Portsmouth Branch Activity

Not good for the propane.

I wonder if they could set up some sort of temporary transload at Rockingham Jct or Dover just to keep things moving for the customer.

Whatever they do, it better be fast. As newpy said, terrible time for the line to be out of service in any capacity given the region got its first bout of snow this morning.

The good thing if any is CSX has the resources (and likely prebuilt girder bridges) to make repairs like that relatively quickly.

That was my thought as well: the customers are fortunate that this happened after CSX took over. If it had happened during Guilford, the best case scenario would be probably a year or more without direct service. CSX will almost certainly rebuild/replace the bridge faster than that.

MaineRailfan wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2024 8:36 am I wonder if they could set up some sort of temporary transload at Rockingham Jct or Dover just to keep things moving for the customer.

Yes. Or Rigby, which already has everything in place for transloading, and it's only one hour's drive from Portsmouth.

Well despite the fire the rail gang is laying the north rail between the juntion and the trestle this morning.
There are 4 or 5 trucks out on the causeway from the east end this morning. I'm guessing a plan for repair is well underway!!

Well I guess the upside is they don't have to work around the train schedule for the time being...

In addition to the high value LPG, Boise is out there. And maybe a undersea cable manufacturing place that gets covered hoppers of I think plastics. several reasons to get this fixed

Probably could for the interim transload the plastic pellets at Rigby, as for Boise they have another yard on the Saco IT which gets cars. They could probably handle the volume there with additional switches per week, or if they could get something to move the cars and could just have CSX drop a bigger cut there.

Here is a picture I took from Chapman's Landing this morning. I don't really see damage but maybe someone else will spot something. There is a break in the fence which may have been done to help fight the fire maybe? You cannot see the west side of the trestle from this picture either.

http://photos.nerail.org/s/?p=281134

If you zoom in, there is about 10-20 feet of rail suspended in the air on the right side of the span. If you zoom in closely you can see a bunch of the other piles are missing sections, unless those are old ones which were replaced and cut off so they wouldn't be in the way.

Not sure how I missed that, I was thinking it was snow but you are right. Thanks.

No worries and I am sure there is more damage that can't be seen from that photo. My guess would be it will probably be down for upwards of a month if not longer than that.

MECFAN wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2024 10:56 am Well despite the fire the rail gang is laying the north rail between the juntion and the trestle this morning.
There are 4 or 5 trucks out on the causeway from the east end this morning. I'm guessing a plan for repair is well underway!!

I sure hope they go for something a bit more fire-resistant on the next go around.