CSX Track Upgrades & Infrastructure of Pan Am

[newpylong]

Rail train is waybilled for Portland not sure if it will be dropped in Rigby or elsewhere. Seems overkill for the yard.

[neman2]

How heavy is the rail on the stony brook and Lowell branch? Seems odd that they would turn the train there and park it.

The rail on the Stony is 115RE CWR installed by Pan Am in 2017.

[F74265A]

Csx sure seems to prefer heavier rail than 115 re
I suspect it gets upgraded at some point

[CPF66]

I imagine they will replace the CWR on District 2 once it finally wears out. Its one thing to replace 112LBS stick rail which was installed in the 50's, but is another thing to replace CWR which was installed just over 5 years ago. At this point, it would probably make the most sense to leave that 115 LBS CWR in place and use the much older rail from District 1 for Rigby.

I know there was talk of redoing the Rumford Branch with CWR last year, but with the uncertainty with Rumford I don't see CSX dumping anything but the bare minimum into the branch, so that will probably stay 10 MPH. And frankly, with the paper industry in the toilet, they would be stupid to invest anything beyond the bare minimum into the two remaining paper branches.

[markhb]

Could that rail be headed for the Wells siding? Or is the track already laid there?

[codasd]

CWR for the Wells siding was dropped last year. My guess is this is for something further north.

[neman2]

As of 16:00 today rail train is still tied down at Westford, the only change is the locomotive has been shut down. My guess is that they don't have the crews and equipment ready where they need them so the train will stay here out of everybody's way.

[CN9634]

Not to mention the Nor'easter on its way... next week should be back to 50-60 degrees weather so bretter conditions to get things going. CSX was trying to get a jump to the WTVL to Royal project this year so that should be started up soon. Plenty of rail to drop east of Waterville too but Im not sure they got all the sections down on the major project (and sidings?)

[CPF66]

Doubtful that its for east of Waterville. The track guys I talked to recently didn't expect to get anymore new rail another couple of years. Its probably a clean up train for Leeds-Waterville as there are a lot of places which haven't had rail dropped. They will also probably dump a bunch for track 1 & 2 in Waterville, since those have switch panels laid out. The rest might go up to keag, since the main from Winn to the start of NBSR trackage is all 85 LBS still as well as 4-5 miles of light rail in Lincoln which was skipped.

[neman2]

I had other things going on today but here is what I know--------------

1)Rail train left Westford and is dropping rail somewhere in the vicinity of WA and Wamesit (Lowell--Tewksbury area)
2) It has MEC 507 as lead engine now because of problem with horn on MEC 7643.

[F74265A]

Doubtful that its for east of Waterville. The track guys I talked to recently didn't expect to get anymore new rail another couple of years. Its probably a clean up train for Leeds-Waterville as there are a lot of places which haven't had rail dropped. They will also probably dump a bunch for track 1 & 2 in Waterville, since those have switch panels laid out. The rest might go up to keag, since the main from Winn to the start of NBSR trackage is all 85 LBS still as well as 4-5 miles of light rail in Lincoln which was skipped.

Did I read your Portsmouth post correctly that big chunks of Waterville to keag are back to 10 mph speed restrictions?

[newpylong]

The whole thing wasn't 25 to begin with.

[CPF66]

Doubtful that its for east of Waterville. The track guys I talked to recently didn't expect to get anymore new rail another couple of years. Its probably a clean up train for Leeds-Waterville as there are a lot of places which haven't had rail dropped. They will also probably dump a bunch for track 1 & 2 in Waterville, since those have switch panels laid out. The rest might go up to keag, since the main from Winn to the start of NBSR trackage is all 85 LBS still as well as 4-5 miles of light rail in Lincoln which was skipped.

Did I read your Portsmouth post correctly that big chunks of Waterville to keag are back to 10 mph speed restrictions?

That is/was correct. They have a 10 MPH restriction at NMJ and Bangor which were around before the geo train came in. But after they scanned the main a few weeks ago, a lot of the 25 MPH dropped back to 10 MPH. The MOW department has been slowly bringing spots back up, but the winter storms have definitely slowed the progress. It seemed like the train found a lot of defects in crossings and bridges. I can't imagine CSX has to big of a stockpile of 112LBS rail left which is defect free at this point. So I imagine the MOW department is replacing the defective stuff, with used rail that has been stockpiled over the years, which likely has defects itself. I know during Pan Am they were having the same problem with the 85 pound rail east of Passadumkeag. They used up all the good stuff that was left and when they were replacing broken/defective rails they were normally throwing in junk rail which had been pulled out during MEC/Guilford which hadn't been disposed of or marked as having defects.

[newpylong]

When I worked there they continually scavenged the old eastbound tracks between South Deerfield and Greenfield, Gardner and East Gardner, and the old westbound between Buckland and Rices. That's on top of scavenging switches wherever they could find them, like the old Holyoke yard, etc. Too cheap to buy new switches and rail, why not use stuff that was forged in the 20s.

[F74265A]

I guess They need a few more trains of the 136lb good stuff