When is the last time anything even ran on those tracks in Lyndeboro and Greenfield?
|| REGIONALRAIL ||
Railroad Forums
Milford-Bennington Railroad (MBRX) Discussion
- Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New England
2003-2005 by Wilton Scenic RR, who ran from the state-owned division post in Wilton to end-of-track. Service ended after only 2 seasons because of Wilton Scenic owner Stuart Draper's sudden death by heart attack during the '05-06 offseason. It scraped together somewhat viable gate receipts by being a small enough operation--just Draper and a couple part-timers--to keep its expenditures low. Unfortunately...@#$% happens, and the tragic loss of Draper meant no more railroad. Newport Dinner Train immediately picked up Wilton's two operational RDC's upon liquidation and still uses them today.
Actually, MBRX runs through Lyndeborough to Greenfield usually once a year for their train show, and last month they took the entire stone train to Greenfield to celebrate the town's anniversary. As far as regular traffic though, you are correct it was the Wilton Scenic.
Last edited by Jeff Smith on Sun Jul 31, 2016 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Remove quote of two quotes immediately preceding/nesting quotes
"Every foot of track of the B&M, mainline or branch, rain or shine, needed or not, was the scene of legitimate human endeavor." -Robert Willoughby Jones
The MB's former B & M SW9 in Greenfield is looking pretty beat up.. By all the growth on the siding where it sits, it looks like it's been stashed there for a long long time.
https://www.stb.gov/filings/all.nsf/ba7 ... 242833.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
PAR vs. MBRX, Part II??? Brand new adverse discontinuance filing to take over the conveyor belt train, citing safety issues by MBRX.
What a strange, deep little feud this is.
PAR vs. MBRX, Part II??? Brand new adverse discontinuance filing to take over the conveyor belt train, citing safety issues by MBRX.
What a strange, deep little feud this is.
If it were a normal railroad, I'd maybe think they just want the business. But I highly doubt Pan Am really cares about this tiny business. It is just a sad little personal feud.
|| REGIONALRAIL ||
BostonUrbEx wrote:If it were a normal railroad, I'd maybe think they just want the business. But I highly doubt Pan Am really cares about this tiny business. It is just a sad little personal feud.To underscore that point...the filing only seeks adverse discontinuance on the 5 miles to the quarry. Not the whole of MBRX's territory to the paper mill at the end of the line which is still somewhat of a going concern for theoretical future carloads. Billerica is A-OK with letting MBRX develop new biz at the mill or anywhere on the desolate stretch west of the quarry; they don't want any of that for themselves. Only there's that small matter of MBRX having already starved to death and gone out of business from loss of the conveyor belt before they even have a shot at making frenzied desperation call to the mill. So that situation quickly takes care of itself. Hence, 15 miles worth of very lightly worn Wilton Scenic-upgraded track is going to be abandoned for the inevitable rail trail within 2 years of the trackage rights going dark out of sheer futility of NHDOT even attempting to issue a new carrier RFP.
Maybe the aggregates biz is worth PAR's while if it came with reciprocal investment from the quarry to double their railcar storage so the conveyor belt only needed to be run once instead of twice a day and could be tacked onto the end of the regular NA-# local. But who's going to pay for that storage expansion if the quarry hasn't already seen fit for its own bottom line to self-invest? This is the silliest hill to die on if it takes assigning a dedicated crew cabbed out of Nashua simply for the self-satisfaction of showing up one local businessman.
Doesn't the state own the rail line passed Wilton Station? How can Pan Am, take that over if they don't own it?
It takes real skill to choke on air, fall up the stairs and trip over nothing. I have those skills.
b&m 1566 wrote:Doesn't the state own the rail line passed Wilton Station? How can Pan Am, take that over if they don't own it?When Guilford got rid of Wilton to end-of-the-line the tag-team sale agreement to NHDOT and rights outsource agreement that gave birth to MBRX had a pertpetual boobytrap clause allowing them to take back operating rights at-will milepost-by-milepost through an adverse discontinuance procedure. It was the conditions NHDOT and MBRX had to agree to in order to take the line active instead of letting Guilford salt it all over in abandonment, and also a stopper preventing Guilford from killing off Nashua-Wilton when they got rid of the rest.
Unfortunately it was take-it-or-leave-it terms, and left Guilford with near-unlimited leeway to screw over MBRX on skimpy justification if they decided to go hostile. They've now decided to go hostile. The hope that originally balanced out this risk and carved out a whole career for MBRX was that Bad Old Days Guilford was so disinterested in customer service that they'd never muster up the nerve to run a revenue train on this track...i.e. Billerica's laziness acting as its own form of self-protection for the shortline. Well...PAR is still pretty bad since this is pure spite, but the new regime has gotten over their fear of spending one cent to chase a customer *juuust* enough to break a small sweat for their spite.
I'm astonished this is being revived - how irritating! - where's the kinder, gentler Fink 2.0? Pure spite? Mostly,yes, but PAR would also love to have the opportunity to cull operations on the miserable Hillsboro. NA crews outlaw just making it to Milford.
Does this takeover include ownership going back to the B&M, or is this just an operational takeover?
It takes real skill to choke on air, fall up the stairs and trip over nothing. I have those skills.
b&m 1566 wrote:Does this takeover include ownership going back to the B&M, or is this just an operational takeover?Just the ops for the 'conveyor belt' train between the quarry and the mixing plant. The property sale to NHDOT was final, but the rights transfer was booby-trapped. It means PAR will have to absorb all maint responsibilities that MBRX was paying for...but note that because the booby-trap clause lets PAR specify which mileposts they're taking back they don't have to take the whole thing to end-of-track. They're just doing the 5 miles from their division post to the quarry where current business exists, and leaving the outer 15 miles from the quarry to the dormant mill customer @ end-of-track to rot. MBRX will still technically have rights to those outer 15 miles to 'develop new business' because PAR didn't specify those mileposts in the adverse discontinuance filing, but at $0 in near-term revenue potential out there they're out-of-business all the same and past the quarry will revert to "Active / No Operator" when MBRX's inevitable folding vacates the rest of their lease with NHDOT.
Maybe the M&B will take a shot at scenic operations out of Wilton... In my dreams, I know 
It takes real skill to choke on air, fall up the stairs and trip over nothing. I have those skills.
MBRX counter-filing to PAR's hostile action:
https://www.stb.gov/filings/all.nsf/ba7 ... 242909.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.stb.gov/filings/all.nsf/ba7 ... 242909.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I'm very surprised to see that Monadnock Paper, also received a copy of this filing from M&B. This has nothing to do with them, or does it? I personally believe there's a bigger chip involved here.
It takes real skill to choke on air, fall up the stairs and trip over nothing. I have those skills.