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  • CSX Acquisition of Pan Am Railways

  • Guilford Rail System changed its name to Pan Am Railways in 2006. Discussion relating to the current operations of the Boston & Maine, the Maine Central, and the Springfield Terminal railroads (as well as the Delaware & Hudson while it was under Guilford control until 1988). Official site can be found here: PANAMRAILWAYS.COM.
Guilford Rail System changed its name to Pan Am Railways in 2006. Discussion relating to the current operations of the Boston & Maine, the Maine Central, and the Springfield Terminal railroads (as well as the Delaware & Hudson while it was under Guilford control until 1988). Official site can be found here: PANAMRAILWAYS.COM.

Moderator: MEC407

 #1618916  by jamoldover
 
There's no rule that dispatching territories have to be contiguous, and it certainly wouldn't be the only instance on CSX where that was the case. It also may be an effort to more equally balance the workload between D1 and D2 (since D2 has to handle all of the MBTA activity between Lowell-Bleachery and between Lowell Jct-Haverhill).

The only thing that makes it "odd" is the idea that D1 and D2 are geographic regions. If you just think of them as "Dispatcher 1" and "Dispatcher 2", it's not so odd sounding.
 #1618917  by F74265A
 
I know there is no rule but the fact that a train in the course of a few hours will travel from D1 to D2 and then back to D1 is just weird
 #1618932  by neman2
 
So this makes the present day ST District 3 dispatcher's territory the future Berkshire & Eastern dispatcher territory, correct?
 #1618990  by ST377
 
It also makes life a little easier for D3. It's not as busy as it used to be (on a third shift you could see a as many as dozen freights), but that desk has a lot of railroad to dispatch, not to mention dealing with several interchange partners (VTR, CP, P&W, BKRR, NECR, CSX at RJ). Toss in weaving freight traffic through commuter territory and its a party every day.
 #1619028  by johnpbarlow
 
Was this video posted before - Q&A with David Fink from the 2023 TIDC New England Railroad Symposium Keynote from February 16, 2023. A number of Maine RR issues (many specific to PAR) are discussed.

https://youtu.be/9EJy0kdXEAs

I have to include a screen grab of Fink's closng remarks...
Attachments:
David Fink TIDC Poland Springs.JPG
David Fink TIDC Poland Springs.JPG (66.35 KiB) Viewed 1772 times
Last edited by johnpbarlow on Mon Mar 27, 2023 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
 #1619046  by jaymac
 
To hear some people describe it, the Guilford era -- even with a few minor hiccups like the strikes and resisting NNEPRA and shedding routes and shedding people -- was all sunshine and roses.
YouTube offers up links to a bunch of other interesting viewing post the Fink one.
 #1619047  by A215
 
ST377 wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 4:48 pm Few minor changes to dispatching. Boiling it down to extreme basics - D1 to 185 and adding the Worcester Main Line, D2 185 to 312 and adding the Brunswick.
The general idea of breaking it up like this was to keep window trains exclusive to D2, and remove them from D1. Not sure why they felt that was needed. To confuse thing further the actual radio channels did not change. So D1 answers on B&M road for Worcester, while D2 is answering on MEC road east of 199. There is talk in the future they'll just combine everything into a single district as well but for now that's just an idea floating around.
 #1619078  by jamoldover
 
So the radio channels didn't change... To CSX, there's nothing sacred about what radio channel or what geographic area is handled by what dispatcher. When they did away with the NA dispatching desk (that used to handle Boston-Springfield, and the various branches in eastern MA) after selling off the lines east of Worcester to the state, and assigned the Worcester-Springfield portion to the NB desk, they didn't change the radio frequencies there, either. Changing radio frequencies is a significant hassle - not only do you need to get a new license from the FCC, but you also need to make changes across the entire infrastructure. Why do you think CSX still uses all of the ex-Conrail frequencies 25 years+ later? It's a lot simpler to make a change on the dispatching end (in terms of what radio channel goes to what desk) than it is to change radios in the field.

I don't expect the legacy Pan Am radio frequencies to change significantly for a long time. You might find their use changing, but the transmission equipment represents a significant investment that they're not going to start changing around any time soon.
 #1619158  by CPF363
 
CSX uses the former Conrail road channel of 160.800MHz on the B&A but also uses 160.680MHz on what was the former "NA" Dispatcher portion and 160.560MHz on what was the former "NB" Dispatcher.
 #1619261  by markhb
 
I know there was a post with the new mileposts, etc.... Can that be pinned somewhere? I realize the recent discussion used the PAR numbering.
 #1619302  by jamoldover
 
The short version (if I recall correctly) is this:
Freight Main Line is being split up into two subdivisions:
  • Waterville SD - FML MP 0-185. Milepost numbers unchanged
  • Portland SD - FML 185-312. Milepost numbers start again at 0 (old 185) and run to 127
Mileposts on the Brunswick Branch will start from 1 at the Brunswick end, and will increase as they go toward Royal Jct (opposite from how they are now).

Mileposts on the former Worcester Main Line (renamed as the Worcester SD) will start from 1 near the division post with PAS/B&E and increase as they head toward Worcester.

I believe everything else is staying numbered as it is currently.

Most of the "CPF" interlockings will get renamed to either old station names for the location or a nearby feature. It will be interesting to see how that gets handled in MBTA territory.

Joshua
 #1619310  by newpylong
 
It used to be fun to screw with the newer dispatchers who only knew the control point or mile marker numbers and not the station names. The names were much better.
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