Trains on CSX St. Lawrence Sub (CR's Montreal Secondary)

lvrr325 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 09, 2019 10:53 pm Saw something new today; train going up had at the rear a four unit well car, 48 ft wells, heavily graffiti'ed with what looked like trash containers in it, one level high. Used to seeing those on special flat cars.

Yea, noticed them a lot this month, usually the well cars are blue, patched and lots of graffiti, gray containers with what looks like tarped tops almost always with the CN block of cars

Loads or empties going north?

Traffic on the St. Lawrence Sub might be light tonight because another rocket-scientist in a semi
smacked the bridge on Onondaga Pkwy.

https://www.syracuse.com/traffic/2019/0 ... ridge.html

charlie6017 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 26, 2019 6:23 pm Traffic on the St. Lawrence Sub might be light tonight because another rocket-scientist in a semi
smacked the bridge on Onondaga Pkwy.

https://www.syracuse.com/traffic/2019/0 ... ridge.html

Aside from the marking, sensors, and everything else that's been done, not much more can be done to alleviate the situation.

The road is already as low as it can be without being underwater.

The railroad roadbed (and thus the bridge) can't be raised much because of the grade it would introduce off the CP and grade crossings in Liverpool.

Maybe they need telltales. Noisy ones.

Traffic on the St. Lawrence Sub might be light tonight because another rocket-scientist in a semi
smacked the bridge on Onondaga Pkwy.

https://www.syracuse.com/traffic/2019/0 ... ridge.html

Probably not, When I lived north of Syracuse, late 70's early-mid 80's this happened once or twice a year. Never really affected traffic on the bridge, in fact if you look at the picture, there is a train on the bridge with the accident below. An empty box van is no match for the weight of the bridge ...

Park Street below the mainline is lower, they could excavate this and get one to two feet additional clearance, maybe even three before reaching water level. Not enough to get to 14 feet I don't think, but it certainly could be lowered some.

Park Street has flooded occasionally before but they seem to have altered the drainage, it hasn't done that in a long time, even with this wet summer.

I think Park Street is 12 feet or so. It also gets hit once in a while, just a few weeks ago it did and some of the pieces have been laying there.

Tough poopie if the cars have to drive through a few inches of water. Better that than hitting the bridge.

In Australia there are some underheight tunnels. They have a height detector, and if it trips, a wall of water sprays down and a full-height STOP gets project onto it.

It probably doesn't work.

charlie6017 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 26, 2019 6:23 pm another rocket-scientist in a semi smacked the bridge on Onondaga Pkwy.

You'd think with all these rocket scientists we would have a base on the moon by now.

Soundbound down this morning with a CN unit trailing, kind of an unusual one, GP40-2W 9544. 4-axle power was never common on these run-throughs and CN has sold off quite a few of these units now.

https://www.cn.ca/en/news/2019/08/cn-an ... te-of-new/

CN is buying the St. Lawrence and Montreal Subs, this comes after CSX and CN announced earlier this month that they would be working together on moving intermodal traffic from Northeast US ports into Canada via Buffalo and Fort Covington. My personal opinion, this is probably the best option to grow traffic on this line given the lack of online customers, traffic going to and from Canada far outweighs anything else moving on this line. It will be interesting to see if CN reroutes any of their other traffic that moves on other lines into the Northeast US onto the Massena line.

The sale notwithstanding, I just heard that there will be more IM on the line.

Could be interesting.

I was in Michigan a few weeks ago and found out that Lake States is now leasing the CSX Saginaw Sub - saw one train on the line during my visit, and it was LS.

Looks like CSX will retain the line from 291 to Woodard and Oswego so trains will be swapped out at Woodard. I hope they get some kind of trackage rights into Dewitt and Belle Isle.

I can't imagine them swapping trains at Woodard, I would expect they'll run to Dewitt like they do now, especially if there's traffic to be dropped there. Why change what works? The crews will likely be mostly CSX hire-overs anyways.

What they probably won't allow is CN and NYS&W to connect.

lvrr325 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 6:57 am What they probably won't allow is CN and NYS&W to connect.

Indeed. CR took out CP237 in Utica so NYS&W and MA&N couldn't connect any where near directly... Of course, the crossovers were damaged in a wreck there, so it meant they simply didn't replace them.

Clayton train show is coming up. Might gain some insight there.

lvrr325 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 6:57 am I can't imagine them swapping trains at Woodard, I would expect they'll run to Dewitt like they do now,

Exactly.