The Maine Central Railroad Mountain Division

Adam81980 wrote:I realize that even if this line is reactivated, it will only be a local line since the state's of New Hampshire and Vermont seem to have no interest in rehabilitating their portions of the line?

Not quite. New Hampshire rehabilitated the Mountain Division through Crawford Notch in 1994.

Adam81980 wrote:But theoretically speaking, if the line was rebuilt all the way to its termination point in Vermont, could whichever railroad that starts service on it still interchange with CN or CP railroad's in Vermont, as was done in the past? Or, do those railroads no longer provide service where the Mountain Division use to interchange with them?

I'm almost certain PAR retained trackage at the end in order to prevent exactly this.

Adam81980 wrote:I ask because I'd like to know if interchanging is still technically possible, assuming the line was rehabbed in it's entirety and there were actually customers to make the investment worthwhile? Perhaps in the future, if not currently?

There is no future for bridge line traffic on this route. The lone operator, Conway Scenic, is not a common carrier (if anyone knows otherwise please say so) and not required by law to accept freight. Then of course there's the issue with PAR.

Adam81980 wrote:We all know what a sad excuse Pan Am is as a railroad.

I disagree. For all their faults and failings over the years they've kept the road running, if barely at times. They also took on some really serious labor issues in the 1980s that could have sunk the railroad forever. I'd like to see how they do as the Conn. River restoration moves forward. Everything with this railroad happens in slow motion.That being said their story is written a decade or so at a time. The 2000's were pretty good to them and could have been a lot worse. This was probably the first decade in recent history for the Maine Central and the B&M in which a major branchline was not abandoned.

Adam81980 wrote:Of course, industry isn't what it use to be in Maine in the past, and there isn't as much demand for rail transport.

That would depend on who you are. Small or infrequent shippers with small volumes have had a lot of trouble with PAR in the past and in some cases continue to. On the other hand if you're paying the railroad to run a yard for you with a local running two shifts e.g. Rumford, then it's a whole different story.

Adam81980 wrote:However, I've also heard about existing business in southern Maine who would be interested in using rail, but refrain from doing so because Pan Am is the only provider in their area and they have somewhat of a bad reputation with shippers. Primarily, for not being reliable in their delivery times. This has either turned off potential shippers, or caused previous shippers to turn to trucks. So, apparently there is industry in the area that would be interested in using rail, but resists primarily because their only realistic option is Pan Am?

Dragon Cement is probably the best example of this issue. They were directly quote in a recent news story as indicating that they can't ship via rail to Boston because the service is inconsistent. They ship by barge out of Rockland instead.

Adam81980 wrote:As far as long distance, cross-country shipping is concerned, I have read that during the Mountain Divisions heyday during the 1970's, cross country shipments from Maine to to all points in the USA/Mexico, via Chicago, had a significantly faster transit time as opposed to going south to Deerfield, then west to New York state and then connecting onwards? If I'm not mistaken, I've heard a shipment from Maine use to be able to reach the railyards in Chicago 2-3 days faster by using Mountain Division and interchanging in Vermont, than by taking the southern route?

This certainly seems possible. I'll defer to more knowledgeable and experienced members.

Adam81980 wrote:I guess I'm just curious if this kind of operation would even still be possible in 2011, assuming there were actual customers to use the line? If so, would it not be possible that in the future this line could be used for cross-country shipments again? Would the line have more potential if it didn't terminate in Freyburg? That is assuming a railroad other than Pan Am operated the line, giving shippers another more reliable option to use rail? Could this attract businesses that are interested in using rail, but refrain from doing so because their only option is Pan Am at current time?

No for all of the above reasons.

Adam81980 wrote:While I have serious doubts about the feasibility of this line reactivated for local traffic only, I do wonder if it could have potential for long distance shipping?

At this point local is the only hope for any kind of renewed freight activity on the Mountain.

Adam81980 wrote:A lot of the propane consumed in Maine comes from Canada via rail. I'm sure companies like Poland Spring and others ship a lot of product to market, which is currently being shipped by truck? What about forest products, or container traffic coming into the Port of Portland by ship that is then being trucked to it's final destinations? ( I know Jotul stoves, a liquor importer/exporter, scrap steel, coal & wood products have shipped from the Port of Portland in the not so distant past. I also regularly see semi's headed south on I-95 hauling CSX containers) What about new cars coming from Chicago, Detroit, or Mexico that currently come to Massachusetts by rail?

Generally, Ship-Rail-Truck isn't economically viable for distances under 500 miles. Container service to Portland doesn't exist right now but there is a proposal for a restart soon. The biggest incoming product to Portland is oil. All of this is trucked locally and therefore also economically unviable by rail. The semis headed south with CSX containers are likely headed for CSX's rail heads in the Boston area. That type of trip distance is more or less typical for U.S. intermodal. Autoracks to Maine would be inefficient due to low volume. Closest you're going to get for now is PAR in Ayer.

Adam81980 wrote:And what about Sappi paper in Westbrook? Don't they ship internationally? Currently sending shipments by truck to ports in Boston and New York? What was their reason for almost abandoning rail shipments from Westbrook? Did it have anything to do with service problems using Pan Am? I do know they've recently been receiving small shipment by rail to the Westbrook plant via the Mountain Division after a long period of time when they weren't using rail at all. Although, I think only inbound shipments? I have been hearing reports of trains coming into the Westbrook mill. I've seen where recent trains have plowed through the snow at the grade cross just short of the spur to the mill. The long rusted rails have also shown signs of recent use.

Pretty sure they do ship internationally. This would lend strength to intermodal solutions that might cut out the local rail leg and skip over to an intermodal terminal or a shipping pier. Pretty sure the economic slowdown had a lot to do with the rail traffic coming to a halt. They may have done a partial shutdown at one point. I know I drove by there sometime last year and noticed that the plant looked as if it was almost dormant.

Adam81980 wrote:So, would somebody please educate me as to why or why not this line could/couldn't again be used for cross country transport, assuming it was active all the way to Vermont? For sake of discussion, let's not bring up the millions of dollars it would cost to do this. Let's just assume the line was active in it's entirety and it was an option to ship westbound. Would it make sense?

Even if the line were active in its enteirity there are other lines with more traffic and greater efficiencies as a result that would make more sense. These 'other' lines also have lower maintenance costs and are more fuel efficient due to lower grade profiles between endpoints. The Mountain Division as a line for bridge traffic only made sense while the Maine Central and the Boston & Maine were competitors. Once they came under the same roof and their parent company had bought the D&H it no longer made any sense at all to keep the Mountain open.

That's the odd thing about the premise for this entire project. Everyone involved is proposing the Mountain as a viable entity based on new local traffic materializing. Under the old model this idea would have been laughable as the Mountain barely had any originating traffic at all, especially towards the end. It really is strange to think that things have changed so much that suddenly shippers are interested in rail where before they could hardly be bothered. I'm not convinced this is outside the realm of possibility. I am however dubious that there will be sufficient freight traffic (if any) to really justify rehabilitation and reactivation. I will be happy to be proven wrong.

Gokeefe,

Thank you for your perspective on my questions! That answered a lot of them. I was unaware of the PAR issues up-line that could interfere with any development of the line extending westward.

Around what time period did the line no longer make sense to operate? I'm aware it was abandoned in 1983/84, in favor of the southern route. However, I've also heard the line was in it's heyday during the 1970's, and freight volume peaked then? Most of the photos I can find from trains on the line were taken during the 1970's and the trains looked to be of good length? At what point between the 1970's and mid-80's did the line stop making economic sense to operate? When did the customers disappear, if there were 45 existing along the line, with 16 originating in Windham? Did they disappear before the line was abandoned, or after? If before, did that play into the decision to abandon the line?

Adam81980 wrote:Gokeefe,

Thank you for your perspective on my questions! That answered a lot of them. I was unaware of the PAR issues up-line that could interfere with any development of the line extending westward.

Around what time period did the line no longer make sense to operate? I'm aware it was abandoned in 1983/84, in favor of the southern route. However, I've also heard the line was in it's heyday during the 1970's, and freight volume peaked then? Most of the photos I can find from trains on the line were taken during the 1970's and the trains looked to be of good length? At what point between the 1970's and mid-80's did the line stop making economic sense to operate? When did the customers disappear, if there were 45 existing along the line, with 16 originating in Windham? Did they disappear before the line was abandoned, or after? If before, did that play into the decision to abandon the line?

I'm pretty close to the limit of my knowledge on Mountain Division operations however the point to be emphasized is that the line was made redundant by the purchase of the D&H with its connections to CP in 1984. As such at that point it 'no longer made sense to operate'. The line was redundant to the southern route and cost more to operate over. Keep in mind your reference to peaks in freight volume, although likely correct, is almost entirely bridge traffic. I'm not sure about '45 existing along the line, with 16 originating in Windham' in terms of when that was but by the end there was nowhere near that number of customers originating freight along the line. I'm pretty confident most of the originating traffic disappeared prior to the end of service. My impression is that the lack of originating traffic really wasn't an issue for the Maine Central, as long as it was competing with the Boston & Maine. This was their most profitable bridge line to the outside world and they were going to use it regardless of other factors such as cost of operation, maintenance or lack of local traffic. It was profitable to them because they got the maximum line haul mileage off the line for traffic heading west.

The reference to 45 Maine businesses shipping on the Mountain Division is from the 1975 State of Maine Rail Transportation Plan, a copy of which can be found in the Maine room at the Portland Public Library. The plan includes an inventory of track conditions and customer base for every active rail line in the state at that time. You can also find there the papers of the Portland and Ogdensburg railroad. None of the items in the Maine room can be checked out. I spent a couple of riveting afternoons there last summer.

With respect to Mountain Division freight peaking in the 1970s, I don't have tonnage figures but at that point there was only one Portland-St. Johnsbury freight a day versus two a day in the 1950s and into the early 1960s. There was certainly some local business in those days, but most of the traffic through Crawford Notch was headed for the CP interchange.

With respect to faster transit to Chicago, during the 1970s both the B&M and Penn Central were bankrupt and in rough shape. It would not surprise me that the MEC-CP routing out of Maine via St. Johnsbury was faster at that time given the track conditions that existed during that period (but which are completely different today).

Finally, as Mr. O'Keefe has written, what killed the line in the 1980s was the Guilford organization's decision to reroute CP interchange traffic via Mechanicville and the D&H. It had nothing to do, at the immediate time, with a dropoff in business as such.

Further to QB's transload comments, to my knowledge, three Mountain "customers" are using/possibly using rail indirectly: LPG in N Conway (possibly over Auburn); steel over NHN to Fryeburg, and a wood products company (in Baldwin?) that ships an occasional intermodal box. It's highly unlikely any would use this line.

While interesting from an historic perspective, "active" customers 30+ years ago is irrelevant. It prompts the smarta*# comment, "...and your point is?" For one thing, discussing their mere existence implies that they were all active. Outside of the occasional grain car spotted in Steep Falls, there was virtually zero active on-line business on the line in Maine west of Westbrook. (LPG in Windham may have been active - that I don't recall). As recently as a few years ago, I recall MMA stating that they served on the order of 300 customers.

GO'K, what potential shipper support are you referring to? The state submitted not one letter of shipper support in their 2009 TIGER grant application.

Cowford wrote:GO'K, what potential shipper support are you referring to? The state submitted not one letter of shipper support in their 2009 TIGER grant application.

The wood pellet mill that keeps coming up. I'm not saying I think it will work out with them just that they have been mentioned before.

That's true. The skeptical side of me (which of course is my dominant side) tells me that those guys are either naive regarding rail or fishing for something with government bodies.

Cowford wrote:That's true. The skeptical side of me (which of course is my dominant side) tells me that those guys are either naive regarding rail or fishing for something with government bodies.

Honestly, that's kind of what I keep wondering. Has anyone really discussed possible tariffs with them? If so who? And also how did they get the impression that rail could be cheaper than road for short-hauls down to Portland?

gokeefe wrote:

Cowford wrote:That's true. The skeptical side of me (which of course is my dominant side) tells me that those guys are either naive regarding rail or fishing for something with government bodies.

Honestly, that's kind of what I keep wondering. Has anyone really discussed possible tariffs with them? If so who? And also how did they get the impression that rail could be cheaper than road for short-hauls down to Portland?

I'm completely clueless about rail freight rates and rate structures, so I'll ask the question: absent special rate subsidies from the state, what might it cost to ship a boxcar of palletized wood pellets from the area west of Sebago Lake to the Merrill-Sprague Cargo Terminal in Portland? What's likely to be the cost to ship the equivalent amount by semi? Finally, other than simply propping the whole operation up with a bottomless pile of tax dollars, how can heavy freight rail be made cheaper to run?

Something that occurred to me while writing this was a possible underlying rationale for the whole Mountain Division rehab project. I am sure that the state would like to see growth in employment opportunities in what I'll call the Map 4 Area: the area west of Sebago Lake, from Limerick to Fryeburg and running west to the NH border, corresponding to the area covered by Map 4 of DeLorme's Maine Atlas and exactly the area served by the Mountain Division. If the starting point of the conversation is "How do we enable new substantial employers to locate in the Map 4 area without putting additional truck traffic on the 113/25 corridor," using the rail line looks obvious, at least at first glance.

markhb wrote:

gokeefe wrote:

Cowford wrote:That's true. The skeptical side of me (which of course is my dominant side) tells me that those guys are either naive regarding rail or fishing for something with government bodies.

Honestly, that's kind of what I keep wondering. Has anyone really discussed possible tariffs with them? If so who? And also how did they get the impression that rail could be cheaper than road for short-hauls down to Portland?

I'm completely clueless about rail freight rates and rate structures, so I'll ask the question: absent special rate subsidies from the state, what might it cost to ship a boxcar of palletized wood pellets from the area west of Sebago Lake to the Merrill-Sprague Cargo Terminal in Portland? What's likely to be the cost to ship the equivalent amount by semi? Finally, other than simply propping the whole operation up with a bottomless pile of tax dollars, how can heavy freight rail be made cheaper to run?

Something that occurred to me while writing this was a possible underlying rationale for the whole Mountain Division rehab project. I am sure that the state would like to see growth in employment opportunities in what I'll call the Map 4 Area: the area west of Sebago Lake, from Limerick to Fryeburg and running west to the NH border, corresponding to the area covered by Map 4 of DeLorme's Maine Atlas and exactly the area served by the Mountain Division. If the starting point of the conversation is "How do we enable new substantial employers to locate in the Map 4 area without putting additional truck traffic on the 113/25 corridor," using the rail line looks obvious, at least at first glance.

Mark,

I think that's exactly what they are hoping. However, you'll notice that the St. Lawrence and Atlantic is already nearby. Why would anyone not want to relocate and use their facilities? To date no one has made any kind of case that the Mountain Division would have some kind of intrinsic advantage over the SLR for businesses that are new to the area. I think the real focus for the potential local shippers is on gaining access to freight rail services without having to relocate.

The Press Herald has already posted Saturday's Letters to the Editor, and the first two are opposed to the Mountain Division project.

So far as why a business would choose the Mountain Division over the SLR, if the actual goal of the overall project is economic development in Map 4, a goal that can't be met by the SLR because it doesn't go there, then maybe the state would provide a Pine Tree / Enterprise Zone to sweeten the pot. This is all supposition / blind guessing / making stuff up on my part as I try to find the prism through which the project makes sense.

markhb
This is all supposition / blind guessing / making stuff up on my part

I think you'd fit right in with the supporters. :o)

Just because it is restoring rail doesn't mean it is right.

"...what might it cost to ship a boxcar of palletized wood pellets from the area west of Sebago Lake to the Merrill-Sprague Cargo Terminal in Portland? What's likely to be the cost to ship the equivalent amount by semi? Finally, other than simply propping the whole operation up with a bottomless pile of tax dollars, how can heavy freight rail be made cheaper to run?"

Mark, to address your questions...

1. Rail cost - hard to say, as many factors are unkown. Some things that are "more known" than others: car cost - assume you'll use a crappy old 50-ft, 70-ton boxcar and you can load to capacity. Pellets are seaonal, but let's assume they flow evenly, year 'round... and you'll get three loads per car-month. (highly optimistic). The boxcar will cost about $400/month all-in, so that's $130/load. PAR serves the waterfront, so they'll charge a switch. Let's say that's $350. (That may sound like a lot, but switch charges can run over $500/car.) Now how much the short line serving Sebago Lake would charge is a true unknown, but it would surely be no less than $500/car. Add it up: That's $980/car, or $14/ton.

2. Truck cost (dry van, 24 tons) - I'd guesstimate about $200-250, or ~$8-10/ton.

Now you can mitigate rail cost by going to a 100-ton car... in Maine, the trucker can also play this game by using a tri-axle trailer, thereby increasing the truck payload to 32 tons.

3. Make rail cheaper? To steal from rail track maintenance humor*, it's all about three things: Volume, volume, and volume. Being primarily a fixed cost beast, rail thrives on economies of scale. More tons in a car, more cars on a train, more trains on a line...

* Three most important aspects of track maintenance: drainage, drainage, and drainage.