CSX Conductor wrote:I believe that's PR2 or PR3, can't remember. When I lived in the area a few years ago I would see them 2 or 3 days a week down there. I believe they go on alternating days. The plastic plant you mentioned was probably Technor-Apex. Further down the street there were a couple of other sidings across the street. One of them was Key Container, but I'm uncertain of the others. They would also service State Line Scrap on their way over, but you probably couldn't watch that move as it's not near the street.
The same local job services the industrial park on Dexter Rd. in East Providence which includes an Anhydrous Ammonia depot and TLA Pond View, who load gondolas of Construction & Demolition waste and generate a lot of outbound traffic. They are busy enough that they operate their own trackmobile. From there the job runs up the line into Rumford where there is a Gold Metal Bakery plant that receives flour in covered hoppers, then another injection molding (plastics) plant just over the EP/Pawtucket line. P&W reactivated a couple of additional miles of this line about 10 years ago to serve a Steel fabricator located off of RT.152 in Rehoboth, but I'm not sure if they are still in business.
The photo ops in EP aren't what they were even a few years ago as P&W just in the last year or so lifted close to a mile of track that used to extend all the way down under the RT.195 overpass to the Providence River oil terminal (and actually was the ramaining trackage of the Providence, Warren & Bristol electric interurban and New Haven/Penn Centrals branch to Bristol). They built a short,new stretch of connecting track that runs from Dexter St. east to connect with the Rumford branch. I miss seeing them switching down at the bottom of my street (Waterman Ave. in EP)..
I was walking around the area over the weekend and imagining what the rail traffic would be like if P&W had built the bulk terminal on the water in East Providence that they had proposed, as well as if the coal fired Newbay power plant project proposed for the industrial park on Dexter st. had gone forward. I believe they even talked about a small container port on the River...................