Pan Am Southern / Patriot Corridor Discussion

There is a couple feet of water in West Portal, once again leaking into the tunnel itself from the Tunnel Brook. No cave ins yet, the rain is over with there fingers crossed it slows down before it gets worse. I would think daylighting the portal will be in the table long term again after this.

The CV is washed out in many spots between East Northfield and WRJ.

Things are going to be interesting... Not good.

Ugh - long history of floods permanently changing the railroad map

I wonder if NS will accelerate the VO connection project to move the pig and maybe rax off of PAS

And, since tunnel brook appears to be on top of the tunnel, how does daylighting fix the problem? I’m not a civil engineer and am wondering how they might accommodate the overhead river

It would be rerouted. Permitting would be fun... though I wonder the feasibility of rerouting it without daylighting the portal. Would seem like a better option, one that may be allowed with less red tape given the threat to interstate commerce.

As of Noon today, there were 11R's canned at Buckland, Athol, and Gardner. Another in Ayer.

ED495 made it as far as Farley before tying it down.

PL1 was taxied to North Adams, to do the branch.

The washouts made an already precarious crew situation far worse.

What washouts?

The one's on the West End and the flooded tunnel which held traffic for ~24 hours early last week and then the ones east of Deerfield from this past storm which are still impacting traffic.

I know there was one washout just east of Herricks curve.

The 11R at Athol headed west this afternoon with 11 units.

Here's a link to a Brian Woodcock video of the ED495 that tied down at Farley (10 miles from its origin) on 7/18/23 passing Lake Pleasant (mp 397.7) at around 10mph: Power was 16,000 hp (B40+C40+C40W+B40 all apparently on-line) lugging 110 cars including quite a few slurry tank cars. I guess ED495 is often a proxy for EDPO these days in that it hauls Rigby-bound traffic to Graniteville (?) to be added to CSX M426?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kAqmNtFcJc

This just in: on July 19, G&W's Pittsburgh & Shawmut RR dba Berkshire & Eastern has posted Conductor job openings for Devens MA and Deerfield MA.

CSX has no Springfield Terminal Conductor job postings for Massachusetts or Maine. Nor is there a Voorheesville-based locomotive engineer job posting for Norfolk Southern.

johnpbarlow wrote: ↑Thu Jul 20, 2023 5:43 am I guess ED495 is often a proxy for EDPO these days in that it hauls Rigby-bound traffic to Graniteville (?) to be added to CSX M426?

Yep, it's gotta move somehow and 16R is too big. There will be two regular train pairs again Deerfield <> Ayer when B&E takes over and can actually get more employees.

G&W's Pittsburgh & Shawmut RR dba Berkshire & Eastern has posted Conductor job openings for Devens MA and Deerfield MA.

Looks like they have also posted Plainville and Mechanicville plus a bunch of supervisory operations, maintenance and engineering positions -- are these all new, or have some been up for a while? I don't know how many are actually open positions or whether this is more of a corporate protocol to post every job that will exist.

There is a date when the job was posted, far right.

Duly noted. I came across everything in indeed.com which, upon further review, shows posted dates at the bottom. I am not familiar enough with indeed.com to know if listings there are removed once filled.

Looks like Friday’s 4 or so inches of rain in W Mass led to undermining track 1 at the Deerfield River bridge at the west end of of E Deerfield yard.