Pan Am Southern / Patriot Corridor Discussion

The B&M might have met its doom as an independent road much earlier then, though; neither Commodore Vanderbilt or his son would have taken kindly to such competition. The BHT&W was for a time to be part of the D&H system, to which Vanderbilt got control of the Troy and Boston running parallel to it and threaten to build a branch that would cut into D&H territory unless the relationship between the two companies ended.

I know this is marginally on topic at best and risks poking the hornet's nest but I made a trip down to the recently exfoliated Horseshoe Curve and within 45 minutes of arrival, I saw 4 wb NS intermodal trains including one shortish double stack sprinting upgrade past a slowly moving land barge stack train that was heavy enough to require two helpers on the bow and two on the stern. Sorta like the previously posted CSX racing intermodals video from upstate NY except NS trains weren't going 60mph! But impressive NS activity nonetheless even if it doesn't serve New England shippers.

You'd be surprised how much stuff trucks out of New England to New York/New Jersey ramps... Could easily be loads from this neck of the woods on those trains

In an effort to displace the crickets of summer doldrums on this forum, I'm bumping this thread with a shameless propagation of loose talk from NS Southern Tier FB page about the possibility of a NS OCS train headed for PAS-land in early August. Any confirmation or refutation of this prognostication would be appreciated.

A likely unrelated sidebar is this provocative excerpt from yesterday's NS 2nd qtr 2016 earnings con call:

J. David Scott Vernon - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC asks: "...are you thinking at all about maybe some more extensive co-production with CSX in some of the lower-density markets like coal, whether it's at the terminals or in the actual coal lines, up into the coal fields themselves?" and James A. Squires - Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer responds: "...Now, in terms of co-production, anywhere it makes sense to for us to share assets with others operationally we will certainly be open to doing so. That's a way to improve asset utilization for both parties."

Update on NS OCS traveling the NS Southern Tier as reported on the Rochester (NY) Area Railroads Facebook page: "...it is reported by ... that the NS Business Train will depart Buffalo on Wednesday (crew on duty in Buffalo at 1300 hrs) this would put them at Letchworth Park and Portageville Bridge close to evening. Good luck remember to post your photos..."

And there was this reply: "...Train will have the F units with 14 cars in tow...."

I'm guessing this means arrival at E Deerfield by Thursday evening? Or is the NS OCS only going as far east as Mechanicville, as has been claimed on the the upstate NY FB pages? Should we expect a Pan Am OCS to be on hand to greet the NS team?

Here's another and more credible update on the NS OCS that is running over the Southern Tier and D&H South lines:

- Today (Weds 8/3/16): depart Cleveland at 0900 with recrew at Buffalo at 1300 to proceed to Corning, NY to tie down overnight.
- Thursday (8/4): depart Corning eastward at 0600 and proceed without crew change at Binghamton up to Mechanicville for arrival at 1pm or so. NS OCS will not proceed to E Deerfield but will reverse and depart Mechanicville back down the D&H at around 3pm.

Apologies for any confusion due to my previous posting...

A few days of travel for a 2 hour stop at Mickeyville. Makes sense...(sarcasm) Only thing that would be about would be an announcement or some publicity (perhaps limited to some circles and not truly public), otherwise they would just fly folks in and not relocate the equipment (they'll probably still fly folks in)

All in all that seems unlikely, none of that schedule makes any sense. Not saying you're wrong, just said it makes no sense.

I'm guessing those on-board, whoever they might be, got to see the Portageville Trestle progress up close and personal. Plus NS has been doing a ton of ballast/rail/tie RoW work on both the S Tier and D&H this summer.

Maybe no other reason than a nice time of year to go out and tour the property. To me, it sure beats sitting at a desk in the office!

There would have to be several site visits by NS brass in a relatively close few months' span in order for it to be any leading indicator of transactional activity afoot. Ditto Watco. If they don't show up again for a return engagement this Fall there's not really any smoke to indicate something's up.


This sounds exactly like Tom describes it: it's summer, they've done a lot of work on the D&H South and Patriot Corridor, Hoosac Tunnel enlargement engineering has been going on for a couple of years and they've probably got financial items to discuss about next steps on that biggie. Time for a nice low-stress field trip to survey their domain and get some suits out of the office in a more relaxed conversational setting. It's probably an annual thing for them on different parts of their system, and this year the attention just happens to swing this way because of the anniversary of the D&H South buy.

Never said transaction... I said announcement. Could be a service announcement to intermodal customers, or upcoming repairs/improvements.

To bring out the equipment is definitely for show to someone, trust me. Also, if they were doing the D&H South they would have come up from H-Burg. Coming from Cleveland is also not without reason. My guess is the boys from Arkansas or some high profile auto distributor was onboard to see some improvements. Also keep in mind the double stack work going on in the tunnel at the moment...

What boys from Arkansas? I'm in the dark.

and what double stack work being done in the tunnel? They are just doing test bores right now.

CN9634 wrote:Never said transaction... I said announcement. Could be a service announcement to intermodal customers, or upcoming repairs/improvements....To bring out the equipment is definitely for show to someone, trust me. Also, if they were doing the D&H South they would have come up from H-Burg. Coming from Cleveland is also not without reason. My guess is the boys from Arkansas or some high profile auto distributor was onboard to see some improvements. Also keep in mind the double stack work going on in the tunnel at the moment...

Rockingham Racer wrote:What boys from Arkansas? I'm in the dark.

Sounds like that's J.B. Hunt trucking, who directs a large amount of intermodal to NS and who'd share an interest in double-stack [and via-Cleveland transcon connections to BNSF]

newpylong wrote:and what double stack work being done in the tunnel? They are just doing test bores right now.

Yes the engineering work. Theres a lot of downward pressure to get this route up to doublestack... You gotta build train density before they'll add another job and right now they are at/below 50% in their eyes due to the restriction.