New Hampshire Northcoast Railroad (NHN) Discussion

BostonUrbEx wrote:

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:One single site on the Chelsea River just inside of Boston Harbor supplies a quarter of the road salt for the entire state of Massachusetts

Wow. If that is true, then the salt pile that they build every summer/autumn at Moran Terminal in Charlestown must cover 50% of the state's needs. I'm pretty sure it dwarfs the Chelsea pile. When I was taking the 426 every day over the Tobin, it was fascinating to watch the large dump trucks traverse the pile like a line of ants.

Which also makes me think of another point.... This salt must then be trucked to different dispersion points all across the state... Seems to me a good opportunity for a few CSX specials in the autumn and winter. Load up some hoppers, run it west, drop the rear in Worcester, and bring the rest to Springfield. Seems more efficient way to haul such large quantities of salt. Not really time sensitive that early in the season, either.

I'm pretty sure Chelsea is the port of call for the international salt ships, and that Moran is either a redistribution site or Stop #2 across the river when the salt ships visit town. But, yes...there actually was a Globe article a few months ago about "Where does our road salt come from?" that gave the eye-popping numbers behind Chelsea and the international points of origin for the salt. It really does handle that much of the state's needs.

Rail's not going to be a big component in all this because MassDOT's distribution network doesn't correspond all that well to it. It's those Mass Pike maint facilities and other associated MassHighway yards that have all the salt sheds, and that's where it triages outward to the towns. Spread-out by DOT district with the majority of the restocking involving incremental truck volumes at their leisure in the far offseason. I used to live right next to the City of Cambridge salt shed at Danehy Park...regular trickle of couple staffers, couple trucks of intake per day, couple hours of onsite activity until it was full. Very low-impact. Restocking season will never involve massive carloads from single point of origin where freight rail's going to offer any efficiency. It's why all the salt piles that do have rail sidings--like Providence, Portsmouth, Searsport, Moran--don't use them for that purpose. And definitely not for emergency restocking mid-winter...by that point the salt trucks are just pulling right up to the pile and taking it straight from the boat to depositing it on the pavement.


G&U I think is trying to rummage around for municipal roadmelt transloads at its yards. But that's about the level of niche rail can carve out for itself...the mom-and-pop shortlines who can profit off every door-to-door carload. The supply chain just doesn't mesh with Class I's or II's all that well. Otherwise all these New England ports that do have rail sidings next to their salt piles would've had rail service continuously...in increasing volumes as more of this roadmelt went from local sand to offshore salt. And the New England ports that don't have salt piles...Belle Dock, New London, Quonset, Quincy Shipyard, Southie, Portland, etc. etc...would've long ago sprouted big honking salt piles next to their tracks. For variety of reasons the affinities just don't match up all that well with this particular bulk material and rail, whereas it does with others (construction sand, blacktopping trap rock, etc.).

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Not sure about Maine...checking Google I can't see any salt piles around Portland...

There's usually a huge one at the Merrill/Sprague complex, near Pan Am's bridge over the Fore River. The size obviously fluctuates though, so it might not be visible depending on when the aerial imaging was done. Pretty sure it's brought in by boat.

I drove by the salt pile today and it's there in all its glory, albeit covered with a huge black tarp. I'd estimate it's three or four stories high. It can't get much taller due to its proximity to the airport runways. It's on the South Portland side of the river, circled in red here.

The Two Salt pikes are owned by two different Companies. Chelsea is Eastern Minerals cannot remember the other company name. The P&W used to bring in salt by rail car to Worcester, and Bay Colony used to unload salt cars in Taunton. Not sure if Mass Coastal still does.

boatsmate wrote:The Two Salt pikes are owned by two different Companies. Chelsea is Eastern Minerals cannot remember the other company name. The P&W used to bring in salt by rail car to Worcester, and Bay Colony used to unload salt cars in Taunton. Not sure if Mass Coastal still does.

Taunton's pile still looks rail-active on Google Satellite. Conveyor belt is set up trackside at their Mass Coastal siding at Weir Jct. for offloading off railcars and depositing at the top of the pile. That machinery is movable so if it's set up in the rail-load position they must've been taking cars in at least the 18 months since the last aerial imagery.

P&W's got a salt pile right in the middle of Worcester HQ, but it shares storage space with their ballast pile and at 150' x 85' and only about autorack-height (from what I can tell on Google switching from 45-degree angle to Street View on Southampton St.) so that might just be for their own use. I honestly can't tell where Worcester stores theirs. There's a couple covered domes at the water treatment plant/city dump next to the autorack yard, but can't tell what's underneath. And all the small gravel companies next to the Providence mainline and 146 throw up some false positives till you zoom in. Port of Providence pile is on the active tracks south end of the property, so it's plausible P&W still picks up there. Looks like the Terminal Rd. track is the loading spot since that's right next to the unloading docks for both the salt pile and the gigantic asphalt pile.

What is the New Hampshire Northcoast schedule?

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Also, most road treatment these days is way heavier on the salt than it is the sand. I can't speak for Maine, Vermont, or far inland NH...but sand has largely disappeared from the road treatment mix in the last 15 years as the salt mixes have gotten way more efficient. It actually struck me how much things had changed when I was driving in Southington, CT a few weekends ago several hours before a 3-inch snowfall and was caught a short distance behind a town DPW truck that was dumping sand because the town had completely exhausted its salt supply. I was like..."Wow, real honest-to-god brown sand. That's a sight I haven't seen in a good 12-15 years." The New England quarries are big on sand but not on the salt, so they have nowhere near the mixing scale of these overseas salt quarries that can ship finished product by boat. If it still figures prominently in the mix anywhere in New England it would have to be pretty far inland of these year-round ports, and generally far enough out in the sticks for the meager local scale to float the needs. New England sand is construction sand. They don't shape-shift seasonally to road treatment because their product doesn't factor nearly as much as it used to in road treatments.

This is going way off-topic I know, but: that might not have been sand. Believe it or not it might have been brown sugar. Ridgefield started using a mix of salt and a molasses-like distilling byproduct a few years back. There's some sort of chemical reaction between the sugar, salt & water that helps melt ice more efficiently. Means they use less salt, too, and the catch basins don't get silted up every spring.

RRFAN wrote:What is the New Hampshire Northcoast schedule?

This question seems to come up a lot.

The closest thing to a schedule I believe are south bound trains to Dover during the afternoons, Monday - Thursday. Pan Am crews take the train to Boston at night and return to Dover in the early mornings before the morning commute starts. NHN crew takes the train to Ossipee in the AM Tuesday - Friday. I know there is a shuttle run mid-day but not sure if its limited days.

Will any of the upgrades be taking place this year? (extension north and line upgrades)

Not sure what time DOBO usually departs Dover, but it seems BODO almost always leaves Boston about 3am.

Thanks b&m 1566

I'm curious if NHN crews travel to BOS or if they even have permission to do so? I don't know if there's anything for them to pick up down there as opposed to BON or if there was, would they have to rely on the T to shift things to the north side.

mbhoward wrote:I'm curious if NHN crews travel to BOS or if they even have permission to do so? I don't know if there's anything for them to pick up down there as opposed to BON or if there was, would they have to rely on the T to shift things to the north side.

PAR crews run from Dover to Boston, not NHN crews. And anything from Boston's south-side to Boston's north-side would have to involve PAR and CSX. No MBTA involvement for freight.

BostonUrbEx wrote:PAR crews run from Dover to Boston, not NHN crews. And anything from Boston's south-side to Boston's north-side would have to involve PAR and CSX. No MBTA involvement for freight.

Ok, but I thought PAR only escorted NHN down to the sand and gravel co. by running a locomotive at the head of the NHN load. Does that mean there are no NHN crew present when the loads are taken down, and the empty cars return to NH?

NHN crews are not permitted beyond one train length west of CPF243 at Dover (just east of the Broadway Bridge)
All the travel between Dover and Boston, including BS&G in Boston, is handled by a PAR crew using the NHN
locomotives.

NHN crews are qualified only between MP240 and MP245 on Pan am's mainlines which is about one large train length east of CPF241 and one train length west of the Dover Amtrak station ...


Cory