Railroad Forums 

  • Boston area (BO-1)

  • Guilford Rail System changed its name to Pan Am Railways in 2006. Discussion relating to the current operations of the Boston & Maine, the Maine Central, and the Springfield Terminal railroads (as well as the Delaware & Hudson while it was under Guilford control until 1988). Official site can be found here: PANAMRAILWAYS.COM.
Guilford Rail System changed its name to Pan Am Railways in 2006. Discussion relating to the current operations of the Boston & Maine, the Maine Central, and the Springfield Terminal railroads (as well as the Delaware & Hudson while it was under Guilford control until 1988). Official site can be found here: PANAMRAILWAYS.COM.

Moderator: MEC407

 #1385486  by newpylong
 
BostonUrbEx wrote:If PAR serves the produce center, that means the cars are either coming in from CSX at Rotterdam for an eventual drop off EDPO or they're sailing straight to Portland to turn out on POED. Either way, that adds a lot of time. You're looking at one more day at a minimum. The cars could end up dropped in Lowell instead of Lawrence, which could mean an additional day on top of any other issues.

There's no easy solution here. CSX is pretty much stuck with the business unless it wants to outright kill the business. It would almost be easier to orchestrate a relocation of NEPC to somewhere between Worcester and Framingham, but this doesn't pan out because of how many related facilities and support facilities are well-established in NEPC's surroundings. There's an entire industry in Chelsea/Everett thriving off NEPC's location, and in turn, they're also thriving off of their proximity to the city.
Or the more likely option as I mentioned which is via Barbers. RJ is PAS. Barbers is PAR and faster. SEPO would just drop them off with the Ayer block. NS wanted to run their ethanol right down the Fitchburg it's possible if these moves were hot enough Pan Am could do the same at night vs gping around the horn.
 #1385527  by BostonUrbEx
 
There's only a handful of cars. I can't imagine it is worth PAR's while to have a PAR crew report to/make there way to Ayer just for a handful of cars to spot. You'd lose any efficiencies gained by PAR taking over the job.
 #1385544  by newpylong
 
Efficiencies? It would be a given moving the traffic to PAR would be more inefficient than CSX, look at the routing. It would come down to CSX not wanting it anymore and possibly price. if you want to talk about inefficient, how about hauling all of the Boston traffic to Lawrence just to drag it back south?

As for cars - I have seen CSX bring 20 cars into the NEPW warehouse before, haven't been down in a while though so no idea what they are doing for traffic these days. Add in Ciment Quebec, Schnitzer, Salem traffic, and the paperboard and there MAY be a business case for a straight shot down the Fitchburg with all of that traffic. The Lawrence locals would turn at Tighe instead of coming down. Of course there is the issue of room to switch down there.
 #1385547  by GP40MC1118
 
CSX traffic to both customers in Everett is way down. Seems it never recovered from the
Winter of Hell in 2015. Especially the scrap business. PAR getting the lions share now.

D
 #1385964  by fogg1703
 
I haven't seen any reefer traffic to PFS in some time. Im sure Eimskip's departure seriously hurt their business. This was always a CSX switch if I remember.
 #1386051  by Trinnau
 
You guys haven't mentioned an important precedent. When the BU bridge went out PAR already handled this traffic - twice. The first time was more of an emergency, the second they had a chance to plan for. Traffic was blocked on SEPO out of Selkirk and set-off in Lawrence. PAR switched them three times a week - not quite what CSX did, but close. With Glens Falls taking over the cement in Everett (Glens Falls, NY being on the old D&H now CP) and that traffic coming over PAS/R the demand for more service down there could warrant a 5-day job, which would make things better for NEPC. It's always possible CSX would turn their traffic over with the condition it be handled by them to PAR - which as has been mentioned PAR won't mind one bit to keep the black horse out.

Hearing rumors PAR has the upper hand for the Wynn site. Whatever it is it will be temporary, because once that dirty dirt is gone that traffic and siding will disappear - replaced by a casino floor.
 #1387985  by bostontrainguy
 
fogg1703 wrote:I haven't seen any reefer traffic to PFS in some time. Im sure Eimskip's departure seriously hurt their business. This was always a CSX switch if I remember.
Did Eimskip ever send stuff out by rail?
 #1388080  by fogg1703
 
bostontrainguy wrote:Did Eimskip ever send stuff out by rail?
No direct containers on flatcars, but there was always a pretty good amount of Eimskip containers lined up at PFS loading docks. Wether loads were cross docked to or from Eimskip containers to railcars I'm not privy.
 #1388091  by CN9634
 
Several containers have been cross docked into rail cars since they landed in 2013... mostly done at Sprague
 #1388176  by bostontrainguy
 
F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:
johnpbarlow wrote:
atholrail wrote:I've heard rumors lately of CSX wanting to rid themselves of all freight east of Worcester...
CSX can't get out of Everett quite yet because they still have to serve Houghton Chemical once or twice per week at Beacon Park on that same job. So even if they had PAR do haulage for them with set-offs at Barbers to pocket the ops cost savings of cutting a pretty small daily...they'd still have to run the same train with the same crew for nearly the same distance every time Houghton needed a measly 1 or 2 tankers. Harvard U. and the Boston Redevelopment Authority are negotiating with Houghton for a relocation so that parcel can be redeveloped contiguous with the rest of Harvard's Beacon Park land. Unlike Beacon Park's other former rail tenant Romar Transportation, who CSX actively negotiated a relocation for out to Hopedale on G&U, Houghton insists that any new site has to be in or immediately adjacent to Boston...on a rail line next to a highway interchange.
Sounds like a perfect candidate for the South Boston Marine Industrial Park area with a new customer on the new Track 61 extension. Lots of empty space down there, real close to the Mass Pike and Ted Williams Tunnel and even closer to the airport which is one of their major customers.
 #1388265  by YamaOfParadise
 
bostontrainguy wrote:Sounds like a perfect candidate for the South Boston Marine Industrial Park area with a new customer on the new Track 61 extension. Lots of empty space down there, real close to the Mass Pike and Ted Williams Tunnel and even closer to the airport which is one of their major customers.
And so close, yet so far from being able to tap directly into the Port of Boston's Conley Terminal; especially considering its container volume jumped 11% 2014 -> 2015, and the dredging for support of New Panamax ships. With no interest in rail access from CSX, MassPort is probably going to go ahead and build the haulage road right to the port. Just doesn't seem like a good traffic strategy to pipe even more trucks onto the Pike between Boston and Worcester.

Admittedly, the South Boston is a logistical nightmare to get freight out of anywhere but south—which is of course why CSX largely stopped bothering with it. No direct connection to the Dorchester Branch, let alone a grade separated one with in the NH days; and to get to the B&A you'd have to do a backup move in the Middleboro Main, cross all of the tracks leading to Amtrak's storage yards, and then cross every track of where the NEC/B&A pipes into South Station, so that certainly wouldn't happen. So I think even if PAR/PAS did magically get a hold of everything CSX held east of Worcester, (or even just got the rights to South Boston/immediate area,) it'd be hard to leverage the uptick in container volume from Conley. I have no idea what kind of convoluted routing they could take any sort of container train from the Boston area to the B&M system; it'd be interesting enough to see them even get any other freight out of there north to their system.