"Up North" Gawking (District 1 sightings)

That will help the crews that have been pushed west.

WA-3 Sun-Thur 1400
WA-4 Tue-Sat 0300
MA-1 Mon-Fri 1900
MA-2 Sun-Thur 2200

If I read that right thats 2 trains each way a day?

newpylong wrote:WA-3 Sun-Thur 1400
WA-4 Tue-Sat 0300
MA-1 Mon-Fri 1900
MA-2 Sun-Thur 2200

So,
I'm assuming (yes I know...) that WA-3/4 will replace the current crew/job NMWA/WANM. And will likely run to either NMJ or Old Town before either cabbing to home/hotel. and the MA-1/2 crews will run 'Keag to OT or NMJ before cabbing home/hotel. Which means that, from a railfans perspective, the schedule pretty much sucks since everything east of Old Town will be nocturnal.

pnolette wrote:If I read that right thats 2 trains each way a day?

Likely not, one train each way each day. Crew change halfway. One crew will haul up/down to OT/NMJ, hotel and haul back the next day, meeting the opposing train/crew from their terminal on their run out. And running basically 5 days/week, but with staggered crew starts so trains will move 6 days but only 5 round trips...

No as I said earlier they are all turn jobs and locals don't typically take rest. Likely to swap trains somewhere in middle.

Per the on duty times there would be two trains a day but my guess is until track speeds are up, they likely will protect the previous job and rarely run two a day.

There are currently 2 crews on WANM/NMWA, so WA-3/4 should replace those. So its really only 2 new crews, MA-1/2. The 'Keag crews should cover the NMJ/OT-Keag section. OD times are staggered 8 hours, WA-3 at 14:00/MA-2 at 22:00 and MA-1 at 19:00/WA-4 at 03:00, so the second crews are almost certainly intended to recrew as it's impossible to round trip Waterville-NMJ or Waterville-Old Town. Running time says you could round trip 'Keag-Old Town, but that doesn't take into account working either NMJ or Old Town or doing their switching at 'Keag. 1 train a day/each way/5 round trips/week, unless they are going to be calling 2-4 crews/day off the spare board to cover canned trains or can boost speeds to 25.

Crew onboard at at old town as of 745, ready to head east with old ties and empty scrap cars from the bucksport project.

Why is this change happening?

I'm assuming that Pan Am is unsatisfied with revenues on their haulage agreement with CMQ.

11/4/16, 12:30 pm, pan am 3401 and 614 with 10 cars-[u]49 containers[/u]- passed the Mountain Division heading east.
S

WOW. Interesting. Poland Spring has been bottling more out of Kingfield this year because of drought concerns in Southern Maine. I wonder if this is an indication that they are shifting more traffic out of Waterville as well.

This should be all the containers needed this weekend. Instead of bringing them back on three POWA's, they all came back on one.

I wondered if that was what was going on. Interesting that they can't turn at least one set of containers fast enough to decrease the size of the equipment pool.

Oh, I neglected to mention that this train consisted entirely of containers.
S

gokeefe wrote:Interesting that they can't turn at least one set of containers fast enough to decrease the size of the equipment pool.

Turns out a derailment blocking the tracks means that you can't send them through like normal.

gokeefe wrote:Why is this change happening?

I'm assuming that Pan Am is unsatisfied with revenues on their haulage agreement with CMQ.

This topic has been beaten to death. See here -> viewtopic.php?f=55&t=68094&start=360" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; second post from the bottom, and read to the end of page 28. Or reread 93-95 of this thread. Myself and others have offered several opinions on the matter. Some discussion in the PAS thread too, if memory serves.

gokeefe wrote:I wondered if that was what was going on. Interesting that they can't turn at least one set of containers fast enough to decrease the size of the equipment pool.

In this case some issues delayed the return. But right now I doubt they are too concerned with container equipment pool turn around to Maine. The pool of equipment in this service should be growing substantially in the coming weeks, so they aren't about to try and force a quick turn to cut 15 containers from the pool right now.