MEC's Rockland Branch

Hello All. Looking for some additional customers on the Rockland Branch in the late 70's/early 80's. This is what I know were customers:

-Bath Iron Works in E. Hardings receive steel on flats

-Power station at Wiscasset received coal??? Not sure when this stopped

-Pulpwood loading at Newcastle station

-Allens siding in Waldoboro received propane

-Some place in Waldoboro received small boats in boxcars (any additonal info on this??)

-Of course Dragon cement coal in, loaded cement hoppers and boxcars out

-Perlite to Chemrock in Thomaston

-Fish Oil received somewhere on the branch (rockland yard?)

-Did the plastic pellets for Crowe Rope start when Maine Coast took over?

-Were Beaver and O'Hara receiving boxcars of salt in the rockland yard at this time?

Did I get all of them?

Thanks in advance!

Well I haven't found out anything more about customer's on the Rockland Branch but I did find out why Maine Coast lost the lease:

From the Boothbay Register:
by Paula Gibbs

http://boothbayregister.maine.com/2000- ... lroad.html

As far as a "Power Station" in Wiscasset receiving coal...well let's just say that I didn't know nuclear reactors used fossil fuels. There's always the possibility that they received it for some type of backup purpose but I can assure you that the reactor at Maine Yankee in Wiscasset was strictly uranium powered. If you had said diesel I would think the possbility of some type of backup or secondary system was there but coal?

Fish Oil I believe is still transhipped at the Rockland yard. I believe this is an outgoing shipment to barges on the Rockland wharf from a local Rockland plant of some kind. Not really sure.

Nuclear power plants do not consume coal, but coal-fired power plants do. There was a coal-fired power plant in Wiscasset, Maine during the time-period that csrrfan is researching.

Mason Station Power Plant on Birch Point in Wiscasset, Maine was a coal-fired plant until its conversion to oil before 1980. The power plant was decommissioned in the 1990s.

An old USGS topo map shows a rail spur from the branch leading right to the power plant:
http://docs.unh.edu/ME/btby57nw.jpg

I stand humbly corrected. Thank You.

Also from looking on Google Earth there appears to be an coal drop with a runaround. I just wasn't sure when it was converted to Nuclear power.

Take a look:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&g ... iwloc=addr

The coal/oil plant wasn't converted to nuclear. There were two power plants a few miles apart.

Maine Yankee was built as a nuclear plant and opened in 1972. It was closed in 1997 due to high costs of operating and maintenance, not the least of which was the failure of a steam generator unit, a complex mass of stainless tubes filled with high-pressure, high-temp water that boils the non-pressurized water surrounding it into steam. Google maps shows the half-decommissioned plant:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&g ... iwloc=addr

Mason Station power plant was built as a coal plant in the 1940s, converted to oil-burning before 1980, then closed in the early 1990s. Google maps as you linked shows the coal conveyor:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&g ... iwloc=addr

With hopes of keeping this RR-related, a big controversy is what to build on the site of the former Maine Yankee power plant. Proposals include a high-tech coal gasification plant which was rejected and a tidal hydroelectric plant, so there is the possibility of future deliveries of heavy equipment by rail, or even coal if the coal option somehow gets back on the table.

Having been a resident in that area from 2005-2007 I can say that the chance of getting a coal fired power plant in Wiscasset is 0%. Not 5% or 2.5% or even 0.5%, it's 0%. The town is environmentally consious without being NIMBY's. They know they benefited heavily from having Maine Yankee in town and that it would probably be a good idea to find something that can take advantage of the high voltage transmission infrastructure that remains in place. They consider the power lines an asset and definitely not a liability. I'm going to say that whoever proposes a natural gas fired plant first wins. Even though there is no pipeline in the near vicinity there is one that runs through Gardiner on a north-south axis.

Whatever company comes in and is willing to pay to get the pipeline extended to Wiscasset first will find themselves with a town that will be happy to welcome them right in. LNG will not happen because of the fishing community and the homeland security implications, Coal won't happen because it's dirty, Tidal won't work if it has to install any type of obstruction of navigation or disturb the harbor sea floor and the lobsters living down there, Nuclear is lost and gone forever and won't be allowed back. Geothermal isn't an option, solar requires a larger surface area, and wind would not be ideal in the low-lying area around the Wiscasset harbor altough it might work alright off shore a mile or two.

The natural gas option is not a very rail intensive solution overall. Although there might be some use of rail for the construction phase of the project that would be little or no need for rail once construction was complete, that I know of.

Well now that I realize theres 2 plants it all makes sense! Maine Eastern was pulling out low radioactive debris in sealed gondolas from Maine Yankee a few years ago. Its is all leveled now?

Thanks for the info!

Gokeefe - while Wiscasset can't claim involvement in Harpswell's rejection of the LNG terminal, their NIMBY tendencies were clear when the coal gasification plant was rejected. To say that the projected barge traffic would have jeopardized the local fishery is complete poppycock. And I'm not sure where that natural gas is going to come from. You'd either need to build a pipeline into the state - or put an LNG terminal in town - yikes!

Maine does have a north-south gas pipeline already. The companies listed below have service areas that draw gas off the pipeline.

Maine Natural Gas, serving southern and mid-coat Maine, http://www.mainenaturalgas.com/

Bangor Gas, serving the Greater Bangor area, http://www.bangorgas.com/

As far as barge traffic not interfering with fishing, based on the volumes of coal that were being proposed, there was an effective case to be made for the idea that the local lobster fishery was going to be affected. Heavy shipping traffic on that scale intereferes in the following ways:

1. fouling lobster trap lines, if they are even allowed to be placed in the navigation channel, (which would be fairly wide by local standards)

2. blocking access to the fishery in areas where there is barge traffic

3. reducing the safety of fishermen on the water, barge v. lobsterboat = barge wins everytime

I don't think you could find a community anywhere in Maine that would support any power plant project that uses coal. Our own utilities got away from coal years ago in part because they understood that people in Maine were environmentally conscious to a degree that was far greater than those living in other states. Central Maine Power in particular knew that people in Maine understood how dirty coal power was compared to oil, natural gas or even wood.

A wood fired power plant might be a solution in Wiscasset that would also utilize the existing rail infrastructure in order to bring in pellets by the car load.

On a different note what is the timeline for Crowe Rope receiving plastic pellets in the Rockland yard? I believe they closed after Maine Coast was done?

The lobster trade seems to be doing ok in Portland despite all those pesky tankers. The coal boats in Salem (MA) harbor don't seem to bother much either... I'm not sure of what their expected burn rate was, but I'd be surprised if they were expecting more than one boat a week... and maybe Wiscasset could have voted Yes with the contingency that all coal moved in by rail

By the way, the latest proposal for Wisacasset was a coal gasification plant... apples and oranges compared to traditional coal plants... and those are a heck of a lot cleaner than they used to be - the primary issues now are mercury and CO2. Mercury is being dealt with - CO2 is more problematic.... and wood is certainly no cleaner than coal.

Dear Mr. Cowford,
Nice to talk again. The statement that wood is no cleaner than coal is patently false. When's the last time you heard about anyone getting worried about mercury emissions from wood? I do think the coal gasification process as advertised was quite dirty. The inevitable generation of large volumes of sulphur dioxide, and suspended particulate makes the gasification process a bad option.

Comparison of Fuels:

http://www.ealing.gov.uk/services/envir ... ion/Fuels/

Please See Section "G" 'Biopower and Air Pollution' for a discussion of wood combustion pollution tendencies:

http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/articles/ ... lution.htm

I think the good people of Wiscasset wisely believed that although gasified coal obviously was better than combustion of solid coal since the original element itself is so dirty it was hard to believe that the emissions from the plant wouldn't have large residual pollutants despite attempts at essentially 'cleaning' and 'processing' the coal beforehand. The companies involved did an extremely poor job of marketing the plan to Wiscasset. In particular their presentation of the plan as well on its way to being a done deal provoked the community to respond in kind.

The additional element of waterway usage and its potential or imagined interference made the fishing community involved to a scale it might not otherwise have been. As best as I could tell the company marketing the plan never attempted to address these concerns. Wiscasset being so much smaller than Portland and far more dependent on the lobster fishery for a significant part of local economic activity this was not an issue that was taken lightly.

Obviously in Portland there are lobsters that don't get disturbed by coal barges and tankers however the Sheepscot River is many times smaller than Casco Bay and the space to move around in for these lobster men would be that much less and fouling of gear or pollution that much more problematic due to the confined spaces.

Wood pellets could be delivered by rail at a high rate of efficiency due to the proximity of not only the rail head itself but sources of wood fuel in Northern Maine. Natural Gas is another reasonable option and would require a small but potentially worthwhile extension of pipleline infrastructure. Any proposal that screws around with the Sheepscot River Waterway and its tidal flows will be met with serious skepticism by the community.

Let's agree we both may be exaggerating to drive our points: I overstated the environmental impact of wood vs coal (though I didn't link it to mercury). And you're stating that a power plant would interrupt the tidal flow of the Shepscot River! We'll have to agree to disagree on the other parts. Anyway, considering this is a rail forum, I'll have to link this discussion (figuratively) to another thread about the Calais branch, in which several kept harping, "build it and they will come." Well, the Rockland branch has been rebuilt for YEARS and, while the PAR connection ain't the greatest, it's viable. So why hasn't anyone (rail shippers) come?

Mr. Cowford,
Same problem as in Calais. Bad economy, and competition from developing countries for industrial production. I agree that you make a good point regarding Calais v. Rockland. Better rails, same state, still no industry. Whether or not the impending connection from the Downeaster will make a difference, and perhaps spur some type of commuter service is hard to tell.

I was referring to some proposals for tidal power that have surfaced recently including one in which there would be a 'tidal water bank' that would involve drilling vertical tunnels deep into the bedrock and allowing water to flow in during the day, and generate power via turbine and pumping it out at night using off peak wind energy. The effect of this type of project which is projected to be the largest infrastructure project in the history of the state would be to massively increase tidal flow volume of the Sheepscot River. Obivously there are potential effects on the shoreline and the fishery. What exactly they would be is something I don't know.

Link to article describing Wiscasset Tidal Power Bank:

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/vi ... 83221.html

Wood pellet fired power is still the most rail friendly option for Wiscasset because it would provide steady traffic during both the construction and operational phases. They might even be able to remove the ash by rail as well and sell it to farmers in the Midwest. I'm not sure how fertile wood ash is but it certainly wouldn't be toxic. A project of this scale might help spur further industrial development through the availability of large quantities of cheap power nearby. Some types of heavy industrial development need huge quantities of electricity that can be expensive to import from power plants that are far away.

Unfortnately some of the best examples of electricity intensive industry are those that Maine typically has tried to avoid,

See Wiki article 'Energy in the United States' under 'Current Consumption - Industrial'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_use ... ted_States

Chemical, Petroleum Refining and Metal Smelting (mostly aluminum production)