PAS Intermodal Prospects

Is the CSX lease on the Ford? auto yard in Ayer up this year?

2017

Think NS will go after it then?

Even with the restoration of double-tracking for the T, it's not currently an easy place to get into or out off, especially during commute times. It could probably be reworked to make access easier, but a customer commitment would be probably be necessary, not to mention having to deal with NIMBY/BANANA issues.

Drove west on the Mass Pike today through State Line and next to the highway was a wb CSX Q train with UPS TOFC and double stacked CSX containers moving along at a smart 50mph. Maybe one day PAS will be able to sustain 40mph!

johnpbarlow wrote:Drove west on the Mass Pike today through State Line and next to the highway was a wb CSX Q train with UPS TOFC and double stacked CSX containers moving along at a smart 50mph. Maybe one day PAS will be able to sustain 40mph!

Yup. With NS in charge. Otherwise, I don't think so.

Exactly. Not with the "PA" in the PAS still.

Idle thought: use an iPhone to make it seem like Pan Am's trains are going fast: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/r ... ?2,3964803

jaymac wrote:Even with the restoration of double-tracking for the T, it's not currently an easy place to get into or out off, especially during commute times. It could probably be reworked to make access easier, but a customer commitment would be probably be necessary, not to mention having to deal with NIMBY/BANANA issues.

Well, if the system gets partitioned you've got NS taking PAS and Hill Yard, and somebody else taking PAR with limited means of doing more than a temporary pause at Hill while doing a Worcester-Lawrence run. Chances are that Ayer-Willows is going to have to be quad-tracked to keep two freight railroads and one passenger railroad out of each other's way on that hectic 2-1/2 miles of overlap. Not a particularly tall order since it used to be quadded (on Historic Aerials topos until sometime between 1958-1968) and there's few residential abutters east of the Sandy Pond Rd. grade crossing. It'd be a pretty complex set of interlockings to fluidly slip from one side to the other over duration of that 2-1/2 miles, but that's probably what we'd be looking at sometime. . .

-- . . .after the partitioning of Pan Am into NS and ____.
-- . . .when NS traffic is exploding on their full-capacity double-stack route.
-- . . .when PAR's successor has a 19'6" or greater double-stack route between the CSX/P&W interchange in Worcester and Portland.
-- . . .when NS finds a re-use role that makes full use of the Ford Yard capacity.
-- . . .when the Fitchburg Line schedule is ramped up with better reverse-commute options to the growing employment centers around Devens.

And given that 3 different RR's would be splitting funding for laying the extra iron and it would have a multi-stakeholder advantage in qualifying for fed funding, probably not too expensive to pull off. Ford Yard capacity's going to be needed by somebody sooner or later. If there's profit to be had, they'll make it worth their while to pay fair share for the mainline capacity expansion on that critical stretch. It's only a matter of when traffic hits critical mass to do the deed: early-2020's, or later 2020's.

Do you really think they need to add extra track there? Maybe 1, but not 2. If they can't get a train out of Hill and over to the Stony between commuter trains, I'd call that a pretty lame operation. Having everyone run left-handed between Ayer and the Willows would help. It's not like we're on the BNSF Racetrack in Chicago where commuter trains are moving by frequently--and where the BNSF manages to get trains [3 times more than we'd be talking about in Ayer, BTW]out of Cicero Yard while fouling the track that inbound passenger trains use.

Rockingham Racer wrote:Do you really think they need to add extra track there? Maybe 1, but not 2. If they can't get a train out of Hill and over to the Stony between commuter trains, I'd call that a pretty lame operation. Having everyone run left-handed between Ayer and the Willows would help. It's not like we're on the BNSF Racetrack in Chicago where commuter trains are moving by frequently--and where the BNSF manages to get trains [3 times more than we'd be talking about in Ayer, BTW]out of Cicero Yard while fouling the track that inbound passenger trains use.

Today, no. 10 years from now, post-partitioning and post- reverse-commute schedule increases? Maybe. Depends on whether projected traffic ends up at the high end of the predictions range or the low end. That's the part we don't know. But that stretch of track certainly is likely to become progressively more of a groaner for traffic conflicts over time. If the T sees enough need to address conflicts with the lower levels of freight traffic on the Haverhill Line between Lowell Jct. and Lawrence, and sees enough of a need to eventually reconfigure Bleachery behind Lowell station to address conflicts with the lower levels of freight traffic in that spot...chances are the need's going to pop up sooner or later to address the higher levels of freight traffic between Willows and Ayer. It's a when and how much, not an if.

Any recent updates to the PS service? Still going on?

Yes. Nothing has changed from was reported here.

In case anyone is curious what NS and PAS intermodal ramp maps look like at Taylor, PA, Mechanicville, and Ayer...

Thanks -- somehow Ayer looks grander on the map than its does on Gearth.