Southern Tier - East of Binghamton

I noticed that there appears to be a new siding going in along Court Street in Binghamton. It appears to start behind Burger King and is being built west towards the diamond.

SecaucusJunction wrote:Yes, with NS it seems like there are plenty of rumors with very little action. If it makes anyone feel better, the rumored increases on the western Tier never happened either. The recent reduction of trains on the Lehigh Line as well as the pitifully short TV trains that are run into NJ most of the day, coupled with the new CSX inland port project in upstate New York make the prospects of the line look worse and worse. Just about everything out of NJ makes drops or pick ups in Harrisburg... or ends there, so a line that skips the state of PA probably does not look desirable to NS. Anything is possible in the farther out future, but as of now, any rumors flying around about the line are probably not based on any truth.

NS just announced a 20% increase in profit compared to a year ago, while CSX is up about 2%, if I read the articles right. And NS stock is up over 35% this year, more than CSX.
Hard to believe given all the NS doom and gloom, at least here in the NJ/NY region - clearly there are some things I don't understand or know about. Guess is shows why I am not a businessman.
JS

Maybe they're pulling a CP on us. I see volume was up a few percentage points, but crew starts (a.k.a. actual trains running) are down 2%. Also mentioned are higher costs inside Conrail territory, which could also be a problem in the NY/NJ area. Maybe west of Harrisburg, trains are probably running strong, but east of there is and still seems to be in the doldrums.

SteelRail wrote:I noticed that there appears to be a new siding going in along Court Street in Binghamton. It appears to start behind Burger King and is being built west towards the diamond.

There has been a lot of work around BD I know they extended the connector from NYS&W 2 to CP's 2 east, the siding you mentioned behind the King and today it looked as if they are doing work on the BD siding I didn't get a good look to confirm what is exactly being done but next time i'm in the area I will.

Is the work around BD still occurring? What ever came of the OCS a few weeks ago? D&H going to the NS??

BD work is still going strong. They were working this afternoon. I haven't heard or read anything since the OCS. Although NYSW adding tracks so stuff won't be blocking the mains at BD, the OCS running through, and the various track and bridge work east of Binghamton leads me to think that something is in the works. The 13T has had multiple sections in the past few weeks with overflow traffic from Gang Mills and Elmira.

With the downturn of traffic on the Lehigh Line in NJ, the prospect of trains on the Eastern end doesn't look very good on the NS side anyway ...

I should have posted this earlier, there was what I thought was a CP office car special sitting just east of the I-81/17 overpass Tuesday afternoon about 3 PM.

RichM wrote:I should have posted this earlier, there was what I thought was a CP office car special sitting just east of the I-81/17 overpass Tuesday afternoon about 3 PM.

It was the CP Tech train. It inspected the entire D&H from Sunbury north.

More rumors about NYSW doing a blitz of work. Regular maintenance or something else?? How is the work in Binghamton coming along? Did NS tell NYSW to keep the SU99/100's off the mainline??

I was originally told the work at BD had something to do with the NYS@W sand traffic but take that with a grain of salt (no pun intended) because im not sure how much truth there was to it.

what work blitz? They are doing some crossings and the work in bingo. From what i remember the work in bingo is to make switching and regular traffic moves easier so 1 NS train doesn't tie up traffic for NYSW and CP if they need to go thru. It apparently is better then in the past but they are working on making it even better. Also another track is being constructed on the NYSW side north of the shops, not sure for what.

If CP can ever get into the North Jersey oil train market, Binghamton would be an ideal place to give them over to NS. Just speculation, but it does make some sense. Buckeye Perth Amboy recently announced they would try to get oil from Canada.

Steve F45 wrote:what work blitz? They are doing some crossings and the work in bingo. From what i remember the work in bingo is to make switching and regular traffic moves easier so 1 NS train doesn't tie up traffic for NYSW and CP if they need to go thru. It apparently is better then in the past but they are working on making it even better. Also another track is being constructed on the NYSW side north of the shops, not sure for what.

The current work in Binghamton has nothing to do with not tying up traffic for NYSW/CP. The work currently being done is east of CP BD where NYSW currently stores cars and does most of their switching. 2 tracks have been added and BD siding is now (again) double ended. This should keep Tracks 1 and 2 east of CP BD clear.

The track that was added north of the engine facility (parallel to CP's Bevier St Yard-just north of the old Agway) is for a couple of different customers. Kind of like a team track.

malfunctjct wrote:
The current work in Binghamton has nothing to do with not tying up traffic for NYSW/CP. The work currently being done is east of CP BD where NYSW currently stores cars and does most of their switching. 2 tracks have been added and BD siding is now (again) double ended. This should keep Tracks 1 and 2 east of CP BD clear.

The track that was added north of the engine facility (parallel to CP's Bevier St Yard-just north of the old Agway) is for a couple of different customers. Kind of like a team track.

Thanks for the info.... this should work to start some more good rumors around here....