"oibu wrote:
MMA is regularly operating 100 car trains from the north (100-101) and the NMJ turn is still running at +/- 30 cars despite the loss of the chip traffic to Lagrange with the closing of the GP mill last year. "
"What the heck are they handling from the North that has them running that many cars? Is there really that much Lumber, Paper and Log/Chip traffic left? I know they had long trains way back in the day when they were supplying alot of logs and chips to the Paper mills (i.e. Old Town, Jay, etc) on the MEC, but thought that was ancient history. That is very surprising to say the least.."
Actually, I didn't write that.
But in any event, when you add up the output of the sveral lumber mills and log loadouts and chip loaders on the Ahsland Branch, Fraser at Madawaska, the various small-medium shippers on the branches out of Squa Pan, and a few other random cars here and there, and it seems plausible that by the time Millinocket is reached they could have 100 cars collected up pretty regularly. I don't know exactly, but even just figuring 20-30 chip loads, 10 or so log loads, 10-15 lumber loads, 15 various cars picked up at Squa Pan, and 10 cars from Fraser (bearing in mind a lot- most?- of the Fraser-related traffic comes in and out via INR Jct.), that's a 65-85 car train. Those numbers as I said are just rough estimates, based on the shippers I know of and the cars/activity I've seen, some may be a little high or a little low, and of course it varies day to day.... but still, you get the picture.