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

Aha, MEC has provided the keywords I was looking for: "NGL Supply Terminal Co.".
Using that company name, some searching brings up an article from September 2015 that fills in some of the gaps I had (excerpts):

NGL Supply Terminal Co. is moving forward with its plan to move from Commercial Street in Portland to Rigby Rail Yard.
...
[NGL]operates just west of the Casco Bay Bridge in Portland. The lease on that property expires this year [2015]
...
Fitzgerald said. “Our relocation is motivated by and in direct support of the state’s redevelopment of the Portland waterfront and we’ve worked closely with the federal, state and local officials to carefully select the Rigby Yard location.” (oops, as MEC pointed out, I guess not close enough)
...
The storage tank would be built just below what previously operated as the rail yard turntable

The article included a schematic showing the proposed layout of the terminal, overlaying the turntable pit.

As for NGL, searching more turned up a listing of Active Fuel terminals as of June 2020 (recent enough), and while NGL has several facilities listed, they are in Indiana, Minnesota, Arkansas...but not Maine. There are several terminals listed for Maine, perhaps the propane cars which used to go to the Waterfront are now going to one of them.

MEC407 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2020 5:06 pm

S1f3432 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2020 4:42 pm Was the gas plant on Commercial St. operated by Suburban Propane? My fuzzy memory seems to recall a proposal to swap some city property on Riverside St.

You're thinking of the Suburban Propane depot at Thompson's Point. That's unrelated to the facility on Commercial Street. The Commercial Street facility was owned by NGL Supply Terminal Co. and operated by Downeast Energy.
...
The Cash Corner neighborhood got its name from a family whose surname was Cash. Many neighborhoods in the Greater Portland area are known as corners and were named for families who were early settlers in those areas, e.g. Crocketts Corner, Morrills Corner, Nasons Corner, Woodfords Corner, Cash Corner, Bradleys Corner, et al.

Incidentally, the Suburban Propane complex on Riverside St. is complete, fulfilling my prediction that the first truly new construction by the Thompson's Point operators would be miles away from Thompson's Point.

And 407, you and I may be the only two people still around who know where Bradley's Corner is .

So this cold storage warehouse "will be adjacent to a rail siding but won't have it's own spur". How does that facilitate rail service for goods that need to either be refrigerated or frozen? These types of warehouses that have successfully utilized rail service have on dock ramps either inside or alongside so that the pallets can be forklifted directly inside.

"Portland, Maine
Linking Intermodal Needs and Rural Freight Knowledge - LINK Project (awarded $4,098,360)
This grant will fund the modernization of gates and scales, improvements to existing warehouses, and rail improvements at a bulk transfer facility to improve the intermodal efficiency of the port. The project is in an opportunity zone."


https://www.transportation.gov/briefing ... s-americas

newpylong wrote:So this cold storage warehouse "will be adjacent to a rail siding but won't have it's own spur".

It's directly adjacent to an intermodal terminal. Seems like enough to me but I agree there's value to having a rail dock.



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If someone is going to move product the last 1000 feet by truck you might as well truck it the whole way. Not having a direct to dock siding is just as shortsighted as building the Yard 8 IMT yard as it was the first go round and then expanding it less than a year later.

Sir Ray wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2020 5:49 pm As for NGL, searching more turned up a listing of Active Fuel terminals as of June 2020 (recent enough), and while NGL has several facilities listed, they are in Indiana, Minnesota, Arkansas...but not Maine.

I was told that NGL moved from yard 8 in Portland to the SLR at Lewiston Jct in Auburn.

Don't know if this is the best place to ask this question, but I've been seeing a lot more slurry cars at the SoPo sprague Terminal over the past few months. Are those cars carrying imported or exported slurry? There's a fairly regular ocean service between Vila Do Conde, Brazil and Portland / Searsport, I've always assumed those ships were bringing Kaolin from the Amazon and then returning empty.

newpylong wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 8:26 pm If someone is going to move product the last 1000 feet by truck you might as well truck it the whole way. Not having a direct to dock siding is just as shortsighted as building the Yard 8 IMT yard as it was the first go round and then expanding it less than a year later.

And that IM terminal has been rusting away for almost 2 years now...

The guys who ran that place (note, not the current group) a few years ago were only interested in padding their resumes and hitting the town for dinner and drinks... sure they accomplished some things but reality was they didn't care about the transportation so much as their social status and the good news articles. And it paid off for one big time who now works as the Ports Director down in Connecticut...

CT's loss is ME's gain? MPA certainly had their fair share of bad ideas (how's that $10M conveyor working out in Eastport?), but if memory serves, MDOT was behind YD 8's absolutely impractical redesign that resulted in maybe the dumbest intermodal terminal ever constructed. Any nominations for any that are worse?

The Maine DOT butchering the design of something to the point which it is impractical. Glad to see nothing has changed in the past 20 years...

An honest question: what do you consider so impractical about it, and what would you have done differently, assuming that Portland Yacht Services is immovable and the plan to add a cold storage facility to the area is still active?

Seemed like a really stupid idea to allow the shipyard to go there when they first announced it and an even stupider idea now.

Literally any design that would have give them more pad and rail spots. Can the packer even reach the second track?

If they ever begin moving any volume a switcher is going to have to sit there all day spotting due to track length.