"Up North" Gawking (District 1 sightings)

yesterday 2 gp20d's came off of the cmq headed to wattterville in wattterville the motive power was swapped out for the 337 and the letx 95 with the 2 gp20d's dead in tow.

Who gets the the DuPont Titanium Dioxide cars up that way?

Monson Chemical in South Portland (off the Rigby bypass) gets them. I don't think anyone gets them east of Rigby.

Thanks. I always wondered where they were going when we picked them up from the CP.

10:50 am, 4.20.15, switcher headed towards Westbook with 3 slurry (?) and 2 lpg or oil cars.
S

2 more loads for Dead River perhaps?

4.20.15, 3:30 pm.
207 (PO2) heading west off Mountain Branch to Rigby with 1 slurry and 1 hopper.
All day a Cumberland Mills? Must be something going on out there...
S

Wow, 64 M/T centerbeam flats heading north through Portland on the POWA this pass Sunday. Looks like the lumber industry will be in full production come this summer.
Thanks to Robert Selberg for the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIVzbWDUH20" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That guy has a lot of good video from that area.

doublestack wrote:Wow, 64 M/T centerbeam flats heading north through Portland on the POWA this pass Sunday. Looks like the lumber industry will be in full production come this summer.
Thanks to Robert Selberg for the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIVzbWDUH20" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They were in Northern Maine Jct this morning.

Article in BDN about restoring Passenger service to Bangor. What would the time table look like? Does anyone have an old schedule for Maine Central service?

POWA has quite the colorful lashup today, MEC 604/LTEX 2964/MEC 512/MEC 511/LTEX 2535. That's five different schemes, PAR phase II/patched out UP/GRS/PAR phase I/patched out ATSF.

BostonUrbEx wrote:

doublestack wrote:Wow, 64 M/T centerbeam flats heading north through Portland on the POWA this pass Sunday. Looks like the lumber industry will be in full production come this summer.
Thanks to Robert Selberg for the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIVzbWDUH20" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They were in Northern Maine Jct this morning.

About 75-80% of those are from sheetrock/wallboard loads out off NBSR via Brownville. The remainder is lumber

fromway wrote:Article in BDN about restoring Passenger service to Bangor. What would the time table look like? Does anyone have an old schedule for Maine Central service?

I am not sure how relevant historic practice would be in the context of any present-day revival of passenger service between Boston, Portland and Bangor, but these notes are taken from the October 1958 passenger timetable, which is the most recent in my small collection.
On weekdays there were four trains between Portland and Bangor via the Lower Road. Journey time was between three and a half and four hours. On the Back Road there were two trains a day.
The shortest times between Portland and Bangor were train 19 (the Pine Tree) which covered the Lower Road in 3h 15m for the 135.4 miles. Coming the other way train 18 did the run in 3h 05m.

MissTheMEC wrote:

fromway wrote:Article in BDN about restoring Passenger service to Bangor. What would the time table look like? Does anyone have an old schedule for Maine Central service?

I am not sure how relevant historic practice would be in the context of any present-day revival of passenger service between Boston, Portland and Bangor, but these notes are taken from the October 1958 passenger timetable, which is the most recent in my small collection.
On weekdays there were four trains between Portland and Bangor via the Lower Road. Journey time was between three and a half and four hours. On the Back Road there were two trains a day.
The shortest times between Portland and Bangor were train 19 (the Pine Tree) which covered the Lower Road in 3h 15m for the 135.4 miles. Coming the other way train 18 did the run in 3h 05m.

Those are some interesting timings. Looks as though they were operating at roughly Class III (59 MPH MAS) speeds most of the way. Average speed on the Lower Road was 41.5 MPH. I'm somewhat surprised the timings were that slow given that the routes were heavily signaled at that time and Class IV operations should have been possible. It might say something to a certain extent about the standard of maintenance for the railroad even at that time (perhaps not quite as good as has generally been believed). By 1958 most of redundant or additional flag stops would have been eliminated so I'm imagining that the trains were not making that many stops.