Freight through Medford

I was surprised to see a 21 car mixed freight heading North through Medford this morning at about 1100. Any idea what that was?
John, the guy in the white car withe the wing on back

doublebell wrote:I was surprised to see a 21 car mixed freight heading North through Medford this morning at about 1100. Any idea what that was?
John, the guy in the white car withe the wing on back

Isn't that usually the time of morning that the BS&G job heads back home after unloading the morning's delivery of sand at the plant? Were there a lot of empty hoppers in tow with the other miscellany?

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

doublebell wrote:I was surprised to see a 21 car mixed freight heading North through Medford this morning at about 1100. Any idea what that was?
John, the guy in the white car withe the wing on back

Isn't that usually the time of morning that the BS&G job heads back home after unloading the morning's delivery of sand at the plant? Were there a lot of empty hoppers in tow with the other miscellany?

BODO usually leaves Boston before the morning rush, and it definitely did so early this morning as well. But 21 cars sounds a little big to be a LA local, even if there was a combined Somerville/Everett/Salem run returning via the Reading Branch.

EDIT: Which line through Medford? I think of the Reading/Haverhill Line by default, assuming they were qualifying a crew on that line, but the Lowell Line goes through Medford, too.

This was at the High Street crossing in West Medford. It was a mixed freight with several Plate F boxcars, a couple of Plate C's, a few tank cars, a few hoppers, etc.
John, the guy in the white car with the wing on back.

If there was a PanAm blue unit on the lead I'll bet it was the unit that was in the Salem yard yesterday. They looked like they were lined up for the main, with a high side gon and about 6 hoppers. They may have also stopped at Univar as I think there were 2 or 3 tankers on that property.

I didn't catch the lead unit but the second was a dark gray GRS.
John, the guy in the white car with the wing on back.

It was LA-2

D

Has the Medford branch seem any use lately?

PAR has not visited the Medford Branch in over a year or more.

D

After the successful Poland Spring short haul tests, the Budweiser to Medford distro deal is back on the table.

newpylong wrote:After the successful Poland Spring short haul tests, the Budweiser to Medford distro deal is back on the table.

Has Bud backed off the clearance requirements for their boxcars? There was pretty much no resolving that dispute that sidelined the 2012 proposal...if big boxes don't clear through there, they don't clear through there and that's that.

Would those cars be coming or going from Medford?

saw a pan am truck at the middlesex st crossing in medford today. not sure what they were doing. something in the works?

tom18287 wrote:saw a pan am truck at the middlesex st crossing in medford today. not sure what they were doing. something in the works?

If I had to guess, they were doing signal testing for the crossing. They still have to do their testing even if nothing is running.

If not, then my second guess would be someone is going to cut up the tree blocking the branch between Middlesex St and Medford Jct.

thats probably it, i just wasn't sure. maybe they were inspecting the track for that budweiser thing