Federal money for District 1 improvements

From the Portland Press Herald:

Portland Press Herald wrote:Pan Am will contribute $4 million to a $10 million project that will increase train speed to 25 mph from 10 mph between Northern Maine Junction in Hermon to Pan Am’s large yard in Waterville. The project is seen as critical because Pan Am connects Maine railroads and their customers to the two large Class I railroads.

Read the rest of the article at: http://www.pressherald.com/2015/10/26/f ... from-feds/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hopefully they don't end up pissing this away a year later.

Agreed, I'm very curious to know what, if any, provisions exist to require that the newly-rehabbed 25 MPH track be maintained to that standard for any length of time.

It's also incredible to see money spent there when there are sections of Pan Am owned track in Massachusetts with 6 times the volume and tonnage that need it just as bad. I guess they haven't gotten any matching grants or pie in the sky MBTA money yet.

Here is a link to he application announced earlier this year for the TIGER funds.

http://maine.gov/mdot/tigergrants/docs/ ... rative.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

newpylong wrote:It's also incredible to see money spent there when there are sections of Pan Am owned track in Massachusetts with 6 times the volume and tonnage that need it just as bad. I guess they haven't gotten any matching grants or pie in the sky MBTA money yet.

Would be nice to see PAR invest $4 million on the lines where the traffic volumes exist in addition to the routes in Maine.

In Mass., the only things they are directly responsible for are Lowell Branch, the Brook, and Worcester Main. Everything else is the Commonwealth, or joint PAS territory.

Engineer Spike wrote:In Mass., the only things they are directly responsible for are Lowell Branch, the Brook, and Worcester Main. Everything else is the Commonwealth, or joint PAS territory.

I'm sure they can justify well more than $4M in improvements to that abominable-condition trackage they own outright, since it probably takes them as long to get between Ayer and Lawrence as it does Lawrence and Rigby. But MassDOT has enough future to-do's in shared PAR main territory reconfiguring the two NH Main junctions + interlockings in shared territory and eventually doing vertical clearance improvements in downtown Lowell and Andover-Haverhill for there to be any grant requests filed by the state specifically targeting the Stony Brook and Lowell Branch, much less the Worcester Main. Have a feeling nothing's going to get touched on that trio of lines improvements-wise until after Mellon cashes out the company to its next buyer, or sells those lines at ridiculous discount to the state in exchange for commitments to publicly fund those improvements.

Over the past couple of weeks, PAR crews have been working on replacing/refurbishing the road crossing at Wagon Wheel on the west end of the Stony Brook. Plus on Friday 11/20/15, the loaded coal train used main 2 between Willows and CPF-312 to get around some track maintenance gear sitting on Main 1. The equipment looked to be surfacing machine? But at the Great Rd OHB east of CPF-312 there is no evidence of new ties or ballast so can PAR really be re-surfacing such poor quality track infrastructure? Also, I've seen a couple of EDPO trains in Ayer over the past month or so with loaded company ballast cars headed to D2 and beyond.

Some of those ballast cars probably ended up in Salem for the Danvers Branch rehab...
At least 15 loads were brought in in the last three weeks...

D