"Up North" Gawking (District 1 sightings)

Guinness decided to move brewery production back to Ireland in 2014 and thus Moosehead lost contract. They replaced it with more co-packing for Eastern Canada. So no need to rail it.

PBMcGinnis wrote:As for the Old Town mill....there is track work to be done and with the ground freezing they might not be ready for January anyway, giving more time to hire and train crews.

Track work won't be hard to finish, it's just one paper shed track being put back in service. As for needing to hire crews, they currently have more than enough. There are crews working west of Maine that would happily come back if they could.

Interesting to see RUPO/PORU going to 7 days a week. Is it currently 5 days/week?

Yes, but the business is definitely there for 7 days a week right now.

I believe it. I've noticed huge numbers of boxcars on trains and in the Rumford yard lately.

How many days per week is DJ-1 running?

M-F, as always.

What duties does DJ-1 handle?

Long string of boxcars in Rumford this morning on the inbound track. Probably 40 or more in one cut. No slurry cars, one coal hopper. Haven't seen that before. Yard leads stuffed full, all boxcars, and the mill tracks had the usual hoppers and boxcars as well.

roberttosh wrote:What duties does DJ-1 handle?

Interchange with the SLR, switching International Paper and Maine Metal, and occasionally they will go to Decosters on the Rumford Branch, or down to Portland and back with interchange cars.

Log cars which morph from loaded to unloaded over the course of a day have now appeared in Rumford as well. Not sure if they are going to the mill. Hard to imagine any other possibilities.

Irving has a sawmill/furniture factory in Dixfield, they are the ones that take the logs afaik. They used to spot them down in Peru, in the old log yard right by the bridge to Dixfield with the steel for ARC, but they may have decided it was just as easy to lump them into yard and have the customers unload in the yard, would save some time to make a set out/pick up only a few miles from a terminal.

That would make more sense as they were large diameter pieces.

Based on a very recent FB post by Gary Fogg, looks like the rails have been pulled on the old Calais Branch starting at Wilson Street in Brewer headed east towards Ellsworth on the section owned by PAR.

Temporary setback IMHO. I strongly suspect they will get tied back in eventually.