"Up North" Gawking (District 1 sightings)

It would be really interesting to see where those truck-to-rail conversions are coming from in PAR territory and what traffic they're chasing.

They really did redact all the good bits in that filing!

This comment is from a YouTube video from an apparently disgruntled former CSX employee:

"They are just Pan Am but with better track conditions. They are already bullying a lot of customers trying to drive them away. They already managed to kill off the lumber reload at Enfield that Pan Am opened."

Can anyone verify this? Doesn't seem logical to me.

Video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvc0pyhhlHU&t=2s

I don't run a railroad, but I feel like if I were trying my hardest to chase away customers, I wouldn't be rebuilding railroad lines and raising track speeds for faster service.

I read his other comments, the guy just seems like he's a former employee upset with CSX. They're not perfect, but what they are doing with the former Pan Am system is incredible.

Goddraug wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 1:02 pm I don't run a railroad, but I feel like if I were trying my hardest to chase away customers, I wouldn't be rebuilding railroad lines and raising track speeds for faster service.

CP did the same thing with the log reloads on the Moosehead; wouldn't serve them, then cut up the cars. Just because they have the capital to make it a faster road, doesn't mean they'll treat every customer to a gold standard.

They're rebuilding it so they don't have to pay CP to move their cars...

Nor is every customer "worth it" but I'm going to do some digging on this one. Disgruntled ex employees aren't the best source of info sometimes.

Reopening Keag to not pay CP to move 40 cars a day is absolutely one reason, but the ROI on that will be a decade on what they are dropping. There are bigger plans.

Technically Pan Am instituted the return to Keag by landing the grant. Works out pretty well when half the cost is paid for by the Feds.

The lumber loading at Enfield was build during a period of time when the line was largely dormant, so not exactly sure what Pleasant River was thinking... I guess with things ramping up maybe they will have a regular service plan but how could they honestly expect to get good service there? Then again, PR is in a strange time, they quietly sold off half their production to another outfit....

https://www.mainebiz.biz/article/robbin ... -employees

Guess they're still working the kinks out of the operation on the Irving side, as none of the cars have been interchanged yet by them. Have to remember last time they ran that interchange the road job 907/908 handled the work. It could easily be 2 or 3 hours of switching around between the Pan Am side and Kirby between all the MNRs and NBSRs. Word is Irving may want to run a turn out of BVJ to handle the interchange, but its probably just a matter of them resourcing a job like 909 or 910, or making an entirely new local. In any case, I'm sure it'll sort out soon.

Pretty ironic if Irving brings the stuff back to Brownville Junction to send east. There goes the two to three day advantage CSX promised.

Bvj works well for traffic headed to northern ME but seems silly for Saint John cars
A mcadam local to handle interchange and make up blocks heading east and west makes sense to this arm chair amateur RR operator

CN9634 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 6:44 pm
The lumber loading at Enfield was build during a period of time when the line was largely dormant, so not exactly sure what Pleasant River was thinking... I guess with things ramping up maybe they will have a regular service plan but how could they honestly expect to get good service there? Then again, PR is in a strange time, they quietly sold off half their production to another outfit....

https://www.mainebiz.biz/article/robbin ... -employees

PR sold off the pine board side of the company as it was no longer needed. They supply a lot of lumber for Irving actually, quite a bit of the studs they make are sold to Weyerhaeuser and are repackaged and relabeled before being sold in the south east. When they expanded the mill at Dover, they added a small production line for pine finish boards, which is more than enough to suit the needs of their customers. PR has been aggressively expanding the past few years with the purchase of two lumber stores (Ware-Butler and Crescent Lumber and another company based out of Kingfield) and they are currently aiming at buying another chain of hardware stores in NH. They have also been buying a number of forestry management and logging companies. They bought several thousand acres of former GNP land in 2021 and bought out the remaining assets of Gerald Pellitier and Son. They purchased two trucking companies to move the finished products as well.
Going back to the two pine mills, those were acquired after they bought out the company which owned those two mills as well as the shuttered mill in Enfield, and a large amount of working forest downeast. The pine mills were never really the gem of the deal, which is why they never invested a whole lot into them while they have been dropping almost $500 million in Enfield, Dover, and Jackman. Robins on the other hand has been looking to either build a pine mill or buy an existing one to meet the demands of their customers in Europe. Robins recently purchased a biomass company and with that came some land and some log yards in northern Maine which weren't really being used. On top of the cash exchange, the log yards and land went to PRL.
PRL just finished building a cabinet manufacturing plant in Detroit which they needed capital for. They also are eying land in the Ashland area to either build a fourth large scale stud mill or a OSB/plywood plant so they can completely supply all of the building materials for the stores they own. Which was the second driver for the sale.

FWIW, under Pan Am PRL was getting OK service at Enfield. OT-1 used to do a turn up to Enfield on Monday or Tuesday and would switch them a second time on Thursday or Friday when they went up to Permatreat. At one point they were looking at getting state matching grants to rehab the portion of the Howland Branch which was still in, so they could get logs by rail in behind the P&C office across the street from the mill. But after the sale happened service became more and more sporadic. The last set of loads sat from Thanksgiving of last year to sometime around April of this year. In that time the cars were unloaded and reloaded several times. CSX was running work trains fairly frequently to Mattawamkeag at the time, why they never bothered to switch them when they were running by is beyond me. I haven't been up in a few months, but last I checked the spur was either spiked or clamped shut, so I don't think they are intending on using rail again. Yet again they haven't had much luck with CP either.

F74265A wrote: ↑Thu Nov 30, 2023 9:35 pm Perhaps a dumb question but I don’t know the answer- why the 40 car limit?

Well, when you have 40 bottles of beer and the shelf on the wall can only fit 40 bottles of beer, its hard to fit any more up there.

If the interchange tracks only fit 40 cars, that’s the answer
They looked longer than that to me but I obviously don’t know for sure

But then... how did they bring up 47 cars in that first batch, if the tracks only hold 40?

NBR/EMRY is also apparently building a 10,000' siding at Knight's Landing as well.

Here's a recent image from Mattawamkeag from Google Earth. It shows approximately 42 work train cars and they are pretty much taking up the entire track length. IM cars would be even longer of course.