The Rumored End of the MMA?

To QB's point, PAR's issues are only one factor related to a MMA's health- and a relatively minor one, at that. Keep in mind that the old CP line is MMA's preferred routing. And even prior to the line being sold by CP, BAR historically played off CP and MEC/BM against each other to their benefit.

I don't think one tear would be shed if PAR was to sell out. It's doubtful that a Class 1 would buy in, though... not enough traffic potential. Consider this "what-if" scenario: Remaining PAR system east of Ayer is sold to Railworld and merged with MMA operation. First, look at history: The MEC kept the Mountain sub open for its revenue advantage vs routing freight over BM. As that advantage disappeared when MEC and BM came under common ownership, one of the first things Guilford did was shutter the Mountain Sub. So, flash forward to the MMA scenario. The CP line shares the same characteristics as the Mountain sub: An underutilized overhead route with no substantial on-line business, operating in a region that has alternative routes. What would you think MMA would do?

I don't often check on this particular site but I saw a couple of names who interested me in what's doing here.
Unfortunately Northern New England is such a beautiful area and its railroads hold a special interest to me BUT it is in a bad
way right now and has been for some time. It is not just the present economic situation but the general trend in the states
involved in general. There are no more major paper mills in Vermont and not much in New Hampshire either. IF the paper
mills on the former BAR shut down for good, that doesn't leave very much. Bridge traffic without a source of the traffic
doesn't exist and nothing that anybody here can do will change that.
There is one very good high speed and rather low grade east/west route in Canada, the CN line through Edmunston. This
line has a lot of straight trackage, moderate or less grades and good track fully signaled. It probably has enough capacity
for all of the east/west traffic between eastern Canada and the west alone. It has a track connection to the US at St.
Leonard and so the extreme north end of the BAR could survive if there were enough traffic to warrant it. Searsport is
probably not a class port to the extent that the rest of the ports on the Atlantic Seaboard are and it will probably not grow
much either.
I have ridden most of the lines in question on here and truly they are beautiful lines to ride but you can't save a line just
because it goes through beautiful scenery. If the paper mills survive in and around Millinocket survive then there is hope
for keeping the lines open but if the same thing happens here that happened in Berlin, NH, then there probaby is not very
much hope for keeping most of the trackage open.
As for the shop in Derby, it might be a good facility with good people and they are able and anxious to do good work, it may
be in the wrong place and to be truthful, there are other shops all over the place that can also do good work with good
people. Rail America found that out when they acquired the Florida East Coast with the New Symrna Beach shop which does
very high quality work on locomotives at a reasonable cost and in a good location. I well remember the Central Vermont
facilities in St. Albans but there is no comparison between what St. Albans can do and New Symrna Beach can do when it
comes to time and cost.
I think it is impossible to predict exactly what the outcome will be here but in general freight railroading in New England has
a lot of problems and I don't think it is going to get any better. That Guilford has been able to survive all these years with
the erosion of their business has been simply amazing to me. Don't blame the railroad, I know they have had many
problems but they are not all or maybe even mostly their fault, the business is simply not there anymore.
We in South Florida are a dead end area so far as rail freight interchange is concerned too, probably even more than New
England is and yet today there is probably more freight in and out of Miami and Fort Lauderdale in one day than the
whole state of Connecticut in an entire week. Maybe Maine could be added to Connecticut and the situation would still be
the same.
I know a lot of railroad lines have gone but unfortunately I think more will go and I don't think anybody or anything will be able to stop it from happening and I don't think it is too far into the future either.
Noel Weaver

calaisbranch wrote:By the way, CSX is supposed to eventually scale back to Worcestor since Harvard has bought the property underneath Beacon Park Yard.

That's right, Harvard purchased the land and Beacon Park long term lease back in the 1980's (from the MA Turnpike Authority) and moving Beacon Park activities westward has been an issue since that time. The Commonwealth also wants to purchase the Worcester-Framingham portion of the Boston Line for increased commuter rail out of Worcester. That does not automatically mean, however, that CSX will scale back to Worcester. Newly increased overhead clearances will go as far east as Westborough and there is a lot of carload business in their eastern MA branchline network hubbed out of Framingham and Readville, and whether that gets spun off to a shortline/regional carrier, I have little doubt that CSX would guarantee that traffic remains fed into their network.

calaisbranch wrote: Not to mention, they have maybe......60% percent of container counts that Conrail ran over the Boston line in the mid to late 1990s. Those numbers had already dropped well before the current economic crisis.

CSX's intermodal traffic in/out of New England is not down 40% vs. mid-90's Conrail...I'm guessing you're referring to the decline in international containers moving via MLB due to worldwide geopolitical, production and logistical changes. I'd say that it is close in the number of revenue units, maybe slightly down (10%?) or slightly up, but with contribution (profitability) up reflecting shifts in the mix of traffic and the transition of domestic truckload freight from trailers to domestic containers and away from 3rd parties towards truckload carriers and CSX Intermodal's retail position within this segment. Also, demand for CSX's New England intermodal service amongst truckload carriers exeeds their capacity at this time, and that is without doublestacked high-cube container capability.

QB 52.32 wrote:

calaisbranch wrote:By the way, CSX is supposed to eventually scale back to Worcestor since Harvard has bought the property underneath Beacon Park Yard.

That's right, Harvard purchased the land and Beacon Park long term lease back in the 1980's (from the MA Turnpike Authority) and moving Beacon Park activities westward has been an issue since that time. The Commonwealth also wants to purchase the Worcester-Framingham portion of the Boston Line for increased commuter rail out of Worcester. That does not automatically mean, however, that CSX will scale back to Worcester. Newly increased overhead clearances will go as far east as Westborough and there is a lot of carload business in their eastern MA branchline network hubbed out of Framingham and Readville, and whether that gets spun off to a shortline/regional carrier, I have little doubt that CSX would guarantee that traffic remains fed into their network.

calaisbranch wrote: Not to mention, they have maybe......60% percent of container counts that Conrail ran over the Boston line in the mid to late 1990s. Those numbers had already dropped well before the current economic crisis.

CSX's intermodal traffic in/out of New England is not down 40% vs. mid-90's Conrail...I'm guessing you're referring to the decline in international containers moving via MLB due to worldwide geopolitical, production and logistical changes. I'd say that it is close in the number of revenue units, maybe slightly down (10%?) or slightly up, but with contribution (profitability) up reflecting shifts in the mix of traffic and the transition of domestic truckload freight from trailers to domestic containers and away from 3rd parties towards truckload carriers and CSX Intermodal's retail position within this segment. Also, demand for CSX's New England intermodal service amongst truckload carriers exeeds their capacity at this time, and that is without doublestacked high-cube container capability.

I do not think there is more demand than capacity for intermodal service out of Boston. There is ample track capacity on
the B & A for more trains if the business is offered and there are stored intermodal cars all over the place on sidings and in
yards from Florida to New York to Texas to California.
If CSX spins off the lines in southeastern Massachusetts they might or might not retain the traffic. It all depends on who
might end up with it and how much they end up with.
I think the future in New England will have many changes in all six states, especially in Maine where at least right now there
may be an excessive amount of capacity for the remaining business.
Noel Weaver

Back in the day when the 3 on-line Paper plants and all the Lumber mills were going 100% and when they were shipping thousands of cars a year of Logs and Chips to MEC served mills, the BAR made money. Today, one of the Great Northern plants is closed, what's left of Fraser mainly goes out over the CN, the Lumber industry is in the tank, and Fiber traffic going to the ST is just a fraction of what it used to be. Add to this the fact that they were pretty much forced to buy the old CP, which more or less doubled the railroads mileage without adding much new business and you can see why they are in trouble. The former MEC property looks like a virtual gold mine compared to what the MMA has to work with.

Noel Weaver wrote: I do not think there is more demand than capacity for intermodal service out of Boston. There is ample track capacity on the B & A for more trains if the business is offered and there are stored intermodal cars all over the place on sidings and in yards from Florida to New York to Texas to California.

The demand (outstripping capy.) for the truckload segment of CSX's New England intermodal business, in the longer-term environment of traffic contracts, and without the kind of traffic falloff seen nationwide given the large amount of UPS business also in the mix, is terminal capacity in Worcester. This reflects the westward shift of freight distribution activity away from Boston and Beacon Park.

Noel Weaver wrote:If CSX spins off the lines in southeastern Massachusetts they might or might not retain the traffic. It all depends on who might end up with it and how much they end up with.

With value in the traffic originating/terminating on CSX's E.MA branchline network (long-haul, consumer population-oriented (vs. production) traffic generating a daily set of trains in a tough backhaul market for trucking competition) and normal railroad behavior and precedence of protecting (valuable) freight franchises during line sales or abandonment, it would be uncharacteristicly foolish for CSX not to restrict interchange/gateways with a spin-off to prevent cannibalization of this traffic to competing carriers (ala CSOR's restrictions originating under a "Conrail Express" agreement, for example).

In deference to acknowledging that I have been way off-topic and getting back to the subject of this thread, is MMA engaged in (reverse) transloading of paper from mills located on PAR? This rang a bell given photos posted on NERAIL of a N. Maine Jct. warehouse; calaisbranch's discussion of PAR's service problems, and, a recent report I read that the old Champion mill at Bucksport is considering shifting all traffic away from PAR due to service problems. If they're not engaged in transloading around PAR, perhaps they should be. Also, I remember back in the early '90's a conversation I had with a railroad's forest products marketing manager around the large land purchases forest product companies were making in ME anticipating shifting PNW lumber production to ME. Obviously, that didn't pan out....what happened?

I can't' say for sure if Verso at Bucksport is doing much transloading around Pan Am, but I do know that that particular mill (fortunately for Pan Am), is set up to load railcars much more efficiently than truck and has thus always shipped a higher percentage of it's paper production by rail vs the Verso plant at Jay and New Page at Rumford, who at times both ship heavy truck volumes. Another problem would be the fact that not only do you have to pay for trucking and transloading to get to LMS/MMA, but then you have to go through two carriers (MMA & CPRS) just to get to the NS or CSXT, whereas Pan Am has direct connections with both. Unless Pan Am's service is completely in the tank, it's probably not economically practical. Obviously if it's paper going beyond Chicago or terminating on the CPRS or CN, then the economics improve. On the flip side, a lot more of the inbound Woodpulp gets transloaded around Pan Am due to the fact that much of it does originate on the CN & CPRS, where again, the SLR and MMA aren't at that same routing disadvantage. Keep in mind too that MMA's cut it's service back quite a bit and I hear transit times are getting worse and worse; in fact, I know I read somewhere that some of the MMA mills are actually transloading on Pan Am in the Bangor area - and again, with Pan Am's direct connections to CSXT and NS, I can see where that would work.

Thanks, Mr. Tosh, for your detailed response. While transloading of printing paper is not "optimal" due to additional handling and trucking and transloading costs, it would be interesting for MMA-CN and CP (to look at trying) to serve PAR-on line mills via reverse transload. While printing plants in PA, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, KY and the Nashville TN area are NS or CSX-served and would be protected by those carriers for the longest haul via PAR, there are large tonnages being used by printing plants in S. IL, Memphis TN-AR-MS area, IA, NV, and OR that could lend itself to CN or CP routings...the flip side to what is probably occurring with MMA-served mills transloading to PAR for traffic destined to CSX and/or NS-served printing plants. I'd guess that the transload off MMA mills is economic and not service-oriented (?) though MMA does have a gateway to CSX via VRS/Palmer and seems to be handling +/- 6 loads/week. I'd also guess the fine MMA marketing folks are on top of any potential and treble consequences such a service would offer. By chance, does SLA originate any transloaded paper traffic?

I know the SLR warehouses like New England Public Warehouse have traditionally handled a lot more inbound woodpulp destined for places like Madison and Bucksport vs outbound printing paper, but I also know that those same mills have at times utilized backhaul equipment for outbound paper and am sure that the mills at Jay and Rumford have moved paper that way in the past as well. I also know that some of the mills have traditionally routed cars ST-DANVJ-SLR/CN to points like you mentioned beyond Chicago; though Pan Am has always done everything it could to prevent this from happenning.

To answer the original question, in the past 2 or 3 months the Maine Department of Transportation released a few reports of the Maine Transportation plan from 2010-2015. Within that plan one of the larger goals is to completely rebuild the Montreal Maine & Atlantic. Whether this will happen or not has yet to be seen but it is a goal.

CN, if true, this just shows out ridiculously out of the touch MDOT is with reality. To think that the taxpayers of Maine should be paying to rebuild a (let's be honest) railroad of yesterday is absurd. At best, the old CP line is a weak bridge line. With the uncertainity of Madawaska and Millinocket mills, NMJ to Madawaska is shaky as well. If the state wants to put that much money into a RR, buy the old freaking Maine Central and at least they won't be wasting the taxpayers money. The next few years should be interesting as I think we'll up with one or two railroads left in the state of Maine.

Understand that if Domtar doesn't increase shipments out of Woodland the NBSR is pulling the plug by years end on the St Stephen Sub I really hope this isn't the start of track being abandoned across the state of Maine

Just thought of something else,with Chrysler's future up in the air when does CP's contract expire to have them sent via the MMA here to Saint John to be unloaded? this too might hurt bridge traffic over the Moosehead Sub

I was unaware about the Chrysler auto business over the MMA; what's the estimated volume? Best case, Chrysler will come out of this a much smaller player; more likely case, it'll be forced into liquidation... on a per-employee basis, their requested govt. loans for '09 equate to nearly $200k!

QB 52.32 wrote:Thanks, Mr. Tosh, for your detailed response. While transloading of printing paper is not "optimal" due to additional handling and trucking and transloading costs, it would be interesting for MMA-CN and CP (to look at trying) to serve PAR-on line mills via reverse transload. While printing plants in PA, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, KY and the Nashville TN area are NS or CSX-served and would be protected by those carriers for the longest haul via PAR, there are large tonnages being used by printing plants in S. IL, Memphis TN-AR-MS area, IA, NV, and OR that could lend itself to CN or CP routings...the flip side to what is probably occurring with MMA-served mills transloading to PAR for traffic destined to CSX and/or NS-served printing plants. I'd guess that the transload off MMA mills is economic and not service-oriented (?) though MMA does have a gateway to CSX via VRS/Palmer and seems to be handling +/- 6 loads/week. I'd also guess the fine MMA marketing folks are on top of any potential and treble consequences such a service would offer. By chance, does SLA originate any transloaded paper traffic?

NECR would also have to be in the mix, probably out of Bellows Falls, since they are the actual link road to CSX in Palmer. With how many times NECR has seemed to change their Southern Division schedules of late, it could seriously mess up any pattern a routing such as this would need. Makes me miss my old NECR/CV haunts though!

Because VRS's WACR has haulage rights from White River Jct. to Bellows Falls and GMRC has haulage rights from Bellows Falls to Palmer, I originally thought the move would be under VRS haulage rights while on NECR, but, after looking at VRS's website, I see that traffic off the WACR for CSX Palmer moves WACR-White River Jct-NECR-Palmer-CSXT. From their website, I also see that traffic funneled via the WACR has an NS gateway routed WACR-Bellows Falls-CPRS-NS (CP haulage on GMRC), so this VRS route offers routing for MMA traffic around PAR to both NS and CSX.