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Pan Am submitted a bid for the Bangor Sub when the MMA was being sold, but it was passed over in favor of a buyer who wanted to purchase the entire railroad (Fortress). And yes, I'm aware that CP has stated that part of the reason they bought the CMQ is for access to Searsport. Here's the thing: Sea...

Well, some of what they sold. Irving will make out nicely, with CP wanting to run additional traffic to Saint John, plus potentially getting the Millinocket Sub at some point to eliminate the trackage rights currently used to connect the MNR and NBSR. Plus now they will be in a position to play CP, ...

Pure speculation on my part, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see CP sell the Bangor Sub (Searsport - Brownville Jct) to Pan Am, and the Millinocket Sub (Brownville - Millinocket) to Irving. CP isn’t buying the CMQ for what essentially amounts to marginal branch lines (for a Class 1). They want the ac...

The crew was an extra crew out of Deerfield, not the normal BF-1 crew.

Also a plus, until the usual code failures happen, and you have to handthrow them anyway!

There may still be blocking devices involved, I'm not very familiar with their side of it. That's kind of the nice thing about most of D2/D3, you don't really have to deal with Form Ds, versus D1, which is mostly DCS still. I don't mind taking Form Ds, but signals are a lot less of a hassle in my op...

You can call clear of a milepost/station, and the dispatcher can then give a Form D to another train up to that point. For example: train 1 gets a Form D to operate between west MP 1 and MP 10. Train 1 calls clear of MP 5. Now train 1’s Form D still says MP 1 to MP 10, but because they called clear ...

Certain operating rules allow trains to give up track behind them to a following train, and with NORAC/DCS we can call clear of a milepost, which then allows the dispatcher to issue a Line 2 to a following train up to that milepost. Before issuing a Form D authority in non-signaled DCS territory, th...

Probably boxcars, we get sealed plug door boxcars of flour already. Filled with phosphene gas to keep the critters out.

Supposedly trash and lumber at the Ford Yard.

CSX routing is likely because they won some bid to provide the coal trains, as CP and NS have in the past. As has been mentioned already, it makes no sense for CSX to run them over Pan Am Southern, and cut NS in on part of the profit, hence the Worcester main routing. I wouldn't be surprised to see ...

5948 is currently trapped on the Freight Main East after the derailment the other day, that’s why FI-2 was using the 3400/7523.

Several of the GP40s have acquired K5LAs too, 321, 327, 345 and 353 off the top of my head.

The bigger issue is that the yard is easily the most convenient place to tie down an engine. Really the only other places are either on the Newington somewhere or at Rockingham, which is a hour from Portsmouth by train, so if the crew is running short on time... Easiest solution would be to have Por...

Yeah, I’ve never heard of a train getting a Line 2 and a Line 3 (train ahead). I imagine it’s partly because once you start doing that it makes it a lot easier to overlap Form Ds by accident. It’s more cumbersome to make a train wait, but at the same time, you’re playing it a lot safer.