Portsmouth Branch Activity

They dumped ballast Friday from Paterson Lane down to Green street. Ballast regulator was working it yesterday and was parked in the yard last night. No sign of the tamper yet.

Thanks. On a separate note the owner of the old station building at Rockingham Junction has decided to sell.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3-Ro ... 5917_zpid/

newpylong wrote:Why is it strange? Look at lumber prices (well right up until the last week or so).

Also finally seeing the LPG volume that the facility was expanded to handle.

It seemed easier to believe that somehow the rail shipper volume increases might not pan out as has been the case so many times elsewhere.

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Engines 306, 345 snoozing away on the main track beside the new parking garage. String of cars including tanks on the passing track, and a few on the yard tracks.

Thanks for the report Arthur. I heard DO-1 on the scanner leaving Portsmouth the other night but never saw it. I was 20 minutes down the line but alas 50 minutes passed and nothing. Oh well.

Is the LPG still running heavy into Sea-3

Yes often 16 cars every few days it seems.

I was at the Hampton Inn earlier this week overlooking the tracks. They had to make 2 trips to get everything delivered on Monday or Sunday nite (can't remember which).

Jonathan603 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 20, 2021 8:06 pm Thanks for the report Arthur.

The cranky old guy still gets to town once in a while.

Here's a well written, reasoned, sober filing at the STB from Wednesday 9/1/21 from the folks of the Islington Creek neighborhood in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Here are a couple of excerpts:

We are residents writing to provide comments that address local environmental and other issues that have been troublesome to our Islington Creek neighborhood in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for years, and to share with you our efforts to address them.
The neighborhood consists of 18 streets adjacent to the Pan Am rail tracks. In recent years, it has become more densely mixed residential/commercial, replacing the industrial zone that persisted for decades.
Our neighborhood does not object to the merger. Furthermore, we support the trains and the important work they do in the Seacoast Region, expanding commerce and contributing to economic stability.

Our Request
We are asking for ways to reduce the community impact of noise and diesel fumes – pollution – adjacent to our densely populated residential neighborhood and in the switching yard near Maplewood Avenue from long-idling trains. The idling and train noise go on at all hours of the day and night and last for many hours and sometimes continue for several days at a time. The middle-of-the night yard activity is especially disruptive as are long idling times. As propane traffic to the Newington Terminal has been increasing, so has the impact of noise and diesel fumes, with a huge increase noticed over the past six months. Moreover, the long-term rail car storage is unattractive and greatly impacts the neighborhood.

Acknowledging the problems
Our concerns were acknowledged by Cindy Scarano, Executive Vice President of Pan Am, in the summer and early autumn of 2019 at which time she vowed to make some corrective measures. (See “Pan Am Vows Action” September 29-30, 2019; Seacoastonline.com). She pledged that: 1. The train crews would shut down the locomotives at temperatures above 40 degrees; 2. Pan Am would look to find the best location to park the trains and 3. Pan Am would work with the community and address other concerns.
Since that time, no progress was made to address our concerns. In fact, the situation has worsened significantly with expanded propane activity at the Newington terminal.

Concluding Remarks
We want to emphasize that we fully support rail commerce and have no objection to the merger. We are asking that Pan Am work with us to reduce the community impact from the idling trains, rail yard storage and nighttime rail activity in our neighborhood. The current condition here continues to have an increasingly detrimental impact on the quality of life.

https://dcms-external.s3.amazonaws.com/ ... 302935.pdf

Another waste of 1s and 0s and someone's time at the STB.

"Sorry Islington Creek, you're subjected to that because we do not maintain the locomotives and they can't be shut down because the batteries are all bad and they won't be able to be restarted. Also, our track sucks so they can't make it back to Rigby or Rockingham Junction where there are no residents.

Sincerely, your good neighbor, Pan Am."

I’m guessing since the residents of Islington Creek filed this plea in the context of their fairly positive view of the CSX acquisition of Pan Am, their hope is CSX listens and remedies their suffering as neighbors. Of course, in a similar situation at Mansfield MA a year or so ago, I don’t believe CSX accommodated residents’ desires for CSX to stop its middle of the night switching and parking of locomotives. I doubt STB will stipulate that CSX accommodate the people of Islington Creek if the transaction is approved but we’ll see…

I don't think they have the authority to make stipulations at that level (that do not effect interstate commerce).

newpylong wrote: ↑Thu Sep 02, 2021 7:55 am "Sorry Islington Creek, you're subjected to that because we do not maintain the locomotives and they can't be shut down because the batteries are all bad and they won't be able to be restarted. Also, our track sucks so they can't make it back to Rigby or Rockingham Junction where there are no residents."

Fortunately for the residents of that neighborhood, CSX can (and hopefully will) remedy the issues in bold as part of their overall plan to bring this railroad up to normal CSX standards.

That filing is pretty well written. However, I don't agree that "Since that time, no progress was made to address our concerns." as I have noticed Pan Am have been parking their idling trains at Schiller and near Highliner to make them a little less disruptive to residents... also I have noticed the weekend switchers in the yard have been powered down.

Here is some DO-1 action from yesterday in case anyone is interested.

- Lunchtime DO-1 into Portsmouth.

- Evening return to Rockingham from Portsmouth