Portland Waterfront Rail Ops (Yard 8, Intermodal, etc)

Going back to the subject of Poland Spring Water being shipped by rail in Eimskip containers:

An ST engineer recently told me that PAR is losing money on this traffic and that it's been, in his words, "a real pain in the @$$ for the railroad."

Seems like an umpteenth repeat of their classic "We want to haul intermodal! / Ehhhhh intermodal is too much work, screw it" routine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

These small shipments are a PIA. If they could get to a point where they could run an actual train, the complications, and the pain felt in their rear should diminish while the monetary side of things goes from ugly to friendly. I keep hearing 6300' trains coming out of Maine, with a start date 2 weeks away since April. As with most Pan Am rumors though, I'm sure it will come to fruition at some point, it just takes a while to get crews, equipment, and locomotives all lined up.

I also have heard slim margins for this hot hot hot traffic. It wouldn't surprise me that it's a wash or a loss.

I was also told PAS ia doing very well financially and PAR not so much.

Thats not really surprising. A quick glimpse through some of the NEARS stuff shows that Intermodal loadings were 48% of business for 2016 while paper & forest products account for ~15%. Compared with 1999, those numbers were more like 7% and 30% respectively. And since 90+% of IM loads in 2016 were loads for PAS destinations, that Pan Am would be near red, while PAS is black makes perfect sense.

They're probably losing money on the IM because of the ridiculous moves they have to make.

If they dedicated a couple crews and a few more engines to the service as its own run, it'd work out, grow, and turn out great. They simply refuse to hire the crews and refuse to have the engines available. Everything is so sloppy, with no care to details.

Well, I'm sure you know, but that's the (eventual) goal. It just needs to happen sooner rather than keep pushing it back.

I would imagine that the new Deerfield equipment pool for Selkirk service may free up power that could be shifted elsewhere.

Cosakita18 wrote:First renderings of the 70 foot Americold building with boxcars for scale. The zoning height adjustment is going to the Portland planning board on the 27th for a vote, and if that passes, the final site design and application goes to the planning board some time in early January for a vote.

If that building was designed by the same folks that designed the adjacent intermodal terminal, someone better check the door spacing; they may well have them spaced for 40-ft boxcars. Seriously, I hope some thought was put into what equipment would be placed here. Modern 60-ft high cube boxcars are about 67-ft long, but modern insulated cars are typically 76-ft in length, and reefers are 76- or 83-ft long.

Come on Cowford. Have some faith. But you are probablt correct. I mean why would you not have direct access from the port to the rail head? And initial construction should have included a second track on the Commercial Street side of the loading ramp. Now they are building a second track next to the first and going to have to buy a new stacker...waste...

Temps this Friday in Maine are forecasted to be a high of 10 degrees and a low of -1 degrees ( ) - Poland Springs train to Ayer may become an ICE train!

I've wondered about that more than once. Basically there's too much residual heat in the water pallets to allow a freeze to happen in the amount of time it would take without refrigeration systems. The air around the water doesn't move, the containers are nearly air tight, the water is wrapped in plastic and sitting on pallets. You don't have to be an HVAC technician to figure out that given all of the above the risk of the cargo freezing is relatively low. As long as the transit times are kept to a minimum this should never be a problem.

gokeefe wrote:As long as the transit times are kept to a minimum

Have you forgotten what forum you're posting in?

Didn't SLR haul water for a while, and lose the contract for exactly the same problem?

As long as there's some movement of the containers,the water sloshes around making ice forming difficult.
if everything is still(no movement) ice forms.
If the container is on a road chassis,and the tractor is idling ,the vibes from the tractor will shake the water enough
to keep ice from forming.

Photo by Ted Bockley:

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