CSX Acquisition of Pan Am Railways

They run Class 2 trackage where there is no passenger service which is what PAS is now. Expect no big physical plant changes, with the two owners contributing what's needed to keep it to that standard.

Is the west end generally back up to 25? I recall for a while it had a bunch of 10 mph speed restrictions. And tracks like the camp in Ayer- I would think GW, if it was the owner, wouldn’t tolerate that after the trash train topple over incident

Yes.

There are pictures posted Saturday 8/27/23 on the CSX Albany Div Sightings FB page showing a gathering of 3 pieces of Caterpillar equipment (front loader, excavator, and bulldozer) gathered next to the soon to be removed NS track at the Main St crossing at Voorheesville. So maybe work begins on Monday 8/28/23?

Lots of videos posted today from VO by the former Subaru guy
There are a couple of parked pieces of construction equipment parked by the spur but no obvious signs to me of active work going on today

Interesting article at Railway Age on-line from 9/6/23 entitled "Inside the CSX Playbook" - an interview with Vice President Engineering Carl Walker and Senior Vice President Transportation Ricky Johnson discussing CSX’s maintenance-of-way playbook.

Provocative excerpt is this description of how CSX was instrumental in recovering Pan Am Southern fluidity after this summer's storms and resulting washouts:

RA: Can you share a recent example of how your teams came together quickly to get a job done?
...
A more recent example was on our New England region on the Pan Am Southern property. We had a lot of congestion, and numerous washouts, floods and track damage. Because of some of the damage from storms and congestion, we reached a point where we had a significant amount of slow orders. They accumulated, and with congestion, track time was very constrained. We were trying to clean up the railroad. Sometimes the field teams don’t see the bigger picture and understand that part of the reason we haven’t been able to clear up congestion is because we’re not giving Engineering enough time to fix the slow orders, and we’re unable to get the trains over the road without using two crews. We had a conference call and came up with a strict train plan, and we lifted 11 of 13 slow orders in two days. That is a perfect example of how you must have all groups come together.

I'm surprised to read that CSX stepped up to get PAS rolling again when NS alleges that CSX was misappropriating ST crews allocated to PAS operations?

https://www.railwayage.com/mw/inside-the-csx-playbook/

Yes, as it was the ST (CSX) operating PAS at that time they were the ones who did the work, likely with a larger capital outlay than NS.

From the dominant Class 1 segment of the North American freight rail industry where the structure requires cooperation amongst competition, boiled down sure looks like NS' PAS lawsuit is about trying to send a bigger message or cause action, or, leverage an element inside the acquisition deal within CSX's new CEO's sensitivity for wanting quiet waters on which to sail his ship.

From the significance of a capital-intensive business' ability to make big investments in long-term assets, in terms of CSX's acquisition of Pan Am Railways and as it relates to their watershed 2017 transformation with their most-important ROI performance metric climbing from marginal 8.84% in 2016 through 13.18% in 2018 to robust 16.17% in 2022 resulting from a 14% operating ratio improvement, I find this illustrative from the RA article:

Johnson: I’m a 30-year industry veteran and I started within the Engineering department, and one of the falsehoods I believe is out there when people talk about scheduled railroading is that it’s a “cut and burn” and the support departments are not funded correctly. I can tell you the exact opposite—that you cannot run a scheduled railroad without having the best infrastructure in the business. And the funding we have received as a team to improve the condition of our main lines and industry leads where we serve our customers, and our yards, where we process all the cars to serve our customers, has been incredible. That started in 2018. It’s unbelievable the amount of money that we’ve been able to invest in our infrastructure—not only for the safety of our operations and our employees, but also to better serve our customers and give them that reliable product. If you have safety incidents and derailments because you’re not maintaining the track, you can’t serve customers on a daily scheduled basis, and you won’t be able to grow your business. So having that infrastructure and the commitment to maintain it at that level is part of our value proposition. That’s what enables us to deliver the best service in the industry.

Pretty sure the moderator said to quit the PSR arguments one way or the other of which this certainly is.

Does B&E have a robust mow dept? What if the summer flooding and washouts happened now?

IMHO the response would likely not be as robust because they would need to work with the two parent companies to involve additional assets, or alternatively another GWI sister company. Both of which would take time.

I have never seen the railroad back into service as fast as it was after the event the article speaks of.

What they have for their own MOW was anything on the ST that was in Ayer or west of there pretty much.

M627 has apparently been extended east to Rigby, as an X627-11 went through Graniteville around noon.

M627? That's a Selkirk-Buffalo train. Unless they've joined 626/426 and 427/627 into a single train running Rigby-Buffalo, I'd have some questions about the accuracy of that symbol.

The poster mentioned it was all NS cars, definitely questioning the symbol as well.

Chester Railway Station log identifies it as X627 a one time train from Rigby to Walbridge, OH. All NS traffic. Maybe helping with the earlier NS computer meltdown?