Pan Am Railways (PAR) Maintenance of Way (MoW) Activity

https://www.maine.gov/mdot/grants/crisi ... ummary.pdf

Here is the official summary of the Pan Am upgrade project. Make sure you click on the link to MDOT to get the full plan details.

Alan

Interesting to see that Pan Am is responsible for contributing $17.5M to fund this upgrade.

Of course, the government knows better than to just hand Pan Am a check with no stipulations.

Thanks for posting the link to the project. I read through it. Very thorough reconstruction job. Very encouraging to see 115# CWR going in with powered switches. Leeds Junction rebuild is a major bright spot.

I assume most of the CWR is going between royal and Danville. Could this be paving the way for passenger service??

Cosakita18 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 7:10 pmCould this be paving the way for passenger service??

No definitely not. I wondered the same myself and the real answer is simply that the project will greatly improve freight service.

The majority of the rail out there is 115 already, with some 112 mixed in. Welded rail exists between Royal and 175 already, as well some other areas that had been laid by Guilford/Pan Am previously. Most of the places that aren't getting rail replacements are already welded, with the replaced areas being mostly stick rail.

Extensive article in today's Press Herald. Also includes map and Poland Spring info

Major upgrade of 75 miles of rail will serve Maine’s resurgent paper industry

A nearly $36 million railway upgrade is planned to improve performance of a critical line in Maine and serve the state’s resurgent pulp and paper industry.

...

Alongside a reviving paper industry, Pan Am also is serving Poland Spring, which transfers bottled water from its plant in Kingfield through the railroad’s yard in Waterville and south to a Massachusetts warehouse. Pan Am expects its business with Poland Spring to grow 9 percent a year.

The water bottling company has been using Pan Am for about 3½ years, said Chris Haynes, Northeast Logistics Director for Poland Spring Co.

“Infrastructure improvements, particularly to safely increase track speeds and decrease time for shipments to reach their destination, will benefit not only Poland Spring but other companies as well,” Haynes said. “Through Pan Am Railways, we currently ship 100 loads per week and we’re approaching 20,000 total loads since 2016. We look forward to continuing this collaboration.”

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/07/10/ ... r-industry

The article is rather hilarious, or should I say the quotes from Pan Am. They make it sound as if their track conditions and subsequent speed issues magically appeared to hamstring them and threaten their customer service. If Pan Am is worried about losing business to trucks you'd think they would at least get track speed to half the speed of highway traffic.

Never see real intermodel service up here with 25mph speeds...

Hux wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2019 2:46 pm The article is rather hilarious, or should I say the quotes from Pan Am. They make it sound as if their track conditions and subsequent speed issues magically appeared to hamstring them and threaten their customer service. If Pan Am is worried about losing business to trucks you'd think they would at least get track speed to half the speed of highway traffic.

Thank you! My thoughts exactly.

The thing to really notice in that article is 9% growth annually from Poland Spring. Notice as well that they give the current loads (100 per week). One might also consider that 9% is probably a long term average.

Yeah, but 100 loads in a week isn’t very much. That’s 25 loads four days a week. They were moving more water on the dedicated WAAY trains twice a week than they are now.

Hux wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2019 2:46 pm The article is rather hilarious, or should I say the quotes from Pan Am. They make it sound as if their track conditions and subsequent speed issues magically appeared to hamstring them and threaten their customer service. If Pan Am is worried about losing business to trucks you'd think they would at least get track speed to half the speed of highway traffic.

You mean: "We haven't spent a dime on real maintenance since 1987 and now we have to pay the piper?"

With new welded rail and crossings, why would the track speed be limited to 25? Wouldn't these changes bring it up to a much higher class?