Hoosac Tunnel Discussion & News

The STB will have the final say,but no CSX monopoly is a given

It won't be a monopoly, it'll be a little shortline feeding some traffic, maybe one train to NS at Mohawk Yard. The tunnel will not be undercut. CSX has won.

taracer wrote: ↑Sun Dec 27, 2020 8:47 pm I don't know, maybe I guess. Thing is they had years to make a move, and did nothing. I'm not sure that NS, in their stage of PSR, is willing to make that investment now. I can see them selling their stake and retreating to Mohawk Yard, and having a shortline feed them some traffic from Ayer.

I think CSX just totally kicked them out of New England, or at best made them a minor player.

Not likely. For as little as they have done, Squires said they are not giving up on their New England investment. There is little incentive to sell their share of PAS to a shortline unless there are zero protections from this sale. As I've mentioned prior, it's nuts to think the back channels weren't open between all 3 parties long before the sale announcement.

taracer wrote: ↑Sun Dec 27, 2020 9:02 pm It won't be a monopoly, it'll be a little shortline feeding some traffic, maybe one train to NS at Mohawk Yard. The tunnel will not be undercut. CSX has won.

The State of Massachusetts is planning to expand the tunnel.

The Commonwealth has been planning to undercut the tunnel for as long as I've been following this board. Has there been any concrete movement in regards to this project since the laser/LIDAR clearance scans of a few years ago?

Hope they've already got an agreement with CSX, otherwise they might ask for a discount on the sale price. From what I read here, the prior fix was done correctly but has to be re-done when/if they do the double-stack thing.

Q: can Hoosac Tunnel be upgraded to facilitate DPU operation? In my limited internet research on the topic, I couldn't find any technology that would definitively enable head end to DPU radio communications in a long tunnel that takes several minutes for a train to pass through. Thanks.

Shouldn't be too much difference from cell phone repeaters in subway tunnels I would think. Under normal conditions (outside tunnels specifically) what happens if the DPU loses comms w/the head end? Does it try to "ride thru" the outage for a short while or does it go to idle? My guess is the latter, you wouldn't want it pushing if the head end has crashed.

The technology is definitely here. BNSF runs DPUs through their Flathead and Stevens tunnels daily.

Presumably no different than the technology that allows the head end to communicate with the EOT device in a long tunnel, no?

Telemetry stops communicating inside the Hoosac, at least it did when I was there.

For DPU, long tunnels need repeaters.

NS got too rapped up in PSR, and didn't keep its eye on the ball. Now they are taking out signals on part of the former D&H. One rumor I've heard is that now NS is having buyer's remorse on taking over part of the D&H.

Yep, not too many years after CP put them all in down there on the Sunbury.

Not a shot they would have made the purchase if given the chance again today.

NS should really be trying to build their business into Massachusetts. "remorse" about buying the Sunbury line suggests to me a lack of leadership.

Unfortunately leadership has to bow to the powerful hedge fund stockholders. It's called job security.