NBSR: St. Croix Tissue Coming Online

[CN9634]

It's not all bad news out there folks... since the news seems to encompass all of the mill closures, heres a nice story for once about one opening up.

Since this is on NBSR/EMRY, I figured this forum would be appropriate. However, CMQ stands to benefit tremendously from this. I heard that a large rail loading warehouse is already done as part of the expansion... it should be able to load as many as 30 cars a day (or was it a switch...?). Also, a lot of this paper I believe will head for places in the Southeast US, so a CMQ-CP-NS routing is possible... or even a CMQ-WACR-NECR-CSXT one... I think by the summer we should start to see some traffic uptick, likely inbound materials as well too.

http://bangordailynews.com/2016/03/18/b ... ileyville/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Fritz]

CN9634,
That is certainly great and welcome news and a nice change from the usual reports of mill closings across northern New England. It will be interesting to see if this mill does start to feed more traffic to CMQ and the WACR. It makes me wonder about those cars that John reported being shipped from Woodland to CSX via the WACR in the discussion of Vermont observations. We may have seen some loads out of Woodland as early as last fall and more in the past couple of months. Would those be loads of wood pulp, which would presumably be going to paper mills, or trial loads of tissue paper? Anyhow great to hear this good news.
Best,
Fritz

[carchecker]

How accurate and reliable is your info CN? I know the mill brass had mentioned last year an extra 1300 cars of inbound traffic but didn't say anything about loads coming out of the mill.

[Cowford]

The fact that it's tissue makes outbound potential a little suspect. Suggesting such a potential loadings number make it a lot suspect. Saying product would be drayed to Saint John (or Waterville) might sound a little more believable.

[CN9634]

I believe the purpose of rail moves is to shuttle product to a finishing facility, a forwarding/port facility and/or markets with greater dray capacity.

[Cowford]

Let's see - so they'll be shipping parent rolls, and the company indicates the two-machine capacity will be 120K tons/yr. On a 5 day/wk basis, that's 461 tons/day. I figger that would translate to a top end of 10 hi-cube 60's/day, assuming 80% cube utilization and using the least dense tissue rating. Still, any new traffic is good news. And it brings up one not-so-small question:

Who supplies the 200+ hi-cubes?

[KSmitty]

CM&Q took over lease on the CRLE's that were on Buckport duty. They've been sending them all over the CMQ/Irving system for loading. Not high cubes, but heavies, suited for paper service. Just a thought...

Otherwise someone will have to pick up the lease on some FBOX's or other high cubes. And its possible the mill could do it for themselves, under its Woodland Rail subsidiary.

[CN9634]

They have the lease on over 350 plate Fs not just the old-CRLE heavies remarked. I don't have reporting marks but officials CMQ have said it publically before.

[Cowford]

Oy, you're trying to shoot a moose with a .22 using 50' equipment for tissue.

[KSmitty]

Yeah, quite right. I wasn't thinking about density of the product. Would be inefficient.

[doublestack]

They have the lease on over 350 plate Fs not just the old-CRLE heavies remarked. I don't have reporting marks but officials CMQ have said it publically before.

CMQ took delivery last year of a large fleet of 50' hi-cube box cars with WRWK markings, (Warwick Railroad). I think there still in storage at NMJ. Could these be the ones your referring to?

[Cowford]

From the Quoddy Tides:

The majority of the tissue paper produced will be trucked to northern Virginia and some will be shipped to the West Coast.

~800-mile move... thinkin' this should be moved to the PAR intermodal thread!

http://quoddytides.com/first-tissue-mac ... -2016.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[WN&P]

I fortuitously caught an eastbound CMQ train outside of east of brownville junction friday night while on a camping trip. The consist was mainly what appeared to be wood chip cars with NBSR reporting marks

[fromway]

Any word of Outbound shipments of tissue by rail? I know there was talk previously of just shipping by truck, but was just curious.