"Up North" Gawking (District 1 sightings)

No, not back in daily service yet.

Not much really, Irving did some contract tie work. Not sure how far they made it, maybe half way to Old Town from 'Keag, didn't do a heavy density job either.

Fact of the matter is, the line is fine for 10mph operations as it was. The problems always come in the spring when the ground softens up and the lack of ballast makes itself known.

It will be very interesting to see what CSX's plans are for that portion of the line north of Bangor, as in what the speeds will be brought up to, will they lay CWR, etc.

I would imagine at the very least CSX will put up the matching money for the Pine Tree Corridor grant Pan Am was recently awarded. That included some pretty serious amounts of CWR. I doubt Pan Am will pony up the matching funds before the sale closes.

The whole line needs 100% of the rail replaced from what I've seen. Ties not far behind on the 100% replacement.

Plus who-knows-how-many thousands of tons of ballast

Basically there is very little of the line that doesn't need to replaced in order to bring it up to what CSX would consider to be acceptable mainline conditions. The roadbed itself is shot in many places, beyond just dumping ballast and tamping and surfacing that.

It also depends on how CSX decides each line is classified. A bunch of Western Maryland lines for instance branching out of Hagerstown, MD were basically secondary or branch line status, even though they saw regular heavy freights (2-4 trains a day in some instances) and were good for 10MPH or 25MPH. Even the line from Hagerstown to Chambersburg after they built the large intermodal terminal there in 2009 was 10MPH for most of the journey hosting daily pairs of long intermodals and local manifest traffic. The Gettysburg line which was secondary status always interested me as it saw regular heavy freights but was really no better than Pan Am's existing D1, in fact it was basically just old relay jointed rail.

I guess the good thing here is that D1 will probably get designated a primary mainline as far as Waterville, since there are no potential secondary routes, but east of there, I could see it being a branch status until CSX decides there is something worthwhile (or even then maybe they will make it a solid 10 or 25). Only time will tell, but I don't expect there to be a large push for 40MPH past Waterville in the first year or two like we saw with CP taking over CMQ, since the business pressures seem to be a bit different. There is a CSX earnings call this week upcoming, so hopefully some more light is shed as to where things are presently (I'm certain at least one investor will ask)

Today's BDN has an article about the expansion of an asphalt plant in Hermon. $16.5 million will be spent, including a new spur for railcars to deliver product for delivery off of CP.

Not a Pan Am customer, although it will be interesting to see how it affects the nearby Downeast Emulsions. Once Lane's finishes up, they'll be able to take sixteen asphalt tanks at a time, versus the 8 or 10 that Downeast Emulsions can take.

Downeast supplies Sargent, Pike, as well as several smaller contractors like B&B. Sargent and Pike have been competitors with Lane/Northeast Paving for quite sometime, so I can't necessarily see them buying asphalt off of Northeast Paving once the tank is built, so I don't think you will see much of a impact. Lane had previously been buying from Downeast as well as a company in NH. Since 2018 Lane has been owned by Eurovia, and if I were to guess, they will be using their own liquid asphalt like they use for the other paving subsidiaries they have.

I see the Yarmouth-Waterville grant improvements are listing in the DOT work plan for this year. It notes "project only partially funded"

And listed 2022/23 is Thomas Brook RR Bridge rehab in Oakland

Any updates on when Pleasant River Lumber at Enfield will be in service?

With NBSR now running solid fiber trains to SJ, the start-up of CP intermodal service to SJ as well as the likelihood of CSX increasing traffic with the Irving roads, I wonder if the yard at Keag is going to become somewhat of a bottleneck? If there's enough new traffic developed, I wonder if it may make sense for NBSR to operate a second CSX run-through train between there and SJ.

According to Pleasant River's website (see below), it appears that the rail siding at Enfield will be the new transload site for the Dover Foxcroft mill, which I believe is now transloading somewhere on CP, maybe Brownville Jct or Jackman? Certainly makes sense to keep things in house and this could end up being a pretty good customer for ST(CSX).


The company also is building a new log line at the Enfield facility, which will have a rail spur to ship dressed lumber coming from a new planer mill at Dover-Foxcroft and also provide logs via rail to the new log line. Optimization is used extensively at major machine centers at the spruce mills. Adding the two most recent dry kilns at the Hancock mill was part of the company-wide commitment to maximize efficiency at the four mills.

I've noticed a LOT of trains getting left on Track 2 in Portland lately; one leaves only to be replaced a short time later. Is there a lack of capacity at Rigby or is everyone running out of hours? They get dropped there frequently but recently it's a new one every day, which is definitely unusual.