East Deerfield Gawking

[atholrail]

Today's plan was to spend a few hours at EDY, and see what I could find. Well upon driving 1/2 mile from my doorstep, I came across 206 waiting on a recrew at CPF 363, and a canned POED also at CPF 363. 206 had NS 8874, 9505, 9015, 9756 and a big train of 51 loaded racks, with 3 wells on the tail end. They were recrewed and eastbound around 1015. POED had it's crew depart in a taxi. They had 604, 616, 612, 614 and a monster train of 115 + cars that streached east of the Chestnut Hill bridge. After 206 departed I headed for EDY. All was quiet except for ED1 working the east end with 77, 406, and ED2 working the west end with 350. I then headed for East Portal to catch RJED. They came out of the tunnel alittle before 1300 with the 307, 518, 601 and 68 cars. They arrived at EDY about 1500, and put their train on R3 and relief to R1. EDPL power was on the ready with 352, 351, also ED190's power was on the ready with 312, 348. Here's acouple pic's from the RJED chase...

[MEC407]

My goodness... that is a positively stunning photo of 307 exiting the tunnel in the pouring rain. Nicely done, sir!

[jaymac]

A 09-19-2013 pre-1000 drive-by showed that the once-proud Tie City had devolved into Tie Hamlet. 3105 -- by radio -- was in the yard. The fog was still heavy, so no idea if it was solo or married or within 100 yards of me. There were a few cars at Millers on the PAS side of the crossing. Other than that and at that time, the crickets were the ruling sound.

[atholrail]

An RJED chase lead me to Deerfield, and at 1540 RJED came into the yard for R2. NS 3491, MEC 615, NS 3482 and 59 cars outlawed at 1600, so they had just enough time to get to the east end and can. Then the problem of getting the now outlawed crew from the east end to the west end commenced. Since the company van was just leaving to get EDMO's crew, the trainmaster had ED2 abort their Allstate work, and run light to the east end to grab RJED's crew and power and hustle it back to the west end. BM 332 was the power for ED2. 205 had yarded their train right before RJED's arrival and the power was already serviced by 1630, with a fresh recrew waiting. There were racks on what looked like 4 tracks in the R yard. R8, R5, R4, seemed like all empty racks, with R1 holding lastnight's 190ED with racks and generals mixed in. Not sure how many empties 205 would take west with them, but NS 6802, 8786, 9583 were getting dailyed and I didn't want to stick around and wait.

[atholrail]

Few hours at Deerfield this evening proved fruitful. At 2140 22K went by on the main. They had NS 9876, 7611, 9729 and 89, mostly wells. After they cleared CPF 384, it was EDRJ's turn. They departed at 2155 with 600, 518 leading 41 westbound.
Next, EDPL asked D3 for permission to head south. At 2230 EDPL departed with 352, 351 and 13 generals, 5 T/COFC loads, and 5 T/COFC empties. ED6 was working the hump with 353, 406, and were to go out to Montague/CPF 381 to bring in POED. 205 was nearing Deerfield at 2330 with NS 9779, 7712, 7677 and 33 empty racks.

[atholrail]

EDBF will run tonight. 406, 348 push/pull and 12 cars.

EDMO should have the 608, NS 3467. At least 4 spine loads in the train.

Hump power is the 606, 353.

[atholrail]

Have not had a chance to upload these till now. Here's a couple shots from my last ED report.

[MEC407]

My goodness... that is a positively stunning photo of 307 exiting the tunnel in the pouring rain. Nicely done, sir!

And by the way, that shot is definitely magazine or calendar material. Not sure if PAR is still accepting submissions for their 2014 calendar, but if they are, you should send it in!

[newpylong]

Nice. Looks like 3W is being used for Claremont Gas?

[atholrail]

Some stuff from today. EDPO was out early this morning around 0545 with 509, 612, 611 and 39 cars. None of the 39 looked like Rigbys. POED arrived around 0800 at CPF 383. Had to wait for the hump to clear a track for them. That didn't happen soon enough, and they ran out of time. ED190 recrewed the train and brought 614, 601 and 85 onto R5 around 1100. That didn't happen as planned also, as a car toward the tail end went on the ground at the east end. While this was going on ED2 was departing. They had the 77, 350 and 21 cars. After yarding the POED, the 190 crew kept the power 601, 614 and with an assist by AD1, backed their ED190 train out at the west end at CPF 384. They headed east aound 1300 with around 50 cars. Next AD1 got their train tested up and departed about 1550 with 38 cars. The head 13 being company hoppers and gondolas. Next in line was EDBF. They had the 307, 337 and 8 gas loads and 1 spacer. They departed about 1630.

[atholrail]

Couple shot's from around the yard yesterday..

[jaymac]

The pre-dawn ~0630/01-172014 arrival gave the line-up for EDRJ -- 3497, 619, and 7482 -- assuming I heard correctly. A bit later, POED pulled into town NewBlue 608, OldGreen 7014, NewBlue 609, and OldPaint 314. It was hand-lined for the Greenfield Runner, made a cut on R-3, hauled west, and then shoved back on R-5. There was some visual interest in the cars that went to R-5 -- 3 Smurf boxes and a dozen or so center-beam loads of wrapped building supplies. It was still a bit too dark and the bike-path parking lot is a bit too distant to have gotten a good read on the shipper(s). Beside the audio report on EDRJ, it looked like there might be something southbound for the Conn River, but nothing was discussed while I was in range, including EDRJ.
There look to be a goodly number of bridge/switch-tie bundles still by the old tower.

[gokeefe]

I noticed that one of the pictures shows a switch either being replaced or installed.

Does Pan Am have any plans to increase capacity or make improvements at the yard?

[newpylong]

They were supposed to rebuild the whole yard a few years ago, it never happened. No plans to increase capacity as it isn't needed. They just need to keep all the tracks in service and the cars on the rails and not in the dirt. It's a PITA to work on yard tracks because you need to take 3 tracks out of service, the one you're working on and the two adjacent tracks.

[atholrail]

Jammed. That's what I got out of a Deerfield visit today. 495ED dropped at Lake Pleasent, 190ED backed in at Montague, RJED on the Greenfield runner, MOED at Buckland, the yard having no place to put these jobs, and another RJED coming in tonight with 70 cars. Also, lots of LPG cars. Numerous strings in the w and r yards, along with the heavily occupied LPG RJED on the runner.

Here's a couple shots I got of what was moving...