Bay Colony Millis Line

BostonUrbEx wrote:So this stump of the Millis Line between the Framingham Secondary and the end of track (a warehouse just a hair past downtown Millis) is MBTA owned, but Bay Colony has the only freight rights, correct?

Yup. It's been T-owned ever since the big Penn Central line sale to the state in '73. Conrail ran it until they dished Newton-Millis off to Bay Colony in '82. End-of-track is technically a GAF siding (or whatever real estate broker now owns that building) with true end of state ownership being the long-removed Route 109 grade crossing en route to West Medway. Google shows a few feet of phantom mainline track going into the Millis Animal Hospital parking lot. Doesn't look like the For Sale sign has come off the warehouse after 5 years of trying, so that's probably as dead an issue as the in-ruins main GAF plant up the street by the yard. Big box stores in-wait?

What about the other direction from the Framingham Secondary? Towards Needham Jct? The MBTA also owns this, I know. I believe Bay Colony abandoned their rights on the Needham Branch, but do they hold rights in between?

BC gave up everything between Medfield-Needham-Newton when it filed for abandonment of trackage rights. It's all dead now except for whatever MOW equipment gets shoved a few carlengths onto that side of Medfield Jct.

And as for the Framingham Secondary, the MBTA very recently purchased this from CSX, and CSX still retains all rights, but it is Bay Colony which is dispatching the line?

Iowa Pacific/Mass Coastal got that outsource contract, since IP can do the dispatching from some remote office in the Midwest like they do with the Middleboro Secondary and Cape lines. CSX wanted the branch scraped off its dispatcher's plate upon sale, so MassDOT added it to IP's responsibilities rather than burdening T southside dispatch.

Other than this one cement transload, Bay Colony's only other customers are in Dartmouth, correct? A scrap metal facility and a lumber yard? Does Bay Colony have any freight rights in New Bedford other than accessing the interchange with CSX? It looks like the only customer in New Bedford is in between legs of the wye, where some sort of public dock has reefers spotted on occasion. I assume this is a CSX customer?

Mid City Scrap in Westport at the US 6/MA 88 interchange is the biggie. Then there's a Budweiser distributor on Old Reed Rd. in Dartmouth...and [???]. I'm not sure there is anything more than that unless they do some unloading at the Bud siding (their makeshift home yard) for the adjacent building supply company. It's a Tues./Thurs. midday operation, usually with horns at Reed Rd. around lunchtime. Third day as-needed if Mid City's chowing down a particularly large meal. I have extended family living in that housing development 1/3 mile up Reed Rd. so can personally vouch for regularity of their schedule. Never ever seen them run on a weekend. Usually a couple of boxcars and/or one of their 2 Wattupa-assigned locos are set off between the Reed Rd. and Old Reed Rd. grade crossings as the proverbial "Closed" sign on the front door for off days. When those are absent...that's the tell that they're out and about.

New Bedford Branch is Mass Coastal. BC only has rights to shunt its interchange cars from the wye onto that grade separated double- and tri-track section of NB Branch south of Nash Rd. It takes 2 interchanges to reach them ever since CSX dished off the South Coast lines.

Are all those scrap cars I see on Google Maps (3D off, not sure if they're there with 3D on) in the vicinity of the wye in New Bedford all for Bay Colony's scrap metal customer?

Yep. MC's freight yard several blocks south is currently out-of-commission for replacement of the rail bridge over MA 18, so the tracks by the wye are a lot more crowded on Google than they usually are. Yard and reconnected port access should be back in action in a few months; the piles of new ties and stick are waiting in the yard. Under normal operating circumstances MC will clear out the interchange line and sort for the daily trip to CSX a lot faster/cleaner when they have full yard access. You won't typically see such a long line of interchange cars piled up over the streets of downtown like that.

You can also see a string of scrap cars disappearing into the woods past Mid City. Since BC doesn't have anywhere to store empties they just shove them way way back onto the start of the abandoned track, break off the first few cars for Mid City to fill up, then pull the string of empties forward on the next trip out. When scrap business is good (cooled off significantly industry-wide from the highs of 4-5 years ago) the string of cars can sometimes reach the MA 88 underpass.

Colonial Beverage (formerly JJ Taylor). The original Colonial Beverage is now Harvey Industries, who promptly sealed up the unloading doors when
they moved it.

Dartmouth Building Supply is the lumber/building materials customer at Old Reed Rd. Mostly centerbeams, unloaded right on the mainline.

The siding at Hixville Rd would be available for storage if needed, but it is the only runaround on the branch (except a short one at Mid-City).

D

GP40MC1118 wrote:Colonial Beverage

I believe they distribute everything but AB products. Interesting to note a lot of Colonial trucks lately coming and going from Burke Distributors in Randolph. Is Colonial using Burke's recently rebuild double track siding instead of their own? Perhaps the triple interchange fee is a factor.

BostonUrbEx wrote:Are all those scrap cars I see on Google Maps (3D off, not sure if they're there with 3D on) in the vicinity of the wye in New Bedford all for Bay Colony's scrap metal customer?

I was under the impression they were EPA contracted PCB cars for the dewatering plant. They were moved from their original spot at the north end of NB yard to Nash Road due to previously noted bridge work.

The PCB sludge gondolas were stored on the elevated trackage between Sawyer St and Weld Square for many months due to the
bridge outage. These are not Mid-City cars. They left last month after being drafted into dirty dirt service on PAR out of Everett
(The Wynn Casino site). Lately, some loaded salt cars for Taunton were stored up there.

Don't know if Colonial is using Burke. The Dartmouth site has a double siding too. I fondly remember the Conrail days when
cars were spotted on both tracks! Now we are lucky to see one or two boxcars only a few times a month! Those cars come
off NS (all ex-SOU cars for the most part and cars that visited here for decades).

D

GP40MC1118 wrote:The PCB sludge gondolas were stored on the elevated trackage between Sawyer St and Weld Square for many months due to the
bridge outage. These are not Mid-City cars. They left last month after being drafted into dirty dirt service on PAR out of Everett
(The Wynn Casino site). Lately, some loaded salt cars for Taunton were stored up there.

Thanks for the recent info on the PCB cars departure. H&S Environmental had the contract for supplying both the gons and intermodal containers for New Bedford project, the latter was a trucking containers to CSX at Worcester.

GP40MC1118 wrote:Don't know if Colonial is using Burke. The Dartmouth site has a double siding too. I fondly remember the Conrail days when
cars were spotted on both tracks! Now we are lucky to see one or two boxcars only a few times a month! Those cars come
off NS (all ex-SOU cars for the most part and cars that visited here for decades).

Burke was the same way too, both tracks stuffed with cars of Coors off NS in Virginia. Now I haven't seen a car at Burke in about 2 months.

Update Sun. 20 Nov.

NAHX 93393 Empty
NAHX 94349 Empty
NAHX 93891
NAHX 93722
NAHX 93731
NAHX 93593
by Island Road waiting to be unloaded


NAHX 94682
NAHX 93721
NAHX 320203
NAHX 94010
NAHX 94723
NAHX 93428
NAHX 320319
by the switch to be picked up.

Interesting, the same cars are used for delivery.

Update Sun. 27 Nov.

NAHX 93393
NAHX 94349
NAHX 93891
NAHX 93722
NAHX 93731
NAHX 93593

by the switch to be picked up.

The 1701 in her nest looking for work.

There is trackwork behind Mid-City right up to the rt 88 overpass. Not sure what is being done but it looks different with all the brush cleared out. I will be curious to see if they go past the overpass.

Just before Thanksgiving, MW of the portion between MP6 and end of track was transferred
to Mass Coastal. Supposedly a few thousand ties to be installed. There was been talk of going
back to the old Westport Drive-In area where Mid-City has a satellite operation, but that
would be a big undertaking since the track has literally sunk/disappeared into the wetlands!

D

just to keep this all straight, when we are talking about mid city, we are talking about the watuppa secondary track which is partially owned both by mass dot and bay colony and solely operated by the bay colony. not the millis sec which is also solely operated by bay colony.,

Mid-City Scrap in Westport on the Watuppa Branch. Not sure why there would be confusion since
Tresca is the only customer on the Millis Line. Perhaps due to both lines being discussed on a Millis thread?

Some history on the Watuppa Branch:

Conrail and BCLR split the in service portions in 1982 or 1984 with BCLR running from the Narrows in Westport
to MP6. Conrail has the rest. After a few years, BCLR got trackage rights as far as Hixville Road in order to
perform an more efficient interchange.

When CR split, CSX took over until track conditions caught up with everyone. CSX conveyed their portion to BCLR,
but retained the land under the track. Also during this time, Mass Coastal inherited the operating rights to the
MP6 to end of track portion (basically Mid-City Scrap), but contracted with BCLR to continue to service Mid-City.

CSX may have sold its interest in the Watuppa to MDOT during the last round of state freight line purchases, but
I am not sure.

D

Wattupa was an earlier MassDOT buy than the rest of the South Coast. At least 12-15 years ago, whereas the FR/NB branches were sold in 2010.

Originally ONLY MP6 to end of track, since CSX did not sell it to the state. Instead it was
the strange (maybe not!) retaining the land under the track and selling the track to Bay
Colony.

While CSX may have sold the "land" under the Watuppa to Mass DOT, Bay Colony obviously
still owns the actual rail, switches and other physical appurtenances between the wye in New
Bedford and MP6.

D

i believe that bclr owns their piece of the rock lock stock and barrel. over the years when conrail or csx offered connecting pieces in mass to eotc/mass dot including the mass central piece in palmer , mass dot politely refused to buy them even though the prices asked were actually quite reasonable. as a consequence, when the line operators bought the pieces offered, the dynamic for actual ownership of the connection connection has proven to be be very good some might say strategic investments.

Safetee wrote:i believe that bclr owns their piece of the rock lock stock and barrel. over the years when conrail or csx offered connecting pieces in mass to eotc/mass dot including the mass central piece in palmer , mass dot politely refused to buy them even though the prices asked were actually quite reasonable. as a consequence, when the line operators bought the pieces offered, the dynamic for actual ownership of the connection connection has proven to be be very good some might say strategic investments.

They don't. All official MassDOT maps and property valuations have had the Wattupa land under state ownership for >15 years, if not longer. YMMV on this whole wrinkle of whether BCLR owns the hardware on top of MassDOT's land, and between what mileposts. But they do not have a property deed today in 2016 to any of it, and do not pay property taxes on it. The only rail property they own (and it's visible in blue on the State Rail Map if you zoom in at >400% on the PDF) are the sidings at Old Reed Rd. "headquarters" (at least the Colonial Beverage cluster...not sure about the inactive one at Harvey Industries where they park all the MOW equipment).

Whatever transactional wackiness may have been left behind in Conrail's wake was cleaned up long ago, except for possibly this what-if of whether BCLR gets the scrap value of the hardware if they leave town. [My guessess: A) No, they won't be allowed to scrap if it's a matter of BCLR's Seminole RR owners in Florida who pull the plug on New England ops and not the loss of branch customers; or B) "Who cares?" if it is the outright loss of customers, because the only thing replacing them is going to be an expanded rail trail and the state will need somebody to pull up and cart off the scrap hardware.]