PL-1 Job Central Connecticut PAS Pan Am Southern

Is Forrestville Lumber that one you can see off the right side of the train when heading southbound right before Hartford station?

whatelyrailfan wrote:The centerbeams are most likely going to one of two places: Forestville Lumber in (Plainville?) which used to be a customer, and may be again. Home Depot Warehouse in Bloomfield via interchange in Hartford with the CNE. I've lived in Holyoke since May of 2009, and to the best of my recollection, I've not seen any centerbeams until about 3-4 weeks ago. I have, however, seen a few in the (remains of) Holyoke yard on Bing Maps, although the images are at least a year old. The interchange with the CNE in Hartford is an educated guess, not a fact, based on a recent conversation with a CNE employee, and unless there's a brand new customer, Forestville Lumber is the logical choice.

Here is a Google street view of the Forestville Lumber siding in Plainville.

http://tinyurl.com/yfzpakx

Dave

Thanks...what is in the Allstate tanks?

I assume that Trew gets calcium chloride tanks in the winter? Do they receive rock for the crusher by rail?

This downturn is a sad state from what it was when I was a kid. I grew up at the Plainville freight house. At the time, my grandfather had a trucking company. He leased the dock areas of the station for transloading from rail to truck. The railroad still used the office for the yard office.
I am not to familiar with the early eighties operations that Tom Nelligan describes. I was bicycle mobile by the mid to late eighties. At that time there were three jobs in Plainville. They were WA1, PL1, and PLED/EDPL. At times they changed things and had PLSP/SPPL, which only ran to Springfield. A job would meet them there, from E. Deerfield.
PL1 used to work around Plainville in all four directions. They got scrap from Stanley Works in New Britain, a lumber yard in Avon, several places on the canal to Cheshire. They also did a big Carnation warehouse and New Departure/Hyatt/General Motors, which is now Firestone. Often WA1 was too heavy to make it over the hill to the tunnel. In this case, PL1 would take the few Carnation cars and combine with WA1. This way they would make the hill. They would split in Terryville, and WA! would continue to Waterbury, while PL1 did Carnation and New Departure.
WA1 used to go to Torrington, and down to Derby Jct. At that time Peter Paul Candy was a big account. They got corn syrup to make Mounds and Almond Joy bars. I remember crews giving me some of the samples which the candy company employees had given them. In Waterbury, they would do Tilcon stone, Porta Nova lumber, and Waterbury Republican news print.
In the evening the jobs combined their trains and power to make up PLED (or PLSP depending on the time frame). In the morning, they would split the inbound trains power, switch out the Waterbury and Plainville cars.

Welcome to 25 years of the Big G!

Is the steel business near Bristol up and running? Someone alluded to this in the OCS thread.

rb wrote:Is the steel business near Bristol up and running? Someone alluded to this in the OCS thread.

If that is the one near the Firestone plant, then yes, they are getting steel coil NS cars.

Good to hear. Does anyone know how many cars are week are heading there? There was talk of them bringing in their own switcher at some point.

Look for HLCX 6200 to be the second unit out of EDFLD tommorow on EDPL. Destination unknown.

That's interesting! I doubt it's going to Plainville, I can't imagine they allow 6 axle units on the track down there. I'm really suprised they're even letting it go down the Conn River.

MCER401 wrote:That's interesting! I doubt it's going to Plainville, I can't imagine they allow 6 axle units on the track down there. I'm really suprised they're even letting it go down the Conn River.

Nothing wrong with going down the Conn River, it's straight as an arrow. They used to run CSX and leaser 6 Packs down there on the coal trains all the time, and track was just as bad then.

Just as info, the HLCX 6200 was sitting on one of the ice house tracks in CSX's West Springfield Yard when I went through earlier on 449. It was facing west, and sitting alone. Haven't seen engines parked over there since the ex-CN unit destined for the G & U.

Sorry to dig an old topic up but...I'm confused.

-There is a switcher out of E. Deerfield that runs to Holyoke, as ED-#? They serve Sulivans Scrap, and other businesses in Holyoke, and presumably the packaging plant there in Northampton. (Packaging Corp of America???)
How often does this run and does Northampton still get rail service?

-Then their is a train that runs from EDFLD to Berlin and the cluster of Branches in Connecticut, from what I gather 1 or 2 times a week.
Does this run as as PL-1 all the way from EDFLD to its destination or as EDPL to Plainville and then become PL-1 to switch the branches around Plainville?

-Does PL-1/PLED switch Holyoke and other businesses on the Conn River between Berlin and EDFLD on its return trip north?

-Does PAR exercise trackage right to New Haven, or do they even still have those rights? If they do, whats in New Haven for customers?

-And lastly, how much, if any interchange takes place with CSX at Springfield?

KSmitty wrote:-There is a switcher out of E. Deerfield that runs to Holyoke, as ED-#? They serve Sulivans Scrap, and other businesses in Holyoke, and presumably the packaging plant there in Northampton. (Packaging Corp of America???)
How often does this run and does Northampton still get rail service?

1-2x a week for the switcher, iirc. Yes, Noho still receives rail service. They only have that one company that receives rail last I knew.

KSmitty wrote:-Does PL-1/PLED switch Holyoke and other businesses on the Conn River between Berlin and EDFLD on its return trip north?

Yes. Both north and southbound last I observed.

The trackage rights into New Haven that the B&M acquired in 1982 were limited to two types of business: intermodal traffic destined to or from the Cedar Hill Yard piggyback terminal, and interchange freight moving to or from the Long Island Rail Road that was to be handled between New Haven and New York (Fremont) by Conrail under a haulage agreement. The former ran regularly for a couple years, but the later never materialized as a significant business. I don't know if the rights still exist, but if so they haven't been used since the mid-1980s.