by Tracer
There is one warehouse with a siding left(switch to the main is removed) near the home depot in West Roxbury. Just curious who would serve this in the one in a million chance they ever decided to resume rail service. Thanks
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Tracer wrote:There is one warehouse with a siding left(switch to the main is removed) near the home depot in West Roxbury. Just curious who would serve this in the one in a million chance they ever decided to resume rail service. ThanksNobody. Bay Colony abandoned its rights to Newton a couple years ago, and inbound of Needham Jct. inside City of Boston hasn't had any customers since at least the late 1980's. The only freight that's traveled through West Roxbury in the last 25 years were special carloads of excavated Big Dig fill that moved regularly for a few years in the late-90's during that phase of the project, and took the NEC + Needham as a more direct route out of town than the usual preferred route of Dorchester Branch + Franklin Line.
BostonUrbEx wrote:What was the maximum extent of Bay Colony's rights? Did they obtain those rights from one outright purchase from CSX? Or were the obtained from the Conrail break up?Bay Colony took over Newton-Millis and whatever remained on the outskirts of Boston from Conrail in 1982, same year it picked up the Cape, Dean St. Industrial in Taunton, Wattupa Branch, Plymouth Line, Greenbush Line (then still active to the military spur in Cohasset), Hanover Branch, and Framingham & Lowell north of South Sudbury. Just a pu-pu platter of low-margin stuff Conrail wanted to get rid of. I know rights never extended further into Boston, because the Needham Line was out-of-service to all traffic inbound to Forest Hills when the SW Corridor was being blown up and Conrail NEC rights were sliced off at Hyde Park (last customers on the south end) and Back Bay (Worcester side used for reaching Southie and the Boston Herald siding out of Beacon Park). Bay Colony did get a lot of outsource work rebuilding the Needham Line in 1986 in the outer neighborhoods when they were preparing for resumption of commuter rail service, simply because the SW Corridor wasn't finished yet and BCLR had the only active access point from Medfield. Not sure when rights east of Needham Jct. were abandoned. Probably when this same spur went dead. If it was even all that alive by the time Conrail got out in '82.
Also, what happens if a customer seeks service on a line where no one has freight rights? Do they go to the state and tell the state to open up bidding for rights or something?
boatsmate wrote:Drove by the Bridge over 128 in Needham on Monday, and demo is almost complete. all the rail and ties have been removed and the concrete between the bridge abutments has been bust up and is being made ready to remove the spans. I will update more next week when I drive by there againTry and get pics if you can. that's part of my old stomping grounds.
Noel Weaver wrote:I am not sure just what the situation is in this case but often there is no freight service simply because there is no demand for service, in other words there are no freight customers on a portion of the line in question. In some cases a railroad has freight rights that haven't been used in a long period of time. An example of this is the New Canaan Branch which as far as I know CSX still has the freight rights on this short line (all 8 miles of it) but there are no longer any freight customers. One reason the freight railroad(s), CSX in this case, don't make a big fuss over it is because they merely serve the territory under a trackage rights agreement and it probably costs them little or nothing to retain the trackage rights just in case. There are a number of lines in the metro areas of the northeast where there is passenger service but no freight service.If a freight railroad has trackage or freight rights, and the rail is publicly owned, and for some reason they want a different railroad to provide freight service, can they take the freight/trackage rights by eminent domain? If the rights haven't been exercised in years they would have a low value. This would allow paper barriers and other vestiges to be extinguished. Not really on-topic for the Needham line, but something I'm curious about.
Noel Weaver
Noel Weaver wrote:I am not sure just what the situation is in this case but often there is no freight service simply because there is no demand for service, in other words there are no freight customers on a portion of the line in question. In some cases a railroad has freight rights that haven't been used in a long period of time. An example of this is the New Canaan Branch which as far as I know CSX still has the freight rights on this short line (all 8 miles of it) but there are no longer any freight customers. One reason the freight railroad(s), CSX in this case, don't make a big fuss over it is because they merely serve the territory under a trackage rights agreement and it probably costs them little or nothing to retain the trackage rights just in case. There are a number of lines in the metro areas of the northeast where there is passenger service but no freight service.There are no freight trackage rights on Needham anymore. Bay Colony RR was the last operator--Medfield Jct. to Needham Jct. and end of the line on the Needham Branch in Newton. They formally filed an STB docket for abandonment of all freight rights in 2011. Forest Hills to Needham Jct. had its rights extinguished by BCLR much earlier.
Noel Weaver
BandA wrote:If a freight railroad has trackage or freight rights, and the rail is publicly owned, and for some reason they want a different railroad to provide freight service, can they take the freight/trackage rights by eminent domain? If the rights haven't been exercised in years they would have a low value. This would allow paper barriers and other vestiges to be extinguished. Not really on-topic for the Needham line, but something I'm curious about.Depends on the letter of the trackage rights agreement. In all of these recent line sales to MassDOT by CSX and Pan Am the STB filings spell out that the legacy freight rights are permanent and irrevocable unless the freight carrier outright chooses to dish off the rights. Though there are performance clauses everyone has to abide by. There's no way to 'evict' the freight carrier with perpetual rights without adjudicating it with the STB, which is messy enough a legal filing that things would have to get unprecedentedly bad for that to ever be an option. Penn Central's and B&M's successors also have inherited rights from the big buy of northside and southside lines that MA made from bankrupt RR's in the mid-70's. So the only places the big boys do revoke their trackage rights are on freight-only state-owned lines with no passenger traffic, because there it is costing the freights maintenance money to keep the lines in active or OOS status. It doesn't, because of the terms of those 1970's bankruptcy sales, cost the successor RR's anything to not use their freight trackage rights when passenger traffic is paying for the line's day-to-day upkeep, so CSX and Pan Am are content to keep these perpetual holds.
Bill Reidy wrote:The bridge over Route 128 is gone. It was there yesterday afternoon when I drove to Maine. It was gone on my trip home early this evening. I assume it was taken out overnight last night.
F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Well, theoretically at least... but I suppose it's better than "never."
So at least it's all protected. Need rail: plop down a rail deck on pre-existing abutments...that's it.