Pan Am Coal Trains

Brideport Harbor is still going strong. But their rail siding to the adjacent NEC viaduct was ripped out 4 decades ago. They get all their deliveries by barge on Long Island Sound, which ends up a whole lot cheaper than delivery over land.

I wouldn't make any bets about long-term viability of coal power. The market is so incredibly volatile as to be year-to-year unprojectable. And in terms of mining bankruptcies, literally month-to-month unpredictable as far as the last 2 years are concerned. Private utilities--especially the ones that own lots of plants--have no qualms about idling single power stations if scales get tipped against profitability. Even the modern ones can and have turned on a dime like that. Modern components in a shuttered plant can just be salvaged to equip another one. Project a 3-5-year unfavorable market that makes Bow look stagnant in their portfolio, and it can still get blinked out of existence in an instant. Even if at >5-year levels it looks likely to normalize. There is no such thing as a 10-Year Plan in coal anymore. The volatility has outstripped the wisdom of even attempting to play a long game.

That's why NS and PAR have written it off even though the traffic has yet to totally disappear. They've shifted their outlook on Bow to treating it as strictly "found money" until the day it no longer is. Full firewalling mode.

OK, then... So to get back to my original yes/no question wrt 286K cars on Pan AM - is the consensus that Pan Am has not yet completed the 263K to 286K work? And if not, anyone have any idea when it will be done? Thanks!

Not to go OT but given CSX can supply 286K cars in interchange to P&W (which is finishing a 286K upgrade on its final 263K bridge between Worcester and Providence this spring), NS/PAS can't be quite as competitive with P&W interchange.

LCT by FG 0915 hrs.

This is NHB-02. Only the second one of the year.

PSNH/Eversource getting ready to crank up Bow to feed all those air conditioners that will soon be humming.

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If you want to see coal trains in NH, you may want to make plans soon.

I am sure the sales process will take a while. This year's loaded coal train count stands at five, so far. PSNH did invest oodles of money to make the plant burn as clean as possible with their 'scrubber'.. Perhaps out next President will have a better appreciation for the almost eternal supply of coal our country has.

Coal is dead. Knew so much so when I completed a grad school project in 2012 about the impacts of Natural Gas on coal consumption. Railroads should have prepared better, to some degree a few did but really just sat around it waited for the end. Now you see droves of units stored at Roanoke and carloads way off year over year. Hey at least grain shipments, chemicals and a few oddities are way up. Intermodal is doing so-so with NS dragging their heals behind CSX, by far the East coast intermodal leader now.

No coal trains = more capacity for commuter trains. When hell freezes over, as things are going right now.

CN9634 wrote:Coal is dead. Knew so much so when I completed a grad school project in 2012 about the impacts of Natural Gas on coal consumption. Railroads should have prepared better, to some degree a few did but really just sat around it waited for the end. Now you see droves of units stored at Roanoke and carloads way off year over year. Hey at least grain shipments, chemicals and a few oddities are way up. Intermodal is doing so-so with NS dragging their heals behind CSX, by far the East coast intermodal leader now.

The vast majority of units at Roanoke are in for rebuild, specifically the GEs. Union Pacific has 300 fairly new units sitting in the Arizona desert.

Rockingham Racer wrote: No coal trains = more capacity for commuter trains. When hell freezes over, as things are going right now.

Bow coal trains are already nine-tenths past tense. The plant throttles down well below-capacity so many months of the year nowadays that it simply doesn't need many deliveries. 5 runs in 7 months? Yeah...that revenue source already end-stage collapsed into a small slice of the pie that's never going to get any bigger. PAR entered its post-coal era when Mt. Tom closed; Bow's last domino left standing just isn't all that consequential in the grand scheme of Billerica's traffic profile when every other coal domino in their realm has already fallen. Get a logistics-focused Watco in there shooting a few low-margin free throws winning back a few of the glut of unused NH Main freight sidings and setting up a right-sized, vertically-integrated, non-overreaching transload at a pick-'em of Nashua, Manchester, or Concord and there most likely is replacement-level revenue to be had in moribund New Hampshire for a lost coal train that was only running once every 6 weeks. Not because business prospects are all that optimistic, but simply because coal's already been fully reduced to traffic entrails.

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Where are people getting this info from?

There are more trains ordered, not many, but about once a month now.

Where are you getting your info from that the coal trains will continue ? I am sure there is a lot of conflicting information out there.

There is a loaded coal train enroute, due on the B&M soon. So as I said, they are ordered once a month or so.

Going to tie down in Garder and use their power to take rax off 2 main and stuff into yard to free up mainline. Only double iron between FG and Erving.