Connecticut Southern (CSOR) Discussion

FLRailFan1 wrote:Any cars at the co-op?

There were two covered hoppers at the Co-op yesterday. - BWP

Get your photos now... Co-op is closing Tuesday

MANCHESTER — A major supplier of livestock feed to farms in the state and region is to close early next week, victim of a declining agricultural economy, the general manager said.

"Financially, it wasn't aligning any longer," Rich Ray of the Central Connecticut Cooperative Farmers Association said. "The cost to produce and what we could sell it for — it didn't make any sense."

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This is bad news for this line. It was bad already but this makes it even worse.

Anyone know the schedule for next week? I know the trains are never consistent for timing. Tuesday is the last day for the coop, but maybe the cars will stay there whenever CSOR has time to pick them up? I know they don't run weekends, so looks like it is Monday or Tuesday.

I hate to be the barer of bad news, but I just got back from the Co-op and was greeted by this:




I suspect they picked the hoppers up either yesterday or today, and I have my doubts they'll be making anymore drop offs/pick ups. The bigger question is, what is the future of the line and maybe the East Hartford yard?

East Hartford definitely isn't going anywhere because there's usually plenty of cars staged there for the CSOR South Windsor job. Hartford Yard is busy enough that they need the relief valve across the river.


Unlikely that they'd abandon the branch or even change status to inactive, as there's lots of abutting industrial and warehousing property in East Hartford and the Buckland Hills area with former sidings. All they need to do is score one single sign-on and they're immediately doing more carloads than the Co-op was taking at the end. Low odds...but also low aim, so the huge Genesee & Wyoming borg down in Darien doesn't have any compelling reason to dump ballast. And hell...even if they did strategically wash hands A.J. @ CNZR would snap it up in a nanosecond.


CSOR and CDOT are still in stalled negotiations for sale of the Suffield Branch, with things sort of in a staring contest because the state wants the whole thing--both the abandoned section to Suffield Depot and non-abandoned/Bradley-connecting half--and CSOR is asking a lot. Possible that impasse gets broken by simply rolling the Manch. Sec. ownership in as a package. CSOR would be able to shed the cost of property taxes and some of the maint costs with a slim-down to trackage rights...then just sit, wait, and see if flypaper can nab a customer at one of those E. Hartford-Buckland industrial abutters without needing to ponder any hard decisions.

FLine wrote;

CSOR and CDOT are still in stalled negotiations for sale of the Suffield Branch, with things sort of in a staring contest because the state wants the whole thing--both the abandoned section to Suffield Depot and non-abandoned/Bradley-connecting half--and CSOR is asking a lot. Possible that impasse gets broken by simply rolling the Manch. Sec. ownership in as a package. CSOR would be able to shed the cost of property taxes and some of the maint costs with a slim-down to trackage rights...then just sit, wait, and see if flypaper can nab a customer at one of those E. Hartford-Buckland industrial abutters without needing to ponder any hard decisions.

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East Hartford yard is storing all the C&D cars, about 50 of them as this is a great place to have them ready at hand.

Manchester secondary though is dying fast. It would be nice if AJ got this line but when and if he does, there will be no one left. They just ran the H-rail down the line from Manchester back to EH but there is not much to look at these days. There are customers but no one is asking them if they want or need rail. CSX also is doing Damage out of West Springfield with intermodal's being trucked down 91 South to 291 East and all points through this area.

South Windsor is barely staying alive as well these days but it does have a few customers. Lets hope someone from G&W starts looking at what is out there and go knocking door to door on both lines. There is hope but they need to get on the ball.

I was gassing up at BJs Manchester (off the line and south/east of the I-84 bridge) Friday morning and saw that H-rail. Must be a nice ride.

Too bad about CCC. I wonder if they could make it off the NECR line as there really isn't much agriculture on the I-91 corridor beside tobacco. There is some livestock in eastern CT.

I see an occasional hopper at Neyra in South Windsor (Armory branch and Sullivan ave. Sadly there is not much life east of the river.

what potential customers exist on the South Windsor and Manchester lines? There seems to be a lot of dead /inactive sidings. I was always surprised K&F Brick / Redland gave up rail.

Dead and inactive is exactly that... I don't see any new business coming online, especially on the Manchester Line. It is pretty much done for.

This is sad news about the Co-Op for sure. We used to go up to Bolton Notch and imagine eastbounds still hitting that 2% grade on their way to Willimantic. All sorts of rumors have flown over the years of reconnecting to Willimantic, but why really? Anyway, back in 2000, I would begin what was a 7-yr tenure of working out of the area of Broad Street in Manchester. CSOR was a fairly new thing then, and the B39s weren't even a thought yet. Mainline trains ran with the tired ex-Conrail B23-7s and the branches could have some weird stuff show up. In February of that year, a strange but awesome visitor showed up in the form of high hood B23-7 3983. It was off one of the sister roads out west. I wanna say Indiana Southern? Fortunately, I got a couple lucky catches of it. I have a real tight wedge of it pulling cars out of the Co-op, but my favorite was when they were pulling a cut of hoppers between Sanford & Hawley and the brick place. There are pallets of bricks to the right, actually. Great horn, too! Those were good times, along with random runs up the Armory Branch to Sullivan Ave and CNZR!

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When I was living in Manchester in 1974 the co-op was so busy that it would sometimes receive 2 switches a day. They were by far the busiest PC customer in the Hartford area at the time and PC went out of their way to keep them as happy as possible. Sad to see the Co-op's decline. Maybe Conrail saw the handwriting on the wall and made a wise decision to bail out of the area and leave the crumbs to CSOR.

Wow that is hard to believe... thanks for sharing.

Stopped by EH yard yesterday... a few CNW, now AOK hoppers, and a bunch more MRRX's. Not much else doing. Hartford looked pretty dead too, getting on 91 spotted a truck that appeared to be heading back to NECR in Palmer.

It seems the Manchester branch is still hanging on by a thread. There was a boxcar behind Sanford and Hawley being unloaded last week (I'll check tomorrow to see if it's still there), so it seems they still have one customer on the line.