New Hampshire Central Railroad (NHCR) Discussion

Looks like NHC is shipping the stored box cars off the N Stratford line. I was by there last Friday afternoon and there was a cut of 9 mostly ex Berlin Mills cars out on the interchange. Further up the line you could see the spots where they had been taken from and all the driveway crossings had fresh piles of snow across them. A lot of cars have gone out this winter. I wonder if StLA is taking them off site to scrap.

Most of the farthest-north cars have been there since the days I traveled to Colebrook to play baseball (at least 10 years). I would imagine most of those old mill boxes are scrap-worthy by now

Hello,
Just following up on the last two posts... Yesterday I followed the North Stratford line south from Columbia Bridge to North Stratford. As already, almost all of the stored cars have been removed from this line. There was maybe half a mile long string of boxcars and covered hoppers about three miles up the line. The Budd RDC was there as well. Otherwise, there were no cars anywhere else on the line, including at the "yard" at North Stratford. There was a single SLR boxcar and the flanger outside the shop building, although the building itself was closed tight and I couldn't see what was inside. Meanwhile down at the SLR interchange were 6 NAHX covered hoppers waiting to go east and 20 SLR boxcars and 3 LPG tank cars waiting to go west. I wonder what the exodus of the stored cars means for the future of this line with only two customers (Rymes and Pressby) and little repair work these days for the SLR (they used to maintain the many boxcars that loaded at the four now-closed or non-rail-served paper mills in northern New Hampshire). Also curious where all of the stored cars have gone. Are they returning to service or being scrapped?
Best,
Fritz

The 6 hoppers were close to next in line when I was up there last, and 20 more boxes should get about 1/2 the remaining cars. I'm going that way tomorrow afternoon and will give a update when I get back on Friday.

Fritz wrote:Hello,
Just following up on the last two posts... Yesterday I followed the North Stratford line south from Columbia Bridge to North Stratford. As already, almost all of the stored cars have been removed from this line. There was maybe half a mile long string of boxcars and covered hoppers about three miles up the line. The Budd RDC was there as well. Otherwise, there were no cars anywhere else on the line, including at the "yard" at North Stratford. There was a single SLR boxcar and the flanger outside the shop building, although the building itself was closed tight and I couldn't see what was inside. Meanwhile down at the SLR interchange were 6 NAHX covered hoppers waiting to go east and 20 SLR boxcars and 3 LPG tank cars waiting to go west. I wonder what the exodus of the stored cars means for the future of this line with only two customers (Rymes and Pressby) and little repair work these days for the SLR (they used to maintain the many boxcars that loaded at the four now-closed or non-rail-served paper mills in northern New Hampshire). Also curious where all of the stored cars have gone. Are they returning to service or being scrapped?
Best,
Fritz

When will they come to get the cars stored at Hazen?

Last Thursday there was only the flanger and 1 box outside the eng house. They had pushed the high cube boxes and the RDC that had been in the yard north to meet the other stored hoppers and boxes. There are still 6 or so hoppers and maybe 20-30 boxes left. I'm thinking they cleaned out the yard to lay the new rail or they're going to store another huge batch of tanks cars like they did last year.
All the SLA boxes in Lancaster are still there too.

http://www.stb.dot.gov/filings/all.nsf/ ... 238354.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Abandonment proceedings Littleton to Bethlehem.

Not surprised at the abandonment proceedings- as stated in the STB filing, no freight has moved over the line since 1998. What I do find interesting though is where the point of abandonment is- why not abandon the entire line from Whitefield to Littleton? It either has to do with car storage or customers potentially on that part of the line. There was talk years back about serving the area that is now (or maybe was) Brown Dog Firewood, but the crossing was nixed to traverse Rt. 2 sadly.

I do find this line and the area to be interesting as there is still Guilford ownership on the line from Whitefield-St. J.

RJDC85 wrote:Not surprised at the abandonment proceedings- as stated in the STB filing, no freight has moved over the line since 1998. What I do find interesting though is where the point of abandonment is- why not abandon the entire line from Whitefield to Littleton? It either has to do with car storage or customers potentially on that part of the line. There was talk years back about serving the area that is now (or maybe was) Brown Dog Firewood, but the crossing was nixed to traverse Rt. 2 sadly.

I do find this line and the area to be interesting as there is still Guilford ownership on the line from Whitefield-St. J.

Weird. There's absolutely zero on the portion inside Whitefield they're keeping for now, they really wouldn't need anywhere past Parker Rd. if all they needed was extra car storage space, and NHDOT already owns the line so it's not like they have an asking price to negotiate with the trail folks. Just keeping the storage spot would also serve as the paper barrier to any new carrier on the PAR-owned/Twin State trackage into Vermont from ever taking aim at a service restoration.

Littleton jams up with traffic by mid-afternoon on weekdays. I wonder if the town might convince the state to consider using the soon to be abandoned right of way to create a town by pass.

toolmaker wrote:Littleton jams up with traffic by mid-afternoon on weekdays. I wonder if the town might convince the state to consider using the soon to be abandoned right of way to create a town by pass.

That's kind of what they did when they built the McGoldrick bridge in 1995-6ish and connected Riverside Dr. to it. You can get from the Industrial Park/Meadow area to 302/93 without stepping a single bit of rubber on Main St.

I-93 itself was re-signed by the town as a "scenic bypass"

Any recent freight movements?

thebigham,
I had a chance to drive along part of the NHCR today, and overall I'd have to say that things looked "dead":

Groveton Line:
I drove Lancaster to Groveton
14 SLR boxcars parked on east siding at Lancaster
0 cars at SLR interchange and yard tracks in Groveton
Based on the rust on the rails, it looked to me like there had been no movements this year

North Stratford Line:
I just drove from North Stratford to about 1/2 mile north of shops
0 cars at SLR interchange in North Stratford
0 cars in yard or at Ryme's at shops
1 SLR boxcar and EWJX flanger 117 behind shop
It looked like no one was working in shops or office
Based on shiny rails, it looked like there had been a movement this week but not sure what or where

With the loss of the storage revenue and little or no repair business, I fear for the future of these lines. I hope I am wrong. One thing I didn't see was any stored propane cars, of which there were quite a few last summer. Maybe it's too early in the season or maybe they pushed them further north on the North Stratford line.

Anyhow, all in all, things didn't look good.
Best,
Fritz

Do they use the North Stratford line for anything except their own shop? Is the portion up to Columbia (now cleared of those hundreds of scrap cars) held for any dormant customers like Columbia Sand & Gravel, or is it just "paper-active" till it no longer makes sense for them to even brush-cut or inspect that far north, then going the same route as Colebrook and Littleton to the inevitable abandonment?

I suppose if immediate finances are not too much a problem they have incentive to keep holding on as a part-time operation in case PAR sells the Mountain Div. in Vermont to VTrans and they have an opportunity (either them or VRS) to get a western connection to the outside world, which is good enough to be considered a 'bonanza' in the context of NHCR's meager standard for profitability.


Other than that, it's a little scary that state of New Hampshire only has one shortline--robust NH Northcoast--that isn't living hand-to-mouth with only enough biz to operate part-time. NHCR, NEGS, and MBRX are each 1 lost customer--or downturn at one customer--of bad luck away from total extinction. Claremont & Concord sort of is what it is...boxed in at the fringes as a teminal switcher, stable for what it does but zero-growth and a near-zero on economic impact. NEGS is boxed in to just 1 customer in Tilton and sealed off from all its former growth opportunities on the NH Main. NHCR has...whatever the hell it's subsisting on. And Milford & Bennington has the "conveyor belt" from Granite State quarry. Which if Granite State would invest in a more efficient onsite loading mechanism that didn't require so much manual labor and a constant rail shuttle to Nashua Yard, would kill that railroad dead even before PAR had the chance to do it by spite.

Are we looking at a future 10 years from now where NH is minus-3 more carriers and down to just PAR, the two G&W roads that treat the state as flyover country, NHN, and the nearly accidental mile or so's worth of VRS and C&C action that clips the Live Free or Die side of the VT state line as the sum total of the state's freight revenue? Yikes. That's like entirely opting out of an entire sector of the transportation economy. At at time when all 5 of their New England neighbors are growing their biz and investments in that sector. Hell of a future they're opting for.

Name anything that far north that has enough volume worth shipping via rail....

The economy north of the notch is little more than tourism/box stores/outdoors-related activities.

Hard to see expansion for an outfit like NHCR whose operation runs on tracks that are mostly dead in the middle of the woods, in a county that lacks any major industry