container facility in southie

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

Thanks F-line!
I'm not going to go back through point-by-point, but that answers a lot of the questions I had (and a few I didn't know I had to boot!)
So it would be far more likely based on operational/logistical needs for singles to run to Readville or Framingham to be sorted into DS trains to head South/West from there.

More likely exactly what they do today. Singles to Framingham to be sorted in the correct order (or start doing that at Readville if Framingham's overloaded), then off to Worcester where the cranes systematically drop the second stack on top. They do it that way because CSX deems that the maximally efficient way to serve New England.

Something big would have to change about the very foundation of Eastern MA freight for there to be any reason to move the stacking further inbound. Which is why that one gets filed under "century-level needs are impossible to predict". I mean...it happened once with the postwar decline in Greater Boston freight, so you can't rule it physically impossible that something equally unforeseen would swing the opposite direction. But that's well out-of-range of any means of prediction. We've got a pretty good handle on what the dynamics and relative ceiling for local freight are going to be at the 25-year level, and it's nearly improbable that it'll involve double stacks needing to venture inside I-495 much less inside Route 128.

[QB 52.32]

Thanks F-line!
I'm not going to go back through point-by-point, but that answers a lot of the questions I had (and a few I didn't know I had to boot!)
So it would be far more likely based on operational/logistical needs for singles to run to Readville or Framingham to be sorted into DS trains to head South/West from there.

More likely exactly what they do today. Singles to Framingham to be sorted in the correct order (or start doing that at Readville if Framingham's overloaded), then off to Worcester where the cranes systematically drop the second stack on top. They do it that way because CSX deems that the maximally efficient way to serve New England.

Besides the economics and logistics which would drive demand for rail-oriented international container traffic generated via Boston in the first place or the physical characteristics in providing direct rail service there's the operational considerations. And, in this case they're not that simple and comparable to existing carload operations, impacting both cost and service.

First, and probably most simple to solve, is how you would move intermodal traffic between Worcester and Framingham. From there, there's flatcar management and storage for saw-toothe demand oriented around ship sailings which likely would drive switching needs. Then, given traffic distribution with relatively low volume and 5- and 3-platform equipment, not to mention the requirements of blending into Worcester's existing operation, a simple "pull-'em-into-Worcester-and-throw-the-second-level-on" won't be the case driving both switching and rehandling (with 2 additonal lifts) needs for some portion of the traffic, if not for the entirety given how Worcester would "set the table" on any given day for their outbound operation.

It's these kinds of operational issues and resulting cost and service implications which drove railroads to adopt large-scale intermodal terminal hubs supported by efficient and well-managed trucking in the first place back in the 1980's. And, no doubt this would frame CSX's position were anything to come of this.