CSX Acquisition of Pan Am Railways

Thanks for the info! Having lived my whole life in the Northeast I knew that oil wasn't widely used elsewhere, but I wasn't sure what was.

Heating Oil. Sure see allot of trucks to deliver to households. I tried electric once and the bill killed me.

Off-Topic


On the Waterbury Ct line (PanAm) there is a natural gas customer. EX-customer..tracks still run to complex but very overgrown.

NG is not moved by rail yet on anything but prototype rolling stock in the form of liquefied natural gas. Do you mean Propane?

PAS lost a lot of customers due to poor unreliable service. Maybe Berkshire Eastern can get them back.

I can't think of many that PAS has actually lost due to service. The collective list that all of the "Systems" subsidiaries have lost over the years is exhaustive however.

So GRS 'pre lost' the customers in advance, so PAS didn't have to do it themselves?

Firetiger58 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:24 pm PAS lost a lot of customers due to poor unreliable service. Maybe Berkshire Eastern can get them back.

Really.....name some customers PAS has "lost due to poor unreliable service."

Not debating service isn't a problem, but nobody had closed because of the railroad. That's been a myth propagated since 1983. For example, rail service had nothing to do with paper mill closures in Bucksport and Madison. The commodities made there were in less demand.

So stop making generalities and instead cite some facts.

The propane dealership in question in CT closed due to poor management by its ownership. They couldn't keep the place staffed.

He gets it ☝

You should know as well if not more than anyone, the list of customers that the RR has lost (not companies that closed) since 1983 is quite extensive. The strike years on their own turned many customers to never use rail again. Sometime I'll come up with my list, but that will take going back into my notes and mind more than I care to do anytime soon.

As to not end without providing an example, I was on a short eastbound stopped on the 1 track at Erving one day. We chatted it up with a product manager who was on the old rail dock eating lunch and I asked why they don't use rail. His response was that they "would never use rail again as long as that outfit in Billerica was around" and they've thrown them out of the building before when marketing has come around. This is a company only 10 miles from the largest yard in the Division and on the mainline. Think the little guys have had better things to say over the years?

+1 to what newpylong wrote.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to speak with some former railroad customers in the Portland area to talk about economic development, expansion, and the ever-popular "getting trucks off the road," and every one of them said the same thing: they'd consider using rail again if another company took over the railroad, but until then, no way.

* * *

Regarding the myth that companies went out of business because of the railroad, that's not what Firetiger58 wrote, and I haven't seen it suggested or implied by anyone else in this thread, so let's try to keep the straw men to a minimum, please.

The strikes unfortunately caused many, many companies to stop using rail. Just in the food business alone, companies like Hannaford, Demoulas, Purity Supreme, Shaws, S&S and several others either stopped using rail for good or severely cut back and slowly faded away.

Question regarding the paper manufacturer at Erving, MA: I drove past there a few weeks ago in early February and saw a handful of JBHU containers on chassis there. Is it possible that Erving is using JBHU containers to dray product that goes to NS 23K at Mechanicville and/or CSX IXXX trains at W Springfield?

In terms of rail, most if not all of what Erving handled was inbound scrap paper.

As for Erving Paper in Erving....

Them not using rail service has more to do with their financial problems than the railroad servicing them.
Scrap Paper inbound is low value and easy to truck, provided they pay you for the freight.

https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stor ... ily11.html

My comments:

This article was written nearly a decade after the conversation I provided as first hand evidence.
This article was written 20 years after they dropped rail service.

Infer from that what you may.