Money for rail freight in Eastern CT

[freightguy]

Does anybody know the plans for the New London area and NECR development in Eastern CT announced by the governer through TIGER grants. More particularly what do they plan to do around the Port of New London, would that involve P&W not just NECR in that area?

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

Does anybody know the plans for the New London area and NECR development in Eastern CT announced by the governer through TIGER grants. More particularly what do they plan to do around the Port of New London, would that involve P&W not just NECR in that area?

The grant is for rail and tie replacement so NECR can upgrade its loading capacity to 286K from the state line to New London. That's it...no money for the port facilities; that'll be a separate investment. And I'm not sure if that settles up 100% of the bucket list for 286K on NECR in Connecticut, or if NECR is self-funding the difference. The biggest upside for this is being able to take heavier loads from the P&W interchange in Willimantic. They do considerably more business out of there than New London. Port of New London is more a long-term business development than an immediate infusion of revenue, so it'll take longer to get funding from the state for upgrading those facilities and a whole lot of state-level planning to help generate the actual business out of the port.


P&W doesn't directly serve Port of New London; that's NECR's alone. They've got the other side of the river and the Groton Industrial Track. P&W already has 286K loading capability on the NEC east of New Haven, the Willimantic Branch, and every-other-car 286K the whole length of the mainline to Worcester until they fix a couple restricted bridges (I think the major one in Norwich is the primary bottleneck). And their Worcester-Central Falls main has a grant in place to replace 5 bridges in Massachusetts and bring that other mainline up to 286K. So that ends up being the other half of the equation: NECR being able to take heavier cars at Willimantic from P&W originating at Port of Davisville when those Massachusetts bridges are done, and then another bump when the every-other-car restriction gets lifted to Plainfield.


There's a multi-state, multi-railroad logic to the way the grants are being spread around. All of it serving this NECR-P&W Canadian gateway partnership. Rhode Island's done...Massachusetts is mopping up all of its P&W part of the equation...Connecticut is mopping up NECR...Vermont is mopping up NECR with the St. Albans-East Swanton weight upgrades. Then Connecticut has to follow up by mopping up its P&W work on the partial weight restriction, and Massachusetts has to do some indeterminate amount of work on NECR (not sure what sub-286K restrictions remain state line to state line or how much progress NECR has made self-funding upgrades) before the complete Davisville-to-Canada, New London-to-Canada, and New Haven-to-Worcester (including Port of New Haven @ Belle Dock) circuits are 100% heavy-rated.

[BM6569]

19 miles will be upgraded with new rail. NECR chipped in a about $2.1 million to make the grant request more enticing

[freightguy]

Thanks for the info. I know Central Vermont/NECR used to beat the lumber rates of rail to Long Island with that huge reload in New London. A lot has changed in the last 15 to 20 years as the LIRR is now 286k compliant. Much of that lumber( Sherwood)and stone from PW is rail direct to Long Island. It will be interesting to see if this helps gain traffic in that southern tier of New England. Glad to hear some attempts are being made at increasing rail freight regionally.

[ebtmikado]

Six axle power is prohibited south of Franklin (Kof Koff), which is milepost 18-something. So the 19 miles must be from there to New London, which is the most photogenic part of the line.
Since losing all that business in Montville a couple years ago, let's hope that more traffic will be generated by this improvement.

Lee Carlson

[Ridgefielder]

Thanks for the info. I know Central Vermont/NECR used to beat the lumber rates of rail to Long Island with that huge reload in New London. A lot has changed in the last 15 to 20 years as the LIRR is now 286k compliant. Much of that lumber( Sherwood)and stone from PW is rail direct to Long Island. It will be interesting to see if this helps gain traffic in that southern tier of New England. Glad to hear some attempts are being made at increasing rail freight regionally.

I went through New London on Amtrak a couple weekends ago, and I noticed more lumber loads on the State Pier than I've seen in along time. Seems like some traffic is increasing even before the upgrade.

[rb]

Just passed through New London. Tons of blue-wrapped Södra brand lumber everywhere, presumably from Sweden. Crews were loading three red centerbeams just north of Amtrak trackage.