by F-line to Dudley via Park
eustis22 wrote:Yes but there's a third track for canning next to the old lawrence platform...can the locos next to the warehouses/stonemason shop.Unfortunately a cat-and-mouse game when PAR freight main dispatcher controls Andover-north. The new #2 main is only used by Downeasters and freights until Andover DPW yard completes its pending relocation and the T can infill a new northbound station platform 2-3 years after completion of the rest of the DT project. Keolis is only going to find out retroactively about canning on a track their local schedules aren't currently using...even when this stuff gums up the overwall works enough with constipated movements that the dreaded "freight interference" starts dinging theirs and NNEPRA's OTP. Ditto the rash of recent cannings in Atkinson, where select Haverhill slots traditionally have gone to runaround to keep the platforms clear...but probably aren't right this moment because of Merrimack Bridge construction constraining regular ops. I haven't seen any reports of how full Lawrence has been this week, but if they've lapsed into chronic canning 5 miles north and 5 miles south it strongly hints to a yard that days ago filled out its storage and is now too short on space to block cars for departure.
I'm sure Keolis is livid about the neighborhood complaints about back-to-back 11-hour idlings in a thickly settled area because they're the customer service first-responders who have to field those calls. Billerica has probably been getting nastygrammes from them all week. But unfortunately they're forced into a limited amount of action from a purely after-the-fact reactive pose. PAR dispatch has more options than they do to sneak around on both the Andover and Atkinson sides of Lawrence when these #2 main tracks are in-service but not in 'prime-time' passenger service while adjacent construction projects are wrapping up. The fact that it makes little sense strictly for PAR ops to be canning here doesn't much play into it. They're doing it because they choose to, because their dispatch control lets them, because their landlord's only remedy is to chase after them reactively when it happens, and because if they shuffle the trains one step ahead of Keolis' complaints they have a well-established window of time where they can always get away with it.