Portland Waterfront Rail Ops (Yard 8, Intermodal, etc)

Now they want to build a refrigerated wharehouse. More trans-loading, probably into trucks..

And remember they are expanding it with a second track and a stacker that can reach across two tracks. Wonder how often the extra capacity will be used?

Portland facility full to capacity with containers today. 30 total parked inside the fence and also on the adjacent sidings. Quite a remarkable sight.

Quick note, last week WAAY was run on Thursday and Friday with WAPO on Saturday. Normally it's WAAY Friday and Saturday.

BM6569 wrote:Quick note, last week WAAY was run on Thursday and Friday with WAPO on Saturday. Normally it's WAAY Friday and Saturday.

Caught this train wb at Town Farm Rd Westford late Saturday afternoon (02/04/17). Was told by a pride of foamers that this was WAAY and had spent 4 hours chasing it from Haverhill. So I'm guessing this edition of WAAY departed Waterville on Friday?

Story in new Trains magazine talks about the Pan Am Poland Springs service.

Article in todays BDN about an announcement from Poland Springs of a $50 million new plant to meet the needs of its products. They are looking at areas around Rumford, Fryeburg and NE of Bangor. Maybe the Water Express is working. The article said they are conducting a search for a third well in the Rumford area and also stated that they already have a 25yr deal to purchase water from the Fryeburg water company. Can't wait to see how this plays out.

Rumford is an interesting choice. Combined with Fryeburg it makes me wonder if they are taking potential rail access into consideration.

They're going to have to shell out big bucks to get Pan Am to upgrade the Rumford branch.

The NE of Bangor reference is what caught my eye. The Keag, around Lincoln, any other potential locations near rail service up that direction?

Wonder if this could have been a good candidate for roadrailer service? Seems like it would work as a pretty seamless operation and easily expanded as new facilities and customs come online.

My impression is that roadrailers as an intermodal technology are not competitive with containers transferred onto truck trailers. The available pool of equipment may be quite small as well.

NS has been phasing out the Roadrailers,that entire service dept has shut down,most of their fleet was about to "age out" most were converted into
regular truck trailers as the fleet was retired.
It is unknown if Wabash National (the current license holder)still offers the Roadrailer or manufacturers them.

Wabash National still has roadrailers listed on their site as "Intermodal Freight". If NS had some sitting idle somewhere a pretty lowcost fast experiment could be tried. Trucks could pickup water at any spring in Maine and drive to Waterville or Portland or other yard and trains could go to Ayer or Mechanicville or Conn and the trucks could fan out from there to expand the reach. This would be quicker and less labor intensive than loading containers onto railcars. This would give lots of flexibility as the market is tested and expanded.

Poland Springs could maybe own the trailers and they would enjoy having their name all over them instead of Eimskip.

I want to add that we here in New England and New York are lucky to have some of the best drinking water in the world. Many other cities in this country have pretty bad drinking water. There is a huge market out there that Roadrailers could be used to test (i.e., any distribution center within a days drive of a roadrailer terminal). If business develops than the terminal could just keep moving further away. Easy to do with this technology.

Roadrailer trailers have outlived their railroad life. 15 years.