St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railroad (SLR/SLQ)

Hello,
Tonight's SLQ eastbound 394 again arrived early into Island Pond at 1835 with the following:

RM-1 805
GP40-3 3805
QG SD40U 6908
3 centerbeam flats
2 bulkhead flats
1 hi-cube boxcar
1 hi-sided gondola
1 covered hopper
22 tank cars

That's 30 cars total, including 28 loads and 2 empties.
Best,
Fritz

Hello,
Tonight's SLQ eastbound 394 crossed the U.S. Canada border in Norton at 1800 with the following:

GP40 3004
GP40-3 3806
RM-1 806
6 centerbeam flats
6 boxcars
4 hi-cube boxcars
9 tank cars

That's only 25 cars total, including 24 loads and 1 empty.
Best,
Fritz

Hello,
In a cold wind, this morning's SLQ westbound 393 departed Island Pond at 0747 with the following:

GP40-3 3806
RM-1 806
GP40 3004
4 centerbeam flats
2 bulkhead flats
3 hi-cube boxcars
35 tank cars

That's 44 cars total, including 1 load and 43 empties.
Best,
Fritz

Fritz reported QG SD40U 6908 eastbound on 394 April 4. This afternoon I observed both
6904 and 6908 stored together on a track adjacent to the shop at Lewiston Jct.

Greg,
Thanks for the report. That's 2 of the 3 big 6-axles down for the count. Hopefully, they're back working soon. They'd look pretty sharp as a matched set!

Last night's SLQ eastbound 394 crossed the U.S. Canada border at 1842 with the following:

GP40-3 3804
RM-1 804
RLHH SD40-2 3403 (that means all three 6-axles are in LJ today!)
9 centerbeam flats
4 hi-cube boxcars
2 boxcars
1 covered hopper
18 tank cars
1 hi-sided gondola

That's 35 cars total, all loads.

This morning's SLQ westbound 393 reached the border at 0805 (early start!) with the following:

RM-1 806
GP40-3 3806
GP40 3004
5 centerbeam flats
5 hi-cube boxcars
4 boxcars
4 covered hoppers
24 tank cars

That's 42 cars total, including 3 loads and 39 empties.
Have a great day,
Fritz

Hello,
Last night's SLQ eastbound 394 arrived in Island Pond at 1817 with the following:

GP40-2 3035
GP40-2 3007
QG GP40-2L 3014
1 centerbeam flat
1 bulkhead flat
7 hi-cube boxcars
4 covered hoppers
18 tank cars

That's 31 cars total, including 26 loads and 5 empties.

This morning's SLQ westbound 393 departed the Pond at 0725 with the following:

GP40-3 3805
RM-1 805
GP40-2 3047
8 centerbeam flats
1 bulkhead flat
1 hi-sided gondola
8 hi-cube boxcars
2 boxcars
34 tank cars

That's 54 cars total, including 3 loads and 51 empties.
Have a great weekend,
Fritz

Hello,
This past week has been a strange week on the SLR (and may portend what things will look like this summer until traffic rebounds).

On Monday night, SLQ ran a Richmond-Island Pond-Richmond turn (no train out of Lewiston Junction). I didn't see them but they left roughly 30-35 cars in the yard at Island Pond. On Tuesday and Friday nights, they ran the regular trains out of Richmond and Lewiston Junction, but they cancelled Thursday night's train.

Tuesday night's SLQ eastbound 394 arrived in Island Pond at 1945 with the following:

GP40-2 3004
GP40-3 3804
RM-1 804
13 centerbeam flats
7 hi-sided gondolas
8 hi-cube boxcars
1 covered hopper
13 tank cars

That's 42 cars total, including 33 loads and 9 empties. They would add the cars brought down the previous cars before heading east.

Friday night's SLQ eastbound 394 arrived in the Pond at 1800 with the following:

GP40-3 3806
RM-1 806
GP40-2 3047
7 centerbeam flats
12 hi-cube boxcars
2 boxcars
10 tank cars

That's 31 cars total, including 26 loads and 5 empties. Hopefully, traffic picks up soon, but it is hard to see how.
Have a great weekend,
Fritz

Does rail traffic on the SLR typically taper off during the summer months?

Late spring and summer have always been the slow season going back to CN days but the
traffic flows have changed and declined with time. Prior to Guilford and the decline of the
poultry and paper industries in Maine there was a mix of eastbound loads of animal feed,
chemicals and manufactured goods with westbound loads of paper and other forest products.
Most of this traffic no longer exists and few westbound loads of any kind are interchanged at
Danville Jct. except those for local delivery. SLR is heavily dependent on traffic to and from
online customers, particularly those around Lewiston Junction and the Lewiston Branch.
In the cold weather months the heaviest traffic is cars of LPG going to NRG, Irving and Dead
River at Lewiston Junction- naturally this traffic slows considerably as the weather warms.
This leaves New England Public Warehouse with three facilities in the area, the Safe Handling
transload facility at the end of the branch, two contractors receiving utility poles at the
intermodal yard and Panolam along with some assorted loads interchanged to Panam-CSX.

I guess that also leaves interchange with the New Hampshire Central in NH and RCP in VT (I’m probably missing a few others as well, I think some more in Maine but the specifics escape me now). Would be nice to see if they could drum up some more traffic.

Speaking of, I saw that the 286k project in NH is supposed to be finished by the end of this year. I wonder if that’ll have any impact on future prospects?

That's it. The NEPW warehouse in S. Paris is the furthest online customer from LJ in Maine. NHCR does a fair amount of cars for Rymes (LPG) in N. Stratford, but obviously seasonal peak type traffic, and the Groveton interchange sees an occasional CSRX equipment move at best these days (two locomotives and a dome car since September 2019, with another car due to them this spring). That's all for NH traffic, and RCP is their sole online VT customer.

Does Maine Wood Treaters in Mechanic Falls not get flats anymore?

There's a centerbeam on the siding in GMaps, I would imagine they still do.

Maine Wood Treating at Mechanic Falls is a regular customer receiving a car or two almost
daily during the week. Some cars come from the west but many are from the Danville Jct
interchange with 513 hauling them west along with the South Paris traffic, then back hauling
them to Mechanic Falls due to the MWT siding switch points facing east. Last summer I remember
seeing covered hoppers behind the former Presby plant in Berlin- don't know if that traffic is
still a thing or not. Another customer not mentioned is the liquor company in Lewiston which
transloads tank cars of food grade alcohol to trucks at Empire Road in Poland- this is steady
business with two or three tank cars present on the siding at any given time.

S1f3432 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 6:32 pm Last summer I remember
seeing covered hoppers behind the former Presby plant in Berlin- don't know if that traffic is still a thing or not.

Those are the cars that used to come down to Hazens, which seems to have stopped as of September 2019 with the sale of Presby Environmental to Infiltrator Water Technologies. Last mention on the FB page of a car being spotted was November. A car or two a month that now stays on their rails probably isn't much of a drop in the bucket to SLR.

It's very much an active Presby business, doing metal fabrication. It's Issacson Steel who was the previous business there.