Pan Am Southern / Patriot Corridor Discussion

Trouble in paradise:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environme ... ail-access

And

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-review ... w-england/

Caught this NS 16R train on the ex-D&H at Richmondville NY siding on Sunday 11AM 8/6/23. Per NS D&H & Southern Tier FB commentary, apparently this was 16R-04 that had been tied down here Friday night because Pan Am Southern was too clogged / short of crews to take it east to E Deerfield/Ayer. One or two trains were already parked in Mechanicville waiting to go east on PAS. And CP would not permit 16R-04 to advance to Mohawk yard to tie down on the siding.

As NS has pointed out in its law suit against CSX, PAS customers are complaining about poor service:

As an example of the irreparable harm being suffered by Pan Am Southern, Norfolk Southern and its customers, one joint customer of Norfolk Southern and Pan Am Southern has had its operations repeatedly disrupted by the failure to delivery empty cars and pick up loaded cars as needed, triggering repeated complaints over multiple months to Norfolk Southern and Pan Am Southern about poor service. Another example is a customer whose operations are, as of the submission of this Complaint, at a standstill due to failure to provide timely rail
service

I'm guessing it's going to be a month or more before NS/B&E can unclog this log jam - can the STB issue a directed service order similar to what was done when Guilford declared the D&H bankrupt and walked away in 1988? Or perhaps NS could invoke its trackage rights agreement to use its crews to operate 264/265 across PAS? Neither of these options would happen overnight.

To question 1, I think that would be a stretch and not likely to solve the immediate problem quickly enough. To question 2, yes, however despite how poor PAS service has been at times to my knowledge NS has never exercised this option.

Not to make excuses for how CSX is running PAS currently but it goes back to what I said earlier. If NS cares that much they would have made a move in one way or another. There have been too many cases of the railroad coming to a standstill since 2009 to count...

At 0546 Tuesday 8/8/23, an abbreviated NS IM train 264-07 (ie Monday night origination at 63rd St Chicago) passed the live cam at North East PA on the NS Lake Erie district with typical BNSF+UP power pulling a mere 26 wells loaded with the usual JBHU/EMP/Hub containers - only one well was single stacked (JBHU) which may or may not be bound for Ayer. The Ayer block on 264 west of Binghamton usually comprises 60 +/- single stacked wells each day. I'm wondering if NS is starting to embargo Ayer-bound container traffic? So it's apparently not just NS/PAS manifest traffic that is getting impeded on PAS.

Meanwhile CSX daily freights M426/M427 and grain unit trains operate unimpeded east of Worcester on the ex-PAR .

Re: NS lawsuit against CSX for mishandling ST crew assignments to the detriment of PAS customers, even when B&E has sufficient crews to untangle the PAS gridlock (September? October?), I'm guessing there will continue to be NS-CSX contention over extent and timing of PAS infrastructure/capital investments for D3 as long as CSX is a 50% owner. Maybe as a settlement for the NS lawsuit, CSX will offer NS a sweet deal for CSX 50% of PAS?

Update on 264 consists wrt Ayer-bound containers: an unusually long 10,000 ft NS 264-08 passed the Elkhart cam at 2053 Tuesday 8/8/23 with a 16 well/spine block of Taylor-bound containers head out followed by approximately 160 single stacked wells/spines. I have no idea if all the single stacked containers are Ayer-bound - perhaps some will be dropped at Mechanicville. Alternatively perhaps NS is reverting to the 264/265 operation used during the Hoosac Tunnel's partial collapse of February-April 2020 with containers going to Mechanicville or Ayer on alternating days?

Just an update from my obsessive monitoring of NS 264 eastbound IM trains passing the Elkhart live cam: consists of 264-09 and 264-10 seemed to be the normal Taylor doubles followed by Ayer singles followed by Mechanicville doubles. 264-09 was about 10,000 feet long with ~75 Ayer containers and 264-10 was over 8,000 feet with ~90 Ayer containers. So the 264s seen earlier in the week that had no singles or no doubles on the tail must have been aberrations.

Thank you for your observations, Mr Barlow.

One hears so little about the Mechanicville intermodal terminal that it's easy to forget that it's even there! I am curious: How much business is done there? Is it busier than Ayer or less busy?

TIA!

A pair of ex-GTW SD40s from G&W’s Bay Line (Pensacola FL) are heading north to B&E and a few PAR units at Waterville have been designated for duty on B&E. Q: who will own the B&E locomotives- G&W or PAS (ie NS and CSX)?

Q: will there be a B&E ribbon cutting ceremony on 9/1/23?

At the STB hearing the the G&W representative stated they would buy and maintain used locomotives.

Three points re: NS' infantile whining:

-Overall in 2023 CSX is the far superior and more successfully operated railroad by pretty much any metric. Don't like it, NS you can do something any time you feel like it,

-NS is 50% owner of PAS, so instead of bitching, why not do something about it (oh wait, NS has never done anything about anything northeast of HArrisburg since 1999 other than if someone else is paying for it or it is in the name of kneecapping a potential competitor just so NS can sit on it)

- B&E startup is imminent, Why does NS think CSX would be modifying its operations or crew assignments or be hiring additional personnel to accomodate something that will be operated by a third party possibly within a matter of weeks? (and circle back to 2nd item above, if an operation that is 50% yours is being neglected by the effectively departing 50% partner, at that point it's kind of -your- (and the upcoming new operator's) problem to fix....). You really expect CSX to use scarce manpower just before (and partly relating to) the operator changeover to run your trains instead of theirs? Isn't a manpower shortage as much your problem as theirs even as a baseline without any imminent change in opertators? As far as the stipulations re: CSX doing work to add capacity to accomodate NS traffic- unless there was a contact timeframe for CSX to do that or you are putting some money where your mouth is, um... yeah, remidn me what was your point again?

I"m suddenly reminded yet again why I try to ignore that NS exists unless it's totally unavoidable. Just a crappy outfit that blames all its problems on someone else because that is is easier (cheaper) than actually doing anything about anything.

Go B&E! Hopefully we can be rid of NS totally at some point and get on with things.

Not sure how this might impact PAS operations up to “BE Day” Friday, but NS says a widespread system shutdown today will impact its own operations for weeks. I presume that will do GWRR no favors on startup. I am cross-posting from the NS forum:

Norfolk Southern’s year to forget has another unfortunate reason to be remembered. A NS “technology outage” today pretty much brought operations to a standstill — and the company states the impact on those operations will last “a couple of weeks”.

Story from Trains: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-review ... er-trains/

Lead sentence:

A technology glitch that affected several Norfolk Southern systems — including positive train control and its freight yard operating system –— caused delays across the railroad today.

NS news release:

This morning, Norfolk Southern experienced a hardware-related technology outage that impacted rail operations. At this time, we have no indication that this was a cybersecurity incident. Our teams worked throughout the day and successfully restored all systems at 7:00 p.m. ET. We are safely bringing our rail network back online. Throughout this, we have been in contact with our customers and will work with them on updated timing for their shipments. We expect the impact to our operations to last at least a couple of weeks.

When I started railfanning in 1998, Guilford's GP9s were 42 years old and were widely considered "antiques" by railfans at the time.

Today, the PAR GP40s headed for B&E are 55 years old.

Makes ya' think...

Part of that is the fact that there haven't been any significant new EMD 4-axle diesel designs since 1972, so there's no new generation of locomotives to compare with. Visually, the GE Dash-8 4-axle designs have a lot in common with the last generation of EMD 4-axle designs as well.

There's also no real alternative 4-axle design for the railroads to use.

Speaking of B&E getting GP40's - do we have a final list of what's going to who yet?

One of the very first SD40's built, from February 1966, is still in regular CSX mainline service as CSX 8881. It's even led M426/M427 a few times due to the shortage of ACSES-equipped locomotives.

9/1 is a go for B&E and I have a list of what locos they're getting looks like most or all of the GEs, the GATX slug set, some 300s, a 500 and the 3400s. Gonna be rocky start for sure.