Rockland Branch Discussion

Apparently I'm not the only one that gets a screen full of ads for women in underwear when browsing the forums. Needless to say, visiting the site has become a thing best done outside the office.

10 loads west this morning.

Well, this ain't good. Looks like days are numbered for cement traffic on the Rockland Branch....

https://knox.villagesoup.com/news/drago ... erting%20a

Seems like nothing short of catastrophic for the branch as a whole. Unless Finger Lakes can drum up a decent amount of new business freight service is finished east of Bath. A few isolated carloads of fish bait aren't going to pay the bills.

There's a lot of possibilities and unanswered questions. It's a large hit, but Finger Lakes seems pretty good at drumming up traffic out of what feels like nowhere. There's also questions about what will happen to the Dragon Cement property, the RDC Coastliner, the facilities in Rockland, all's up in the air. We'll have to see what FLRR has to say.

Should be noted that in certain articles about the FLRR takeover of the line (such as the one from railfan.com), they say that Finger Lakes' goal in seeking new traffic was to reduce reliance on Dragon Cement after the barge moves stopped. Seems like they had the right mindset there.

Some fair-use quotes from the Village Soup article:

Village Soup wrote:The plant will continue to operate while it processes the remaining product which could continue into early 2025 . . .
. . .
The reason for the decision to close is due to the high cost of fuel to operate the plant as well as the fuel to transport the product to markets . . .
. . .
Cash said the jobs are good ones but he is not worried, noting that it seems like everybody in the area is hiring workers.
. . .
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has two active enforcement cases against Dragon Products for possible violations of air emissions standards at its cement plant.

The announcement of the two active air quality enforcement cases comes a week after the federal Mine Safety Health Administration announced that its May 2023 inspection led to 33 citations for safety violations at the cement plant.

Once the plant has completely shut down — and assuming that another company doesn't buy it and restart it — there could potentially be at least a year of additional freight business for the Rockland Branch in the form of scrap metal, C&D, and "dirty dirt," as was the case when Maine Yankee shut down.

It doesn't seem likely that any other party would be interested in buying and operating the plant given that there's only 25-30 years worth of material left in the mine.

The "glass half full" view is that the line is in good shape, BIW will still need lots of steel, and scheduled passenger service is a serious possibility even if freight service completely vanishes. The branch isn't destined to be the next rail trail.

BIW hasn't gotten steel by rail in a while, it's been a month and a half since ASA last got a car.

7 cement loads west today.

Longtime Maine cement plant to idle operations
Dragon has been a fixture of Thomaston for nearly a century

THOMASTON, Maine — Dragon Products Company says it will start shutting down its plant in Thomaston starting in December.

Dragon, which has been owned by Giant Cement Holding, Inc. since 2006, has been in operation for nearly 100 years. The company says it will start a gradual process of "idling production operations."

https://www.wmtw.com/article/longtime-m ... n/45033481

How long before there's a push for making the Rockland line a rail trail...

People can push, but they won't get very far. There are strategic and national security reasons for the Rockland Branch to remain open as a railroad.

If you're referring to BIW, they get nothing by rail now. Nothing strategic or secure about that. And Rockland isn't a viable enough seaport.

Now, if Emskip wanted a direct ship-rail transfer, Rockland might make sense. Stranger things have happened.

Getting nothing by rail right now doesn't mean they won't need to get things by rail in the future. If you think a defense giant like General Dynamics would just shrug and say "oh well" to a proposal to rip up their access to the national rail network, you are underestimating how much clout they have in those types of decisions.

But I wasn't only referring to BIW.

JBlaisdell wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 5:27 am If you're referring to BIW, they get nothing by rail now. Nothing strategic or secure about that. And Rockland isn't a viable enough seaport.

Now, if Emskip wanted a direct ship-rail transfer, Rockland might make sense. Stranger things have happened.

Are you saying the huge BIW fabrication facility near the former Brunswick naval air station is no longer an active customer? I’d be very surprised by that. Lots and lots of loads of steel have gone there over the years. I think the line at least to there stays as long as BIW is in the naval ship building business