East Deerfield Gawking

Wow this is like reading some sort of action adventure story lol

In other weird news D3 just told 22K to drop their Fitchburgs on the west side at OX...

Traffic is up 9% (not sure if this is PAR+PAS) but it came from the PAS side of management. They are having problems keeping up.

It's past time they stick their necks out and spend a nickle to make a dime. The "plan" that Transportation is stuck with is is using NS power where possible - but they keep wanting it back.

newpylong wrote:Traffic is up 9% (not sure if this is PAR+PAS) but it came from the PAS side of management. They are having problems keeping up.

If I was a betting man I would say that is all IM/Auto/Grain traffic and carload freight is stagnant or declining with the loss of mill traffic. Meaning trains that should required little handling 205/206 and 22K/23K (PW pick ups/set outs in Gardner) are tying up valuable resources, time slots and parking spaces for other trains to die on.

newpylong wrote:Traffic is up 9% (not sure if this is PAR+PAS) but it came from the PAS side of management. They are having problems keeping up.

It's past time they stick their necks out and spend a nickle to make a dime. The "plan" that Transportation is stuck with is is using NS power where possible - but they keep wanting it back.

As I said elsewhere, "It's about to get a whole lot worse." There's going to be a major economic expansion in 2015 which will probably accelerate towards the end of the year (as opposed to the deceleration we've seen in Q3 for several years now).

Handcock wood products has 8 cars in circulation, loading logs behind the tower and shipping them to a pulp mill in Maine. They increased from 2 cars. Same outfit that was loading in Athol I believe.

Yard still plugged 1300 cars. RJED at 384. PLED on loop. MOED on runner. AD-1 can't leave. Too many rules. And clueless train masters who piss off the guys and get them to throw the anchor out.

newpylong wrote:Traffic is up 9% (not sure if this is PAR+PAS) but it came from the PAS side of management. They are having problems keeping up.

It's past time they stick their necks out and spend a nickle to make a dime. The "plan" that Transportation is stuck with is is using NS power where possible - but they keep wanting it back.

newpylong wrote:Handcock wood products has 8 cars in circulation, loading logs behind the tower and shipping them to a pulp mill in Maine. They increased from 2 cars. Same outfit that was loading in Athol I believe.

Yard still plugged 1300 cars. RJED at 384. PLED on loop. MOED on runner. AD-1 can't leave. Too many rules. And clueless train masters who piss off the guys and get them to throw the anchor out.

CP and NS could set up Mohawk Yard with a few new tracks; one track would be for cars directly bound for Rigby and another track for cars that need to be switched in East Deerfield. There would be two road trains on the far west end of the system: MOPO/POMO and MOED/EDMO. MOPO/POMO would run right around East Deerfield without stopping with a crew change in Fitchburg then on to Rigby. The MOED/EDMO could make pickups along the way between Mohawk and East Deerfield and would then forward their cars following switching at Deerfield bound for points east to EDPO/POED and they would work all of the yards and interchanges between Deerfield and Rigby. The Riverside portion of the yard at Mohawk would be for receiving trains: NS bound freight going south and CP bound freight heading north.

Another way of improving some of the bottleneck would be to get the old #2 track west of Greenfield re-activated. Looking a Google Earth, it looks like the old #2 track is largely in tact from roughly one-half mile west of CPF-385 to just west of Wisdom Way. They would have to install a new left-handed switch at CPF-385, restore 1/2 mile of new track from CPF-385 to roughly MP386 and install a new right-handed switch at Wisdom Way. That would allow trains would be able to make meets west of Greenfield rather than bogging the west end of the yard down.

Putting more tracks in is just moving the problem elsewhere. The solution is to switch, and get trains in and out of Deerfield faster. I was looking at statistics on other railroads the other day and the average dwell time on most NS yards is less than 36 hours. That is unbelievable. There are customer's cars in Deerfield that sit for weeks. Unfortunately I don't see productivity increasing substantially until the entire yard is rebuilt. I don't know what their near term solution is, I assume they are just going to keep going business as usual as opposed to operational changes.

We used to run a MOPO with pre-switched Portland blocks but it didn't last long. There isn't enough crews or power to run two trains, but pre-blocking would make sense if NS could do it.

Pulling up the double iron to West Deerfield was just another item on a long list of foolish things they did. It would be a perfect place for westbounds to meet eastbounds and eastbounds short on time could tie down at Greenfield so trains could get around them and avoid what I described yesterday. Only place I know who's biggest yard on the RR only has single track leaving.

newpylong wrote:Putting more tracks in is just moving the problem elsewhere. The solution is to switch, and get trains in and out of Deerfield faster. I was looking at statistics on other railroads the other day and the average dwell time on most NS yards is less than 36 hours. That is unbelievable. There are customer's cars in Deerfield that sit for weeks. Unfortunately I don't see productivity increasing substantially until the entire yard is rebuilt.

How many yard crews switch EDY each day? Are they just classifying cars on only one shift per day? Would increasing # of active yard crews per day help make the yard more fluid?

24 hours a day on the hump 3 shifts. The west end I think right now is one day switcher.

Have they repaired the track on the Montague Industrial after the derailment a couple weeks ago?

Yep.

There was an article in the Greenfield Recorder the other day about (nonprofit) 'Green River House running transit center cafe'. I was thinking if anybody was in the Deerfield & Greenfield area gawking you may like to stop at the Cafe and eat lunch with a view of the track. If you look at the pictures in article you can see how close the platform is to the Cafe tables. Link to the article: http://www.recorder.com/news/15211174-9 ... enter-cafe" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It looks like a good spot for the winter to watch the rail.

Spent a little time around Deerfield today. Caught BFED coming in around 1030 with 501-343-502 and 15 cars. After that it was really quiet except for the hump crew ED1 switching the east end with GMTX 5000-5001 making up EDBF. 604-3003-504-3001-606-3109 were some of the engines around the pit. ED4 taxied out to who knows where. PLED came in about 1430 with 352-353 and 32 cars. POED train powerless sitting at Montague, AD2 train sitting in Erving also powerless. EDBF should have 502-343-504 tonight.