B&M Gawking (District 2 Sightings)

Don't know where else to put this: there's a boxcar hanging at Boston Paperboard just off of the Yard 10 Lead. LW 9180.

Here are some photos of PAR SEPO taken Friday 01/08/16 at Sandy Pond Rd Ayer (almost into PAR D2!). Train was a healthy 6500ft long with 20ish hazmat cars. CSX engine complement was interesting with newish, old, and very new GE locomotives: ES44AH leader + C40-8 + brand new ET44AH Tier 4 (hopefully the ET44AH compensates adequately for the C40-8 polluter!). Illuminated number boards were quite visible on this dreary day.

SEPO waited for and then followed the Northbound Amtrak through a snowy CPF 273 Plaistow at about 6pm Tuesday evening. SEPO was exceptionally long and featured three engines up front, I believe a new tier 4 unit (LED number boards) in the middle.

Hearing that next years big track project is to get the Brook and the Lowell branch back to 25.

Well, they already go rid of the 5's, so at least there's that. And the Lowell Turnouts are in service again. Now they want 25? My my, what has this place become?

newpylong wrote:Hearing that next years big track project is to get the Brook and the Lowell branch back to 25.

Which Class I is cracking that whip to get their Portland-bound waybill the hell out of town faster? The SEPO one, or the everything-else one?

Believe it or not, this is Pan Am's attempt to drum up more business, but not new business rather than win back old business. More specifically -- Paper traffic. Their plan is to increase rail car velocity to bring back lost paper business to trucks. Stay tuned.

Also big talk again about Poland Springs piggyback trains again. Any idea what their routing or destination will be? Supposed to start shipping small batches in general freight to start. After that planning on a job Waterville-Lowell, Lowell-deerfield, and another crew out of deerfield.

The plan keeps changing but... They want to load PS at two different locations either WTVL or Danville andPortland. They start at the furthermost location and head west, picking up a cut in Portland (likely with Eimskip loads) and take it to Ayer. Eventually they wanna go to NYC area via Kearny/The Bergen's.... I think south CT on their own system makes more sense tho

Why go through the trouble of loading at 3 different yet geographically close locations?

CN9634 wrote:Believe it or not, this is Pan Am's attempt to drum up more business, but not new business rather than win back old business. More specifically -- Paper traffic. Their plan is to increase rail car velocity to bring back lost paper business to trucks. Stay tuned.

Perhaps with track improvement to 25mph on the Stony Brook there will be less train parking at Graniteville and Lowell?

johnpbarlow wrote:

CN9634 wrote:Believe it or not, this is Pan Am's attempt to drum up more business, but not new business rather than win back old business. More specifically -- Paper traffic. Their plan is to increase rail car velocity to bring back lost paper business to trucks. Stay tuned.

Perhaps with track improvement to 25mph on the Stony Brook there will be less train parking at Graniteville and Lowell?

I wouldn't be so sure. They usually end up there because they'd have to wait for a hole in the MBTA schedules and anything else that might be going on in addition to that.

Two views of EDPO trundling east on the west end of D2 on the Stony Brook branch, passing a 28N that had arrived about an hour earlier. 2nd photo is heavily zoomed but does suggest Stony Brook track needs some MoW attention.

ETT No. 36 (Nov. 1943) indicates that close to three-quarters of a century ago, the MAS for that stretch line was 60/50 -- depending on curves -- for passenger and 40 for freight, one of the few -- except for PAR/S -- examples of the good old days actually being better.

Poland springs trains "kind of" starting this weekend. Fri-sat-sun POSE will have 9 spines of water to be unloaded in Ayer.