Connecticut River Line (Pan Am)

The past week I have been seeing a couple track maintenance machines where the double track starts on the north side of Northampton, MA. Workers where getting ready to start some track maintenance today as I biked along the rail trail on the north side of Northampton. One fellow was checking track gauge as he walked south along the man line. I do know there are a lot of loose spikes.

Rich

The new PVRR interchange is almost complete and PCA still chooses to bypass Pan Am completely and transload from the PVRR in Westfield? Pan Am should have kept a local based out of Holyoke/Northampton after they let the track deteriorate to 10mph. Between Sullivans, PCA, Mt Tom, and Yankee Candle they would have had plenty of work, instead of wasting hours and hours heading south from EDY and alienating nearly every customer in the area.

Definitely. It might work with PL1 dropping and picking up once a week - but ideally an EDPL/PLED would need to run 3 times per week to bring them cars and pick up more frequently...

newpylong wrote:Definitely. It might work with PL1 dropping and picking up once a week - but ideally an EDPL/PLED would need to run 3 times per week to bring them cars and pick up more frequently...

Lets hope NS notices this and makes a move once the line is rehabbed.

Once the line is rehabbed there's no question the local can originate from Deerfield. Decreasing the travel time Deerfield-Northhampton from ~2hrs @ 10mph to 30 mins @ 40mph results in a 3 hour time savings round-trip between Deerfield and Northhampton. Holyoke, currently at ~3hrs from Deerfield, would reduce to 45 mins resulting in a 4.5 hour time savings round-trip

Not sure if it was EDPL or a local. But a decent sized train rolled thru Northampton about 2:00pm yesterday. Led by the 340, lost count after about 20 cars.

The train you saw was EDPL, and it's power was MEC 350. There were 23 cars boud for Connecticut, with at least 4 Sullivan hoppers at the rear

whatelyrailfan wrote:The train you saw was EDPL, and it's power was MEC 350. There were 23 cars boud for Connecticut, with at least 4 Sullivan hoppers at the rear

Hey, for it being 96 degrees out while I was at work and catching it as it went thru downtown I got pretty close on the details. lol.

Does anyone know when work on the Conn River Line is actually supposed to start? Any updates? The funding was secured a year and a half ago now...

On a somewhat Conn River Line related note, the CSXT yard in West Springfield was active today with trucks getting loaded up from the huge pile of coal on the south side of the yard, headed presumably to the Mt Tom generating plant. The pile's been there for quite some time but this is the first time I've seen activity from it in a while...

Looks like Mt Tom got a P&W train from Pan Am as well. I heard a southbound on Wednesday night so that must have been it...

Cadet57, I saw that same train just as I was going to get my rental car. I was about to cry cause I coulda had a perfect shot of it if it if I could have gotten over to the track in the Enterprise pick-up car.

The car took forever so I didn't catch it until it got to Harford, and by then it was high-sun conditions.

I can say that when I saw it going through Windsor Locks, I could only say "DAMN that train is booking."

Saw the Sperry car (as currently pictured in the MBTA/Fitchburg line thread) in Springfield on the New Haven line just south of the station (near the Basketball Hall of Fame)- today 6/12.

I saw that one too. I didn't know if it was testing the Springfield line or not. Seems kind of pointless when you know your going to have to rebuild the line but I don't know all the statistics it can provide.

Post on http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/G ... s/messages states the PVRR interchange was opened today.