CSX Acquisition of Pan Am Railways

There is an extensive thread(s) on Poland Spring water over PAR system to somewhere in NJ or NY area to distribute in the NYC area. Including test unit trains of water that have to get to their destination before the water freezes. Nestle Waters does big business in bottled water in the US, including Poland Spring and Perrier. So much that they sold off theUS candy business and kept the water. When I visited Miami a few years ago they seemed to have a near monopoly on spring and filtered water. Lots of rail potential, and CSX probably makes it easier in the NY area.

Bracdude181 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:06 am I remember CSX mentioning this but with lumber and not water. It was earlier this year. They said Pan Am was moving lumber to a certain spot and then it was being trucked to NJ from there. CSX said they could instead take the lumber loads by rail all the way to their Transflo yard in Newark.

I don’t know if they have started doing this though.

Was that possibly Cedar Hill Yard for the lumber? I kind of remember that.

@bostontrainguy I live in NJ so I am largely unfamiliar with Pan Ams network/operations. The lumber customer was not named.

BandA wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:49 pm There is an extensive thread(s) on Poland Spring water over PAR system to somewhere in NJ or NY area to distribute in the NYC area. Including test unit trains of water that have to get to their destination before the water freezes. Nestle Waters does big business in bottled water in the US, including Poland Spring and Perrier. So much that they sold off theUS candy business and kept the water. When I visited Miami a few years ago they seemed to have a near monopoly on spring and filtered water. Lots of rail potential, and CSX probably makes it easier in the NY area.

Nestle Waters was acquitted a little bit ago and is now Blue Triton Brands

I still say short haul tankers from Maine to Poland Springs bulk facility in Framingham. Lot easier to do now with 1 railroad.

edited for spelling

Why would they pay someone to transport bulk water all the way to Framingham via rail to bottle when they can just continue bottling closer to the source? After that it doesn't matter how or where the pallets go it's all finished product.

At some point I think that CSX is going to want to run a non-stop pair between Rigby and Selkirk, as they will really need expedited service to capture much of the Irving Oil traffic that CN currently handles. I could see a second train from Selkirk handling PW, Ayer and Lawrence blocks and then picking up Rigby's at Ayer (including NS and B&E traffic) and Lawrence.

newpylong wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:05 pm Why would they pay someone to transport bulk water all the way to Framingham via rail to bottle when they can just continue bottling closer to the source? After that it doesn't matter how or where the pallets go it's all finished product.

Because they use tanker trucks to transport the water from Maine to Framingham and bottle it there for office water coolers: https://www.framingham.com/info/manufac ... merica.htm

Well there is an unused track right there.

If you look on Google Maps it's easy to tell that the switch into that industrial area off the Fitchburg Secondary is gone and most of the trackage within is removed or clearly out of service.

I still say short haul tankers from Maine to Poland Springs bulk facility in Framingham.

The water would have to be transloaded from truck to rail in Maine, as no Poland Spring facility is rail-served. Transloading adds expense, complexity and product damage risk (in this case, read contamination). Over a greater distance, the long-haul efficiency of tank car vs container can outweigh those drawbacks, but for a move of a couple hundred miles, it's a tough putt.

For some reason I think they'd need to use stainless steel cars which are not cheap. As Cowford pointed out, I'm guessing contamination is a major concern since transloading would obviously need to be done off-site where the same quality control is impossible.

I would guess that a bottling plant in Massachusetts is going to have higher operating costs than a bottling plant in rural Maine, which would further reduce the cost effectiveness of taking water from the rural Maine source, putting it in tanker trucks, trucking the water to a rail facility, and then railing the water to the Massachusetts bottling plant. It's hard to envision a scenario where that would make sense, even if CSX was willing to haul it from Maine to Massachusetts for free.

Also, I believe PS owns their own tanker trucks, so the entire journey from extraction to bottle is within their hands and they know that the only thing that has been in that tank is Poland Spring water. I strongly doubt they would maintain their own fleet of rail tank cars, not to mention what's the overall market for hauling bulk potable water by rail? Are suitable cars even available if they wanted to try this?

Coors does it with beer.

Silver Bullet by Rail: From Hops to Finished Product, Coors Beer Takes the Train

This article profiles the transportation operations for the Coors Brewing company in Golden, Colorado. It gives an overview of how a fleet of 316 tank cars are used to move batches of beer from the brewing plant in Golden to a second brewery in Memphis, Tennessee, and a packaging plant in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Coors also ships close to 250 boxcars of beer a week in bottles, can, barrels, or kegs for nationwide distribution. The tank beer, however, arrives more quickly than the boxcar shipments. This is due partly to the fact that Coors pays premium rates for the tank-car shipments. Trains are used not only to transport beer out of the brewery, but also to bring in most of Coors’ raw commodities, including rice and barley. Coal used to feed Coors’ on-site power plant arrives by rail as well. While Coors relies on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) to transport its beer nationwide, the article relates that Coors runs its own private railroad for in-plant operations.

https://trid.trb.org/view/778542