CSX Acquisition of Pan Am Railways

bostontrainguy wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 4:12 pm The T's Readville yard is not connected to or even close to the CSX Readville yard. Unless you know something I don't that's in the works.

Do they have to be connected? I just look at a map and think of what's close to Boston that could work as extra storage or a south version of BET. And a bonus doesn't send you down the NEC or Old Colony lines. This is all pure Speculation.

Horse trading - swap acre for acre, property value for property value. Has CSX got everything they need in Springfield freight area for highway access? Is CSX still holding on to some rail-trail land? CSX playing nice on Springfield Commuter Rail, Inland Regional, dispatching Amtrak crossing their Springfield diamond, etc.

Would be amazing if they upgraded the Grand Junction for both freight and passenger service.

I'm curious how CN will route Maritime traffic to and from CSX points along the I-95 corridor. Will they short haul themselves and use the much more direct Saint John interchange, or insist upon the more roundabout long haul route through Huntington by way of Montreal.

Roberttosh, I expect CN to continue routing cars via Buffalo and Montreal. Routing via Saint John or the SLR/SLQ seems far too roundabout for me. They could possibly route via the NECR. On paper it would be far more direct than Montreal; however, the line would undoubtedly require infrastructure upgrades.

Additional question. I know it's embedded in the STB filing and in this very thread, but I don't have the time to look. When will the STB hand down its decision?

They would have to go almost into Montréal, just to go backwards to head south to route via the NECR. Doesn't seem like they're moving much traffic that way these days, down to 2-3 trips a week.

Shortline614 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 8:21 am Roberttosh, I expect CN to continue routing cars via Buffalo and Montreal. Routing via Saint John or the SLR/SLQ seems far too roundabout for me. They could possibly route via the NECR. On paper it would be far more direct than Montreal; however, the line would undoubtedly require infrastructure upgrades.

I'm specifically talking about Maritime traffic going to points along the I-95 corridor. If you have a carload of lumber say coming out of Nova Scotia, it's a much more direct move to hand off cars to NBSR (CSX) at Saint John for movement down the PAR and B&A into Selkirk, than for CN to go over the top of Maine, all the way to Montreal, then down the Massena line to Syracuse and back East to Selkirk. CN may not want to give up their long haul but a Saint John routing would clearly be much fewer miles.

Keep in mind it is not always the railroad's choice, customer usually gets the choice of routing all things equal. However, in reality CN could always price them out of one gateway or another easily.

One thing that is not often discussed when talking about traffic routing is rate divisions. Each time an additional
carrier is involved the portion of the pie going to each railroad gets smaller. I've seen this mentioned as a reason
shortlines get bypassed even when their involvement would substantially shorten a route between two points.
The big guys don't want to share the pie with the little guy if they can avoid it.

CN can and probably will try to use pricing to force traffic over their long-haul interchange, but CSX as the destination carrier can play that game too. The other thing is that CSX is a lot closer to the CN origins than CN is to the CSX destinations, so if CN doesn't play nice, CSX could offer transloading at Saint John, where NBSR is already set up to handle boxcars, CB's and tank cars and cut CN out altogether. I think that CSX is really going to become the dominant carrier out of SJ, at least on the manifest side.

I assume Pan Am bought these CSX locos used and CSX crossed out their 'CSX' logo before they sent them off. I reckon they'll have to uncross them when they finally take ownership of the railroad.

BTW, I call the second loco the 'hammerhead'. Any idea what the purpose of that odd overhang is?

I believe it is a housing for large cooling fans

Csx said in their filings what they intend to do with the par power, I recall that some will get sent to GW for the B&E operation, some will be retained and some disposed of. Little is in good shape

They are cooling for the dynamic brakes, mostly.

I would not expect CSX to retain any of the GE units that used to say their name on it. Sold them once already.

As Mr. Newpy notes, there are both Agent's and Shipper's routings. He's been a Conductor and reviewed Waybills on his trains, so I defer to him to answer the question how many are one or the other?

When I did Station work for the MILW out in Iowa, I recall one grain operator near Mason City that always had a Shipper's Route which was depriving us of a line haul to the West Coast. When I asked the Agent about such, all he could say is that "the CNW comes up with the cars, we can't". All we got was a Reciprocal Switch out of the shipment. That was back when guys I knew in Traffic said "fifteen more cars a day to the Coast and we would be profitable".

Looking at a map of Saint John, it appears that the CN is on the East side of the River while the Port and the CP-M and hence the Irving road are on the West. That would appear to put CN at a disadvantage for soliciting traffic from the Port, absent a noted Shipper's Route. Never mind their circuituous routing they have to interchange into Southeast US. Admittedly, they could keep it on their own rails to New Orleans if a shipper was willing to accept such circuitry.

In short, I'm at a loss to see how CN could expect to share in traffic originating from or destined to Saint John.

Unfortunately, I don't recall seeing what class of routing or how it was determined in any paperwork that the crews had. Never asked any of the clerks or agents either. All we had was a computer print out of the train consist with car numbers, what is in them (or empty or residue for hazmat), tonnage, axles, tonnage profile, where they originated, where they're going, and via what interchange, etc. We had extended information or separate MSDS print outs for all of the hazmat that required them but that's about it.

Back on topic, CSX was actually the worst to get a train from because they used dot matrix printers (you know the very faint text with the holes on the perferated sides of the paper) for their train consists. By the time we got the train out of like Buffalo after the set offs and pick ups they did not only was the print impossible to read but they were cut up and added to so many times you needed a PHD to figure out what order and what was in your train. The rollby ended up being as much finding that out as anything else.

CP had the best paperwork, easy to read stuff from a Laserjet. However if the crew did not leave the paperwork in the knuckle or the yard office good luck getting the dispatcher to give it to you. We wasted hours waiting for paperwork from them.

I believe that the whole Saint John terminal is switched by the NBSR and all 3 roads have equal switch access (CP, CN and ST). CN's only advantage is that they get directly into SJ whereas CP and ST have to pay the NBSR haulage to get there.