Pan Am Woodland Spur

I was speaking with a couple of NBSR MoW employees the other day in McAdam and they informed me they are presently replacing ties, etc with their equipment on the Woodland Spur owned by Pan Am. I believe NBSR also has a switcher based in Woodland as well but a Pan Am crew runs it? They also said Irving (NBSR) would like to get ahold of that piece of track but Pan Am won't sell. Apparently chips will be running to Woodland from Irving land in northern Maine shortly as they are about to sign a contract for them. It sounds like a pretty sweet deal for Pan Am since they do virtually nothing and get paid for every car that crosses the bridge at Milltown onto their tracks. Am I correct or does someone know some other arrangement that may exist? The size of the south freight out of McAdam will soon rival the main line trains with the new business. There is also a major contract just signed with Cook Aquaculture for carloads of grain (not sure exactly what) to be unloaded in St Stephen and trucked to their St George operations.

It has been rummered that the Woodland mill is trying to purchase the GRS line from Calais to the Woodland Mill. Nothing has been announced yet. There are stacks of new ties at the Woodland yard that just arrived. They are certainly needed. I don't know who will be installing them but NBSR did a lot of the washout repairs last spring when the line was down. Another interesting note is that recently the mill has been sending Containers by truck to Halifax NS for Europe. The cars for St. Stephen is fish food for the salmon growing pens.

How many customers does the NBSR regularly serve on the branch line south from Mcadam to St Stephen/Woodland? Thanks.

roberttosh wrote:How many customers does the NBSR regularly serve on the branch line south from Mcadam to St Stephen/Woodland? Thanks.

NBSR serves three industries in St. Stephen N.B.;

GANONGS Chocolates with inbound raw material such as sugar, cocoa beans........St. Stephen Flakeboard, moving outbound product in box cars.......and inbound cars of urea etc. to a plant, that manufactures resin for the Flakeboard product.

The Woodland Paper Pulp Mill in Baileyville is the only regular customer on the Calais Branch in Maine. Chemicals ,logs inbound and very occasional boxcar outbound of Pulp.

I remember seeing a long time ago in "atlantic northeast rails and ports" something about a transload facility being built in Baring by a trucking company called Bluebird Ranch. Does anyone know whatever became of that? I remember them having quite lofty goals for serving the port of Eastport.

That project and a transload facility at Ayers Junction or Perry are for now silent in the news.

Word has it that the Woodland Spur has indeed been sold by Guilford to the Woodland mill owners. The deal will officially take place January 1st. NBSR will have the running rights. I was down in Calais for a basketball tournament last weekend and took a drive out to the mill in Woodland. NBSR MoW equipment, trucks and men everywhere. They were putting a new siding into the mill for unloading chips. Still a tremendous amount of trackwork to be done but nice to see progress. NBSRs large track crane was there as well as at least 8-10 other pieces of equipment working at various places on the line from Woodland into the Milltown bridge.

certainly a different attitude from Pan Am here. In the past it would have been my way or the highway, or abandonment. Interesting...

How are things looking in Woodland? I saw in another post in another forum that the Woodland Mill sent out six loaded High Cubes. Is there any other good news coming from there? Also, I think i read something about them recieving woodchips by rail. Has that been a success?

They haven't started hauling wood chips yet but are going to be soon. NBSR MoW crew have put in a new siding at the mill for this. I suspect that is why they also have brought in additional cars either buying or leasing them. I'm not sure about how much or how long the outgoing pulp will last. RRBUFF may know. There have also been some YKR boxes heading south from McAdam to the mill. On another note talk has resurfaced about Irving developing a sand quarry on their land which is adjacent to the track between McAdam and St Stephen. Before the economic downturn it sounded like a sure thing but was put on hold. The plan at the time was to run unit trains of about 50 cars to Saint John to have the sand put on a barge for somewhere on the eastern seaboard.

From what I hear, the market for pulp in China and Far East has been weakening. The mill is trying to find other markets for their pulp. Some is being loaded into boxcars for USA potential customers. About a month ago there were some ocean containers loaded to go to Halifax for export to Europe. There are still many trucks hauling pulp to Eastport. I am still unsure of chips coming into the mill. It is good to see more activity in the Woodland yard again.

RRBUFF wrote:From what I hear, the market for pulp in China and Far East has been weakening. The mill is trying to find other markets for their pulp. Some is being loaded into boxcars for USA potential customers. About a month ago there were some ocean containers loaded to go to Halifax for export to Europe. There are still many trucks hauling pulp to Eastport. I am still unsure of chips coming into the mill. It is good to see more activity in the Woodland yard again.

Does anyone know if the Woodland Spur (Calais Industrial Track) was actually sold around January 1st and if it is no longer under Pan Am ownership? Thanks.

This is some what off topic but, I just want to say thank you to everyone here for all the info. I would visit these places myself and be able to give answers if i was in my home State of Maine, (Penobscot County). But im stationed over here in Europe, Germany to be exact. These forums and all the info is outstanding! So like i said before. Thank you all.

Not sure why NBSR crew would be installing track or doing tie work but PAR stills owns the line and leases the power from NBSR.

They are supposed to be getting chips soon.