"Up North" Gawking (District 1 sightings)

MIll at Rumford shoudl be fine, they have done and/or are doing major upgrades.

Traffic and/or track conditions may have issues, but the *mill* should be the best it;s been in decades.

NHV 669 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 10:41 pm L053 today was 6152/2548/5948 and just 21 cars.

I would expect wide swings in tonnage like that now that Jay is gone.

I heard some company that makes paperboard or particleboard? was taking over part of the Jay mill. They are keeping some former workers. I'll try to find out more. Not sure if it will be rail served

oibu wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2024 9:55 pm MIll at Rumford shoudl be fine, they have done and/or are doing major upgrades.

Traffic and/or track conditions may have issues, but the *mill* should be the best it;s been in decades.

The upgrades done to the mill were done to keep it in operation. The paper market as a whole has been in a slump, pretty much every mill in the state is experiencing the same issues. Thats partially why ND closed the mill in Old Town, I believe they still have some pulp left in the warehouse, but once that's gone the remaining warehouse employees are going to be dismissed.

FWIW, today's LO52 (PORU) tied down at Riley's with two GEs and 56 cars.

RUPO arrived at Leeds Jct with 5948-5933 and 52 cars about 1130 and PORU arrived with
5972-7575 and 51 cars about 45 minutes later. Looks like the era of the GP40 is winding down.
Photos show the two versions of RUPO at Libby's Pit and at Danville Jct. I made a mistake
captioning the photos - sorry

mattawamkeag interchange volumes look robust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZhy8RHXb2A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hfhJujShk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyP4UlJ-Kus

Over the past several weeks, demolition has removed most of the old IP Otis Mill in Livermore Falls,
last operated by Wausau Papers. When I was by this morning excavators were working on the remaining
structures close to the river. Next to the street and railroad only the clock tower remains standing. With
the scrap operation at the north end of the site moving to East Augusta in the future I wonder if there is
any plans for reuse of the site?

F74265A wrote:mattawamkeag interchange volumes look robust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZhy8RHXb2A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hfhJujShk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyP4UlJ-Kus

Traffic levels still fluctuate, but that's normal during the winter. Trains seem to be holding at 20-30 cars per day, although they are still running a lot of light power moves east and west. It seems like they are moving the CP interchange traffic on the weekend, which is normally like 5 cars each way.

I should also add the jobs east of Waterville have been screwed up the past few weeks. CSX has been having a lot of broken rails in the crossings they installed last year. They had two separate ones I want to say on Tuesday and I have heard of similar issues in District 2 on crossings which were redone at the end of the last work season. I would say they got rail from a defective batch with how often this has been happening.

Traffic may be fluctuating but the number of cars to and from Irving that are heading through Barbers is way up.

There’s an awful lot of lumber moving west over the worcester route now. Since the route revived in the early 1990s as a through route, i am not aware of lumber being in the mix in a material way. Based on the videos from keag, i think pretty much all the lumber is off of Irving. No idea how it moved before, but presumably cp and cn

POSJ/SJPO moved a good bit of lumber off MNR and out of Atlantic Canada back in the early 2010s. The traffic has been there for sure, just moved other ways.

Yep, that job was 3 sided at the time and traffic was pretty healthy when they were marketing the route w/CSX. It pretty much tailed off when they shifted to NMJ when to Keag was taken out of service. They were moving a lot of Moosehead Brewery beer in cryocars too, not sure what happened to that.

6405/6407/8145 dropped 43 for CSXT at Keag today.