CSX Track Upgrades & Infrastructure of Pan Am

jamoldover wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 8:54 am So when's the last time this much new rail was dropped into B&M territory?

It depends on how many miles all of those trains come out to, but I would say this likely tops the cake for actual owner funded projects. Substantial previous projects:

~2015 - Conn River/ Knowledge Corridor rebuild by MassDOT for Amtrak and Passenger service.
~2009 - Pan Am Southern freight main rebuild. NS supplied numerous rail trains that were dropped in the worst areas, mostly curves.
~2000 - Portland Division rebuild for the Downeaster. The whole thing was stick rail before this.
~1980 - 4R Act rebuild of the Fitchburg. 1 track between Mechanicville and Lowell pretty much replaced with welded rail.

No problem! Happy to help and I will try to post my updated rail train list every once in awhile.

There are 2 more Rail Trains out in Ohio for Worcester. They are being loaded this week with 136 and should be on the move east soon. One of the rails trains is the CWRX 400 set which holds 60 rails and the other is the CRWX 100 set which holds 50 rails.

When people say 136RE rail, what does the RE stand for?

My understanding is that the RE (and other designations such as CB along with many others) is a code reference to the engineering specs of the shape that the rail cross section has been milled to.

It may have its origin from AREA (American Railway Engineering Association) who came up with the dimensions. I've seen 107NH rail which is 107lb/yard rail with a cross section of New Haven specs.

It does (come from AREA). Other codes in common use today are AB (AREMA ), PS (Pennsylvania System/PRR), RB (American Railway Association type B), RA (American Railway Association type A), AS (ASCE). Quite a few railroads had their own profiles that were viewed as the best for their needs.

New subdivisions, mile markers and control points confirmed for 1/23. Also they are swapping from NORAC to GCOR (except in T territory)

CN9634 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 18, 2023 5:15 pm New subdivisions, mile markers and control points confirmed for 1/23. Also they are swapping from NORAC to GCOR (except in T territory)

Details, details, details.... (please)?

GCOR and not CSX rules?

Details Monday. I’ll clarify too— I was only told they are moving away from NORAC, I made the assumption to GCOR

It's supposed to CSX rules it would be really odd to move to GCOR.

There you have it… guess I thought they were on GCOR so my bad.

In any detail, Monday will be a telling day

PAS will likely be GCOR though. Beyond that I got nothing. It will be interesting to see what the changes are.

Interesting.

It might be a hybrid of NORAC-CSX rules. When I hired out nearly 20 years ago it was still NORAC rules on the B&A with a few exceptions, so it was still stop and proceed instead of restricted proceed and having to answer the detectors, they used to say over after the message and then we had to respond to that on the radio. Among other things.

Working limits and temporary speed restrictions were governed by CSX rules however. The old heads hated it because all you had was the same warning sign, nicknamed a "firecracker" for both. Before e-rad and PTC, you could blow a temporary speed restriction with no harm, as long as you didn't derail. I'm not saying that anyone did that on purpose, but it's a lot different if the engineer missed a work limit., so NORAC had them signed differently.

Pan Am being a small railroad, I can see how they could go to CSX rules right away.

Are CSX rules closer to NORAC or GCOR or a blend? I hated Norac. Speed signaling stinks amongst other things.

They're probably closer to GCOR than NORAC, but they're really neither one. They're based on a combination of what were originally SCL rules mixed with B&O/C&O ones. They include versions of signal aspects/indications that match
* SCL practice (what they use as standard)
* B&O/C&O practice
* Conrail (NORAC) practice
The Conrail signal rules were introduced back in 1999 as part of the Conrail integration so that they didn't have to change out all of the signal logic right away.

The copy I have is from 2017 - while I'm sure some things have changed, I suspect a lot hasn't.

JacobKoppel you said Danvers in the Spring, do you have any idea of when the Hillsborough branch might get some TLC? Also, is there any word of expanding customers/extending the line? Monadnock Paper has announced interest in moving their product by rail once again, do you know if there's any progress on that note? That would be difficult since the rail west of Lyndeborough (especially in Bennington) would need to be heavily rehabbed/replaced. It would still be cool to see and I'd give my life savings if CSX can actually get trains that far out again.