Intermodal to Saint John

Last night's train 142 departed Franklin Park IL at 2205 Thursday 11/04/21 led by CP8781 painted in a commemorative Hapag-Lloyd orange livery. A posting on the Eastern Canadian Pacific Facebook page says the unit has "St. John Express" markings but hopefully it really says "Saint John Express"!

Here is CP8781 leading 142 past the Deshler OH live cam at 0710 Friday 11/05/21 followed by a Fostoria Live cam screen capture at 0926.

Here's a tidbit from the CPKC Merger filing re: intended changes to train CP 142 (OPERATING PLAN APPENDIX I: GROWTH PLAN TRAIN CHANGES - APP VOL. 2, PAGE 438):

142 – Schiller East to Brownville Jct Daily
§ Handles the new Silao, Rojas and Salinas Victoria to Detroit IMS blocks ex 170 for connection to CSX Q150 at North
Baltimore. Maximum length of Detroit traffic is restricted to 2500 feet per day on CSX
§ Handles new Interpuerto to Vaughan IMS block connecting from 170 in Chicago
§ Handles new Wylie to Vaughan IMS and IFG to St John IMS blocks connecting from 163 in Chicago

"IFG" = KCS' International Freight Gateway Intermodal terminal near Kansas City

And heading west:

251 – Brownville Jct to St-Luc Daily
§ Handles new St John IMS to IFG block connecting to 143 at St-Luc

There was a ceremony and photoshoot yesterday with President of Hapag America (a German of course) as well as CP's John Brooks, VP of Marketing, and Jonathon Wahba head of CP Intermodal as well as a few other sales execs from CP. They said to 'stay tuned' on the Saint John port development as something is in the works soon (obviously judging by the loco).

Here's my best screen capture of CP's "Saint John Express" Hapag Lloyd commemorative ES44AC as it passes the North East Live Cam a bit after 1332. Unfortunately, CP8781 is the only thing in the today's 142 consist that says "Hapag Lloyd" though. Hopefully better things are to come!

Nice! Seems like they're following the tradition of NS and BNSF painting locomotives in MAERSK paint schemes when those two rail-sea partnerships began.

Here's a video of CP 8781 leading CSX train I166 through Ohio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H05VG0K5vtg

Very curious as to what hapag will announce about SJ. Has the port expansion gotten far enough along to increase dock and rail capacity!

I wonder how much price competition is going on between ports. The busy ports seem to stay busy when other ports have capacity (including ports larger and more convenient than St. John, no disrespect). Or lethargy in the system. Or the shipping companies gaming the system, since congestion is going along with big profits.

All this investment in ports reminds me of the days when every mid-sized city was being sold on developing a convention center. I'm thinking of Duluth MN with its container cranes waiting for a customer.

Saint John never stopped being a viable port, but about a decade ago realized they had to modernize or die after their traffic eroded since the 90s. It's taken them this long to get the funding and project moving forward, which timing wise has paid off with CP's growth.

kitchin wrote: ↑Mon Nov 08, 2021 9:45 am I wonder how much price competition is going on between ports. The busy ports seem to stay busy when other ports have capacity (including ports larger and more convenient than St. John, no disrespect). Or lethargy in the system. Or the shipping companies gaming the system, since congestion is going along with big profits.

All this investment in ports reminds me of the days when every mid-sized city was being sold on developing a convention center. I'm thinking of Duluth MN with its container cranes waiting for a customer.

St. John and Duluth are in very different situations regarding container traffic: simply St. John being a deep water port on the ocean and Duluth being a far-in Great Lakes port. The idea of containers via the Great Lakes is interesting, hasn't seemed to take off.

Among other things, Great Lakes shipping closes for the winter and ship size is constrained by the seaway
I can’t see Duluth being successful
Saint John has much more going for it

Some candy for you here... the good news is CP is the first speaker so you don't need to go very far.

https://brandfolder.com/s/pcx97zt5fmk3f7wbsv6zh87

17 racks on today's 142, which was 90+ cars with a handful of wells at the rear. Apparently they're back to five days a week, recent trains have also had 3 GEs instead of the usual 2.

I could be wrong but I don't think they run on Sundays so that was essentially 2 days worth of traffic on today's train.

I think it was mentioned elsewhere as Mondays/Thursdays off out of Montreal /BVJ, as today's Greenville capture was certainly a Sunday departure from St. Luc.

Agreed on the combined traffic, and the power stable is more than capable under CP of running longer trains 5 days vs. having them run something silly like those >20 car trains once or twice a week for such a long run across the Moosehead. Especially given the speedos still impacting run times between Sherbrooke-BVJ.

They are 5 days until things get messed up... won't take long. First container ship is 11/27, then a quick one behind it 12/2, so that'll push them back to 7 days. Not sure why such a long outage, there are a few different ships in rotation so maybe some maintenance and a blank to 'match capacity with demand'. There is definitely an imbalance, with the outbound containers and long string of empty wells WB on 142. Supposedly when the new NBSR intermodal facility opens that'll 'break the dam' with more domestic intermodal.

Funny with everyone talking about CMQ running 5 days a week 'bigger' trains. During the week CMQ would run some pretty small guys, 30 or 40 cars, which since most railfans were out on Saturday no one ever saw. There was a pretty consistent traffic pattern actually with the start and end of each week being busy, and in between being fairly smallish (but decent) trains. Don't forget, a dozen of those cars were log racks on the head end, which that traffic probably really only covered their cost in fuel and maybe made them some slight pocket change. CP runs traffic that makes actual margins.

Wait until this time next year.