Oil Trains (RJMA / MARJ, OI-x, etc)

Oil traffic continues to float in everyday (No pun intended). Instead of unit trains, they are coming in small blacks on general merch to fill out the capacity of the SEPO/POSE jobs. These jobs are running many extras as well. Keep an eye out for 1267 tanks.

That would explain it.Thanks for the info.

Large MT MARJ by Wachusetts going up the hill, This is a complete unit train no mixed freight 8:47 AM did not get a car count.

Peter

There were 19 empty oil tucked in together on POSE today (4/15)

A reliable source has reported that ATLANTIC JUPITER, a tanker vessel registered in Hong Kong has been sitting at the Irving Oil Terminal in South Portland for about 10 days now. The indication is that it is highly unusual for such a vessel to stay in port for so long. Assuming mechanical problems are not the issue (which it very well could be) I speculated that perhaps there is some kind of transloading operation underway in Portland that is moving crude from Rigby to the tanker for final movement to St. John. I had noticed when I drove by Rigby the other day that there was a very long string of tank cars on the eastern most track in the entire yard which seemed somewhat out of position for cars that were being forwarded north as rapidly as possible.

According to the Marine Traffic.com web site, they have Boston as the ship's next destination. http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/datash ... &B1=Search
The tank cars at Rigby have been there for quite some time. I'm thinking maybe some of the OOS cars from the Mattawamkeag derailment.

I believe all the derailed cars from March are still in Keag Yard. While its possible they took the rest of the trainset out of service it seems unlikely.

I believe finished product from Saint John is being shipped to places like Bucksport, Portland and Boston for east coast distribution. Elsewhere it was reported an Irving tanker from Saint John was in Bucksport a couple weeks back offloading fuel oil.

Has anyone seen the track of tanks at Rigby up close and if so are they placarded for propane? When there is a large, high volume customer the railroad sometimes will dedicate a track just for the consignee in the yard. Is it possible the propane customer in Yard 8 gets switched enough for this? Just thinking out loud... other than that, no idea.

I think your on to something Newpy, there is at least one white propane car in the line shown in this Dan Comick photo. http://photos.greatrails.net/showpic/?p ... 385917.jpg

Without seeing any placards it's hard to determine for sure, but those cars look like the larger propane type.

This might be of interest to the current discussion, GMTX 3003 was parked on along Commercial St with 12 white tanks this afternoon! Maybe someone can go grab a pic as my phone was dead. Most of them were GATX and I saw at least a couple were lettered for Slurry usage. The 3003 had pulled the cars down to the track (instead of pushing them). And you could see some of the SLR lettering on the side. haha

Also, I caught SEPO passing thru Haverhill today. Was at least 115 cars. One SHPX tanker and others that were also black. I was filming it crossing the river and it ate up my battery because of the speed restriction. It was sooooo slow! Seemed even slower than most of the trains that pass through Auburn. I filmed for 11 minutes before phone cut out and then counted another 25 cars to the end of the train! Even the oil trains moved faster than that.

fogg1703 wrote:I think your on to something Newpy, there is at least one white propane car in the line shown in this Dan Comick photo. http://photos.greatrails.net/showpic/?p ... 385917.jpg

Without seeing any placards it's hard to determine for sure, but those cars look like the larger propane type.

The line of tank cars on the far right of that photo is in fact what I was referring to. Thanks for the help!

Has anyone seen any return to the track work we saw last year starting in District 1? We sould be seeing material and equipment being put into place by now.If not, I would think that would be a bad sign.

I believe if I'm not mistaken, there is an LPG company in the west end of Rigby yard. That string of tanks you're looking at could be a storage track them as well...

neman2 wrote:Has anyone seen any return to the track work we saw last year starting in District 1? We sould be seeing material and equipment being put into place by now.If not, I would think that would be a bad sign.

I haven't seen any work in the Winthrop area (yet) and haven't seen any such reports in the PAR forum threads either.

You won't see any work if they can't get a commitment for big oil traffic. Not worth their money.

Time will tell.