div to Westbrook. This seemingly win win on paper move ran into an obstacle that proved to be insurmountable.
Apparently somebody had acquired a nice place next to a crossing north of Ossipee and this guy had the political clout to insure that this crossing was never to be used again by trains. I never knew who the guy was and I forget the name of the crossing but I do remember this . That crossing was a deal breaker and stopped the study dead in its tracks.

Very interesting first I think we've ever heard of this. I would imagine that traffic levels like that could have single handedly saved the Mountain Division.

I'm absolutely fascinated by the idea that the ultimate failure of both these branches was potentially an artifice of politics and not purely economics.

number7 wrote:Was up in Rollinsford yesterday. The gate was closed at the end of Watson Ln again so no getting in that way.

We did park at the end of Pease Ln and walked to the end of the former East Wye.

As I said before, it looks like instead of cutting the end of the wye from the mainline and ripping up iron, it looks like they pushed the very end into the woods.

Also very interesting was the discovery of more iron in the woods. I'm guessing that the East Wye had either some parallel tracks or there were two other tracks used for storage.

A little bit east of the East Wye track there was another track that split into two tracks, one went more to the west than the other but when I walked the East Wye a month or more ago, I saw no sign of this iron.

When the foliage clears more I'll have to go in there again and take a close up look and get some more pictures. With all the foliage pictures are difficult.

Updated Google Earth shots show this configuration. Very interesting. And from the "I drive by there quite frequently and never noticed" department: If you follow the PAR mainline east via Google Earth just past the crossing of Route 236 in South Berwick you can see there is still iron on the ground there as well.

Hux wrote:

number7 wrote:Very interesting.[/url] And from the "I drive by there quite frequently and never noticed" department: If you follow the PAR mainline east via Google Earth just past the crossing of Route 236 in South Berwick you can see there is still iron on the ground there as well.

Isn't that the PAR mainline to Portland, i.e. the Downeaster route?

ThinkNarrow wrote:

Hux wrote:

number7 wrote:Very interesting.[/url] And from the "I drive by there quite frequently and never noticed" department: If you follow the PAR mainline east via Google Earth just past the crossing of Route 236 in South Berwick you can see there is still iron on the ground there as well.

Isn't that the PAR mainline to Portland, i.e. the Downeaster route?

Yes.

I believe he is referring to the old PSP connection (original B&M mainline to Agamenticus Jct) that was severed when the Eastern took over the PSP, forcing the B&M to build its own mainline. The connection served as a freight spur for years afterwards.

Was heading up to Arethusa Falls today and we just so happened to pull over to check out a railroad crossing, and what do I see but a big NHN sign! Couldn't really see into the facility much from the gate though. But was great to see the source of Boston Sand and Gravel's sand and gravel.

Anyway, does anyone know if they're stilling switching out BS&G on Tuesdays and Thursday at 11pm still?

Was scrolling through the TIGER Grant awards today, and saw that NHDOT and the NHN got a $1.4 million grant to rebuild portions of their mainline.

The award can be found on page 8 of this PDF: http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.dev/files/ ... eets_0.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Blub of interest from today's Foster's Daily Democrat:

Upgrades coming to the Conway branch thanks to a Federal grant.

Grant will upgrade 42 miles of rail from Rochester to Ossipee

By Kendall Salter
[email protected]
Thursday, September 5, 2013

DOVER — Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern said a new federal grant will help upgrade 42 miles of rail line between Rochester and Ossipee.

Van Ostern said he and Councilor Raymond Burton wrote a letter to the federal Department of Transportation in June requesting consideration for the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) V grant.

According to Van Ostern, the grant will help boost the local economy by boosting weight limits for freight along the rail, attracting more business and providing construction jobs.

News report that there will be a press conference Friday (9/6) at the Ossipee
Aggregate Facility on North Coast Drive in Rochester at 11:00AM. The FRA
Adminustrator, Joseph Szabo, is scheduled to be one of the speakers.

I had a PM report that the NHN will have a loco and their caboose on hand
at the event. Unknown, if they plan to take the VIPs for a tour.

Press conference for the TIGER grant was held at Tri-City with the NHN 100
caboose and the loco 3823 as a backdrop. No VIPs boarded the caboose and
the 3823 and NHN 100 returned to Ossipee following the event. Several news
sources, including TV9 were on hand to cover the event.

Dick H wrote:Several news sources, including TV9 were on hand to cover the event.

Here's the WMUR article and video:
http://www.wmur.com/news/money/14m-grant-will-boost-rail-freight-service/-/9857662/21819690/-/c0a1pdz/-/index.html

Also there's the FRA official press release:

http://www.fra.dot.gov/eLib/details/L04754

Wow, the WMUR article makes you feel like the NHN is literally Conway bound (and Groveton apparently) with this grant. I had always heard that the missing track in Ossipee was simply removed as a clever Guilford Rail System strategic block to prevent competition? Is this the "washout" they refer to in the article?

Sooo....what would this mean for CSRR and Silver Lake RR? Would Silver Lake need to upgrade to full-sized equipment? Would the North Conway yard need to be rearranged to allow passing freights? Who would operate over the CSRR, would it be a proper interchange for CSRR to operate, or would NHN/NHCR have freight rights over the notch? I'm surprised there was no mention of the Maine DOT interchange on the eastern side of the mountain division also being rebuilt.

Back to reality,
It's great to see NHN getting some grant money to increase capacity on their current rail line Rochester-Osspiee!
Any chance they could reserve a few dollars to put their old trademark slanted yellow nose stripes on those GP38s?