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  • Trains on CSX St. Lawrence Sub (CR's Montreal Secondary)

  • Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New York State.
Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New York State.

Moderator: Otto Vondrak

 #1552487  by lvrr325
 
Pan Am is a topic for other parts of the board.

I expect CSX is playing chicken with the board on the paper barrier. They're dead set against any interchange they don't have control of.

Was awake enough to hear one go up about a quarter to four in the morning that was quite long. Wonder if they do it on purpose, what with the 10 MPH limit until clear of the wye a long train has to struggle some to get up to track speed once clear. Just the grade up over the parkway is fairly steep. You'd have the crossings blocked a long time.
 #1552542  by Clif
 
The website virtual railfan which uses a youtube channel has a rail cam in Pulaski NY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVP7Ks2iVeo

I do not know how long this will be free.

This week it is one of their free cams.

I watched both the south bound train 2 engines 11 container and 91 total cars.

passed the camera 8:20 PM 14 Sept

The north bound 2 engines 12-13 containers and around 85 cars went north bound 7.05 AM 15 Sept
 #1552615  by johnpbarlow
 
Yesterday, the sb manifest train passed the Pulaski cam (apparently an Accuweather cam?) with zero wells while the nb passed with 11 wells of international containers including several 20 footers, which I rarely see on NS international container trains when I watch the Elkhart cam. Net: at this point the daily container volume for this lane is not large.

Q: are these containers coming from / going to ship at Port of New York or Port of Montreal?
 #1552680  by johnpbarlow
 
Overnight 9/16/20 to early AM 9/1720: southbound manifest passed with 0 wells while northbound manifest featured 5 single stacked international 40' containers in 5 wells head out.

CSX/CN do not appear to be blowing the doors off this international intermodal service lane regardless of what they say publicly - this is the kind of volume that CP and NS were doing between Canada and Port of NY/NJ before they killed the service earlier this year.
 #1552690  by tree68
 
The CSX Valleyfield IM facility was supposed to be the dawning of a new era - there were even a couple of dedicated IM trains on the line (the symbols escape me).

That petered out rather quickly. I don't know if it was lack of demand, lack of marketing, or some other reason. And that was before the EHH era.

Perhaps it will see a revival.
 #1552708  by QB 52.32
 
johnpbarlow wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 6:57 am Yesterday, the sb manifest train passed the Pulaski cam (apparently an Accuweather cam?) with zero wells while the nb passed with 11 wells of international containers including several 20 footers, which I rarely see on NS international container trains when I watch the Elkhart cam. Net: at this point the daily container volume for this lane is not large.

Q: are these containers coming from / going to ship at Port of New York or Port of Montreal?
Mr. Barlow, which container line did the boxes belong to, that might provide a clue? The 20-footers are for freight with high cubic density, like Italian tile, for example.

Valleyfield was part of the pre-EHH CSX management's attempt to capture "domestic" North American freight moving to/from CSX's network in their hub-and-spoke system with one hub in North Baltimore, OH. While it seems to have been a miss, there is traffic and it had been on Conrail's radar as a potential market for years. Once EHH took control the whole hub-and-spoke network was ended.
 #1552842  by johnpbarlow
 
At shortly before 2200 Friday 9/18/20, the sb freight passed the Pulaski live cam with about 9 container wells loaded with single and double stacked international containers. At a little after 0100 Saturday 9/19/20, the nearly 2 mile long nb train passed with a whopping 89 wells (if I counted correctly) loaded with single/double stacked international containers followed by 63 general freight (lots of empty centerbeams). Containers observed heading north were mostly 40' dominated by Maersk but with representation from P&O Nedlloyd, Safmarine, Hamburg Sud, CMA CGM, APL, MCC, and a few other shipping lines. So I'm guessing the nb train features loaded containers originating at the Ports of Philadelphia and NY/NJ headed for CN's Taschereau Intermodal Yard at Montreal and Brampton IM Yard at Toronto. And I'm further guessing that monster IM consists like this morning's nb train operate perhaps weekly?

https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/about-us/ ... -offering/
https://www.theproducenews.com/more-com ... an-markets
 #1552851  by tree68
 
The Pulaski cam is a joint venture with Accuweather (I think) and Virtual Railfan. It was the featured cam for VRF recently. I suspect it will be back to subscription soon.
 #1552961  by SecaucusJunction
 
Are they shipping to Toronto via Montreal? That’s what NS used to do back in the day and then we’re surprised when no one used them.

Later NS ran NJ to only Buffalo on a 5 day schedule.
 #1554071  by tree68
 
Caught the southbound through Watertown today, noonish.

Fair number of cans at the head end, behind four locos. The rest of the train was the usual mix.
 #1563357  by cd2434
 
Been a while since I've been in the North Country. What is the train traffic currently at these days? Seems like Q152/Q153 aren't running on their own anymore & just get combined with Q620/Q621. Other than the Massena local (B778 I think) & occasional military trains, anything else running on the SL sub?
 #1564130  by tree68
 
Q620 and Q620 are still running, I believe Selkirk-Massena.

The Watertown local (B778) still runs.

I don't get near the line much these days, so don't overhear much of the radio traffic.
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