oibu wrote:Yes, even "back in the good old days" very few individual mills ever supported their own full train other than whatever local(s) served them.
10 cars a day of outbound finished product is a pretty substantial volume, probably roughly on par with what Woodland was shipping (again in terms of outbound finished product) back in the 70s or so.
Their footprint now compared to what it was is substantially different. Remember they put in new tissue machines and bolstered the pulp capacity, so in terms of railable quantities there is a lot more that could go for certain, but majority ships breakbulk via Eastport to overseas markets as of today.
A lot of mills produce trainloads when you consider the balance of inbound raw material to outbound product, examples are Sappi , Verso / ND paper. The Irving traffic is split between CMQ, ST and CN, so you'll sometimes see large bursts go either direct but nothing cohesively on just one line. Twin Rivers ships most outbound via CMQ, but inbound materials comes in through CN and their pulp side is in Canada connected via pipeline to the US paper side (an interesting setup).
The wildcard out there is Lake Utopia who ships a lot of transload / intermodal off CN in NB, but has no direct rail access.