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It's at least dead obvious you're breaking the law if you evade flashers and bells; that's enough to thin out the Darwin pool. "Every person operating any motor vehicle, upon approaching at grade a railroad crossing protected by a railroad employee waving a red flag or white lantern, shall bri...

Back in the day, direct discharge helped provide good song lyrics for Steve Goodman. ("City of New Orleans")
(Maybe some lyrics for a former U.S. Supreme Court justice, too. [Look up "Humoresque" on Wikipedia.])

As an old friend of mine (and frequent Amtrak rider) used to say, "Don't eat blue snow along the Northeast Corridor."

Emptying the holding tanks is just another part of cleaning/restocking passenger cars.

I believe the roundhouse and turntable are owned by MDOT. The turntable was handy for turning an FL9 around for a return trip from Rockland to Brunswick, when excursions weren't being run with a locomotive on each end. I don't know if CM&Q has a rule about turning a freight locomotive to run wit...

Yeah, they rely on the track owners to update the information. I don't know if there's any standard for how often it has to be reviewed. I think MDOT has one guy who takes care of the data for all the state-owned lines. Depending on the size of the owning company, there are probably only a handful o...

" Rockland drivers charged with OUI after separate accidents, one with train " "[Around 5:30 PM] a car driven by 45-year-old Michael Duffy of Rockland was driving on Berkley Street and failed to yield for an oncoming Maine Eastern Railroad train, [Rockland Police Sgt.] Finnegan said. ...

There's a rather complicated formula for it, involving train frequency and speed, amount of road traffic and the road speed limit, sight distance, etc. A crossing that's at an angle other than 90° to the roadway might get funded for upgrading before one that has similar conditions, but is at or clos...

I find this concerning. If you're going to have this type of crossing you might as well avail yourself of all the passive warning devices available. I'm pretty certain the advance warning signs are mandatory, and the pavement markings might be as well. I agree that "somebody" should at le...

What sort of customers were alive along the line? I know paper has taken a HUGE hit in the region and, along with it, certain sorts of timber. Something that has been mentioned multiple times, if not in this thread, then the other MERR thread: Cement. Lots of Dragon Cement, in two directions. (To t...

Dick H wrote:I should clarify my "fuel" comment above, as I was not very clear. The fuel cost
between Brunswick and Rockland, would be partially offset by the savings of not
having the loco idle at Brunswick for six hours.

Free PR, couldn't hurt... Well, that might depend on who was being mistaken for whom. But then there's always the old "I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right." :-D Since they like to have unique names for each of their operations, maybe they woul...

Only to Boston, Newington is no more. MERR and Pan Am actually do have them shipping to N Billerica for customers north of Boston. Not alot moving yet but it has potential to grow. I've forgotten what the numbers were for the projected number of barges this year, and also can't recall how many carl...

Giles said that "state officials approached his company" whatever that may mean. There was a Request for Proposals. Companies could [competitively] bid or not bid, as they chose. http://bangordailynews.com/2015/06/19/business/state-seeks-bids-to-operate-rail-line-that-runs-from-brunswick-...

MEC407 wrote:13 years ago, I believe. Let's not age ourselves prematurely.

Why would a private equity firm like Fortress have the slightest interest in bidding on an isolated branch that . . . has virtually no business Three regular customers might be "virtually no business" in your fast-paced world, but there's still freight moving on the Rockland Branch. For p...