Engineer Spike wrote:This thread has made me do some thinking. First, who really knows Housatonic's financial condition, other than a few company officers, and various governmental agencies in both tax and regulation. I'm sure that the economy has put a damper on them, as it has everyone else. They may have had to scale back on repairs, if the traffic is not there, as it used to be, pre-2008.
Earlier there was a comment about their Guilford like tactics. Maybe this is because of Colin Pease. I understand why they will not fix up the east end of the Maybrook. They have no customers there. I have only seen a locomotive interchanged there, to Guilford. I later read that it was bound to E. Deerfield for wheel work. Why would they fix the track when it does not profit them? I'm sure the trackage right fees from P&W don't cover the repairs.
They're beholden to agreements with P&W to do their part on the shared Maybrook track. Bare minimum is all the stakeholders are asking for, and they won't even do that. That's the crux of the dispute. If they don't want to do that much, they need to get the hell out of there. They're not doing that. They wanted to abandon and hold the property for scrap and sale, and that's what spawned the adverse abandonment filing from P&W and HRCC's subsequent backtracking. Bottom line is they either need to fish or cut bait...they can't just hoard or it's gonna go nuclear and they will not win (and will possibly go from the legal costs) with the STB and in court if P&W were to seek damages. They have obligations to CDOT on the state-owned track they got public money to fix up when it was reopened. They refuse to maintain the grade crossings in tolerable shape. That's a lesser problem because if the Berkshire goes splat it's not going to blow up in court like with the Maybrook, but the state has to withhold TIGER grant filings because they can't be trusted to put the grants where they're intended.
Back to the Guilford play book! Look at how Amtrak wanted to run trains on the Portland Div. They want high speeds, well pay up. 10-25mph is good enough for our freight. NS wants to run auto racks through Hoosac; pay for it. You want to run fast piggyback service-you pay for it. I think that Housatonic wants P&W to pony up if they want to run that line. If the government doesn't take the line away, then P&W will have to pay up if running via Norwalk is to costly.
Operable 10 MPH is all P&W is asking for. That's what HRCC is obligated to provide. They don't have total free will here when there are shared usage rights agreements in force. I'm sure at this point P&W would love to get them the hell out of there and be able to exercise its own self-determination on the line, but they can't...they have to deal with HRCC management's intransigence.
Interchange with PAS and P&W was brought up. My question is whether they are bound by a deal like Connecticut Southern's, where they are only allowed to interchange with Conrail, or its successor? Was this part of the deal for the Danbury cluster?
I'm pretty sure they've got rights to both, because both B&M and P&W scooped up Conrail's agreements and HRCC probably inherited a cumulative bundle of agreements when it reanimated the line post-Guilford. They don't do anything with PAS because they don't give a crap about the Maybrook and it isn't worth PAS's while to develop anything with them. But yes, they can interchange.
Who owns the line in MA? Is it the Commonwealth, or did they get it directly from Guilford? Was a paper company set up like the Danbury deal, so they would not be bound by labor protection rules?
HRCC owns via the Maybrook Properties paper company. They purchased direct from Guilford. Although they got healthy amount of assistance from MassDOT for track maintenance on the Berkshire Scenic shared trackage, so MA is kind of getting boned over by the Berkshire Scenic spat too. Small potatoes so the state's not intervening, but another reason they got stuffed on the TIGER grants. Too much liability for the state to risk funneling public funds to an untrustworthy outfit likely to abuse the privilege and line their own pockets with the money. And they may get sucked in anyway if Berkshire Scenic sues.
If Housatonic does go bust, it may not be the end of the world. The B&M was in bankruptsy for 13 years. They might be able to file a chapter which allows continued operation while in reorganization.
Yes, although the states will probably have to intervene and bail out at that point. CDOT especially with the Maybrook. It's gonna suck. It's gonna be unpopular with the public to pour public funds to firefight this disaster. But they won't have much of a choice. It's a key corridor they don't want severed. They have to keep the lid on the P&W nukes. It's got very viable near/medium-term commuter rail potential on the HRCC-owned Danbury-New Milford segment. It at least has potential to develop business and move a lot of goods from the interchanges on its 286K FRA rating, if HRCC reformed itself or a competent operator came in. It'll be a blow to the Housatonic Valley and Berkshire economy if the RR goes away because it'll be that much harder to attract business. Not talking major growth potential here, but it's a selling point for commerce in an area that needs more of it and the RR is a prevent-defense helping keep the remaining industrial base from shrinking further. It's a good corridor...it's just got bad-news people operating it.
