CSX Boston and Albany Line

This is a mistake. The planned new service (2x RT per day) is between New Haven, Springfield and Boston and it will surely not use the name Lake Shore Limited.

Sometime during the night Wed the 27th into Thur, CSX delivered the first cut of loaded flats, empty dirty dirt containers. Appeared to be a cut of 10 cars

MBTA F40PH-2C 1050 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 30, 2023 1:19 pm Sometime during the night Wed the 27th into Thur, CSX delivered the first cut of loaded flats, empty dirty dirt containers. Appeared to be a cut of 10 cars

Where? Beacon Park?

Looks like CSX freight has indeed returned to Beacon Park. Not a great photo, but the dirty dirt containers on flat cars are visible:

Wow they are way out there. Is this a temporary project?

I was wondering why two new stub end tracks were recently laid in the ruins of Beacon Park yard! Wonder what local CSX uses to service this business?

Got this while waiting on the AAPRCO Autumn train.

Just wondering as I watch this . . . when the vandals paint their graffiti on these railcars, does the paint also spray on the automobiles inside?

Some daylight pics of Beacon Park from earlier today:

Some more pics.

Also a pic of the extra bypass track they added to the Boston landing station (possibly to get freight cars past the high-level platforms?)

Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 7:52 am Got this while waiting on the AAPRCO Autumn train.

https://youtu.be/VLKuAD1abxs?si=B8UIFcem1RCT97mV

That would be M264, Jeff.

Thanks wasn’t sure what the symbol was.

In regards to the dirty dirt cars at Beacon Park in Allston,ma(BOSTON).Back in Conrail days, in about 1980,there was a large diesel fuel leak at the engine fueling racks.The oil seeped all the way to the Charles River for days or months before anyone knew there was a leak.It The river was about 150 to 200 yards from the fuel rack.The fuel rack to fuel engines had a 5 or 6 inch line which was fine,A small 2 inch line came off of these 6" lines and went underground to heat the engine house which was right beside the fuel rack.This 2 inch line could have been leaking for over a year before anyone knew about it.A new line was run overhead, but it was too late, the ground in that whole area was saturated with diesel fuel.Over time vertical corrugated steel pipes were put in,like a well,to monitor the ground water at multiple locations.A private contractor built a building with a large oil separator under the mass pike ramps.Home heating oil is the same as diesel fuel ,there was a large 50,000+- gallon oil tank that fed the fuel racks and heated engine house.I am sure Harvard university knew about this when they got involved with this property.Harvard endowment is up in the BILLIONS,so they can afford it.When this happened it was a good day, not to be the supervisor.Ido not know the soil conditions there ,but hopefully there is a layer of clay so the oil could only seep down so much.This was probably 4 or 5 times worse than the contamination in OHIO at the derailment money wise to clean up.

Beacon Park is right next to the river, the river is dammed so there is no tidal flow and a constant water table level. So most of the oil contamination should be above the water table. If they had an oil separation system trying to filter/mitigate the oil running for 40 years they should have removed a lot of the contamination by now. I remember an elementary school had an underground oil tank behind the school. After a sheen showed up on the Charles I river, I think, they traced it to a tributary brook and then to a storm drain pipe and then to the school. They excavated the 40 year old tank. I stood next to the open pit where the tank had been and one whiff of saturated diesel oil fumes was instantly nauseating. I think if I had lit a match there would have been a fireball. They installed an oil separator, converted to natural gas and life continues.

Not that you ever really clean up a site. The dirty-dirt is shipped out of state to a "sanitary landfill" where it is entombed without rainwater for eternity or at least until we forget about it. Not like the oil is removed and you can grow vegetables in the soil.