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  • Abandoned PAR line to reopen (North Anson/Embden)

  • 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

 #917775  by KSmitty
 
BigLou80 wrote:...That being said 10' of fill is about the best case scenario ( as simple as bridge construction gets) for installing a road over pass assuming the town will allow the road to be closed for a few weeks.
Building a bridge 10' up isn't really going to solve the problem. A GP40 is 14-15 feet tall. The road is going to require major work one way or another. It might almost be easier to lower the road, from personal experience, going up is harder than down when dealing with dirt.

and Rinktums-http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rinktum-
"An extra special solution or invention for a mechanical design situation."
 #917782  by b&m 1566
 
The road in question is currently about 10 ft higher than the ROW, right? Was there a dip in the road back when the ROW was active, or was the entire road level with the ROW and then later raised?
 #917810  by BigLou80
 
KSmitty wrote:
BigLou80 wrote:...That being said 10' of fill is about the best case scenario ( as simple as bridge construction gets) for installing a road over pass assuming the town will allow the road to be closed for a few weeks.
Building a bridge 10' up isn't really going to solve the problem. A GP40 is 14-15 feet tall. The road is going to require major work one way or another. It might almost be easier to lower the road, from personal experience, going up is harder than down when dealing with dirt.

and Rinktums-http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rinktum-
"An extra special solution or invention for a mechanical design situation."
I am aware that 10' wont cut it. I was trying to say that fill is easy to dig in, be it for removal or foundations. More fill can easily be trucked in to raise the road another 5 feet. Either way its not a terribly complex or expensive fix compared to many others.

Who is responsible ? The town or the rail road ?
 #917931  by Sir Ray
 
Can anyone provide a Google Maps or Bing link to the crossing in question?
I tried to search, but there seem to be several candidates for the ROW along Cross Town Road,and I couldn't figure out which was which.

Also, if a road overpass is built, then the Plate C clearence has to be 15 ft 6 in from top of railhead to lowest part of the bridge underside. More likely they'd want Plate F clearence (17ft) - Since they won't be carrying Double Stack Intermodal nor Tri-Level auto racks, Plate H clearence (20ft-2in) won' t be necessary.
 #918005  by trainsinmaine
 
The quarry in question is on Route 16 just northwest (within a short walking distance) of the intersection of 16 and 201A, across the Kennebec River from Solon. The Somerset Branch of the MEC used to run along the easterly face of the quarry hill, then crossed 16 and paralleled the river up to the Solon Dam.

Cross Town Road is just south of the quarry; it heads due west off 16 and is a shortcut to New Portland and Kingfield for people heading west who don't want to go all the way south to North Anson. The former RR crossing (where the new bridge would be) is just west of the point where it leaves 16 --- again, a short walking distance.

Last but by no means least, a rinktum is (according to my understanding of it) a wrench in the works, something that may not have been originally intended to be a screw-up but which has become one. It's an old Maine term; I originally heard it years ago from a friend in Washington County. I looked it up. Apparently it has Gaelic origins. No surprise there; the Maine coast has a large Scots-Irish population.
 #921053  by trainsinmaine
 
Thanks for posting that, Mike. It's a nice shot.

The Levee Road (I didn't know it was called that) is the old Somerset roadbed. It crosses Route 16 just about at the entrance to the quarry.

It makes so much sense to reopen this line rather than to continue trucking the ballast. I hope PanAm can get around the Cross Town Road crossing problem.
 #1452827  by 690
 
Yes, this is toast. The grade crossing issue never ended up being an issue because Pan Am was only operating to the Carabassett River bridge in North Anson; beyond that the rails were completely removed. The plan for reinstalling the line to Embden never happened. At any rate, the line hasn't seen any trains beyond the first mile or two in Oakland in three years now, and it's unlikely that they ever will run up there again.
 #1452887  by F-line to Dudley via Park
 
RenegadeMonster wrote:Thanks for the info.

Are there any other branch/lines that Pan Am have reactivated or any that could potentially be reactivated in the next 10 years or so?
Decent/reliable odds:
-- Woburn Loop industrial track, Woburn (PAR-owned). Very recent OOS embargo (months ago) after the cement plant closed. That New England transload outfit just filed a bunch more environmental reports with the STB last month, so that new sign-on on this spur is still slowly moving forward despite the local opposition.

-- South Peabody Branch, Peabody (PAR-owned). Good odds of future *partial* rehab to extend operable track +2400 ft. from grassy field past Allens Ln. to foot of Summit St. grade crossing. Minor move to expand tail storage for Rousselot, since canning hell has caused a lot of problems with them not moving empties out of North St. yard and Castle Hill fast enough. Probably a necessary and logical short-term move to get all 3200 ft. between he Allens and Summit crossings fully operable for storage so service levels to fast-growing Rousselot remain stable in spite of PAR's slop-ops.

-- East Boston Branch, Revere/Boston (MBTA-owned). Almost reopened in 2012 for Global Petroleum's ethanol mixing operation before the NIMBY's shut that down by attacking Global with local ordinances. No current talks, but anything is possible there...and quickly...if Global comes up with a new business angle for using rail.

-- Mystic Wharf Branch, Boston (Massport-owned). Subject to longer-range Massport studies for rail reactivation. Any initiatives here take a backseat to CSX rail service to Marine Terminal on Track 61, so won't happen soon. But probably will become a thing eventually through state action at the port, through no effort of PAR's.


Flimsy but greater-than-zero odds:
-- Bucksport Branch, Bangor-Bucksport (PAR-owned). Technically not OOS yet since they're still hauling dirty dirt from site cleanup @ Orrington and Bucksport, but there's that strange proposal that popped up last couple months for a logging operation interested in setting up shop in the Bucksport yard. Unusual proposal, but if the operation really wants it there it'll get served by PAR.

-- Medford Branch, Medford (PAR-owned). Brewery was all set to restart service, but negotiations bogged down 2 years ago over clearance restrictions on Plate F boxcars forcing PAR to take a more ops-costly route into Medford for what isn't going to be enough weekly carloads to justify that extra overhead. I don't know if this is dead-dead now or if they're still staring at each other. Since the cold storage warehouse on the branch hasn't taken a load in 7 years, this is an all-or-nothing deal. The branch will either get held OOS a while longer if there's any possibility of the brewery accepting regular-size boxcars...or if they've moved on it'll be abandoned very soon because there's zero other reason to hold it and it's costing PAR a nonzero yearly sum to maintain a signalized switch and active grade crossing protection here.

-- Wilmington Cold Storage spur, Wilmington (third-party owned). Anybody not-named-PAR would take one look at this track and see a gimme opportunity or two on a part of the NH Main thick with industry. PAR doesn't care, but their successors might. Built by whoever developed the industrial park, so probably won't ever be abandoned no matter how overgrown it gets.

-- Montvale Yard spur, Winchester (third-party owned). Another industrial park -built spur, OOS for years and not as attractive on-spec as the sites on the Wilmington spur. MassDOT owns Montvale Yard including the derelict portion buried in the weeds north of Tighe opposite the cemetery, and a grant for yard reactivation is seen as a potential storage relief valve for Somerville (in a post-PAR era when their successors give two craps about not canning everything in the T's way). If that happens and the BO-# jobs start using Montvale as a stopover it would modestly bump the attractiveness of the Holton St. sites on the spur track (perhaps even just for Tighe if they want to gobble up a couple more warehouses inside that industrial park for expansion). Negligible present odds, but you never know given Tighe's explosive growth and what the T's storage stance will be re: the Montvale option in the post- Green Line Extension era.


Conditionally realistic if stars align, but unlikely real-world odds:
-- Lower Road, Brunswick-Augusta (MEDOT-owned). PAR retains right-of-first-refusual ability to take back the trackage rights at any time. Some scenarios could force it back into play, such as future Downeaster extensions to Augusta rationalizing/pooling costs by switching the Waterville mainline from the Back Road to the Lower Road to max out cost amortizations. A combo of NNEPRA needing freight revenue to underwrite its extension costs and a new company owner needing to rationalize D1 operating costs could easily result in a decision to bootstrap the freights on new Class 4 / signalized / 286K weight / double-stack cleared track Brunswick-Augusta with a reciprocal company investment to rehab the Augusta IT to Class 2 + 286K + DS mainline status. Any such scenario would have a trade-in of ASAP abandonment of the Lower Road from Leeds Jct. to Waterville and stripping of all usable re-lay hardware to plug state-of-repair elsewhere on the system, but this may be the public-private price for keeping D1 viable if new ownership puts the screws to the state to help them rationalize further investment in Northern Maine


Flat-out extremely unlikely:
-- Madison Branch (PAR-owned). When the paper mill was still open it wasn't generating enough carloads to keep all two-dozen-plus miles of crap-condition branch viable. Other embargoed customers have since been relocated, and the mill site is highly unlikely to net a net-gain rail customer. MEDOT would have to spend an unwise fortune on the rehab since PAR won't, and PAR's successors would have a hard time justifying the expense of this one. My guess is this goes for abandonment once all the Poland Spring-Lincoln business is fully settled, the mill site is past any further points of speculation on some really big redev, and it's time to do some system cleanup with the STB in prep for Billerica selling D1+D2. Maybe MEDOT can be blackmailed into taking Madison + Bucksport in an adverse abandonment settlement where PAR just squats on perpetual OOS rights and MEDOT takes all funding responsibility for further business development on the branch; they've certainly been gullible of that before. But this one comes off the company ledger in some way or another before Mellon cashes out.

-- South Peabody Branch, Summit St. to end-of-track, Peabody (PAR-owned). Zero business potential here, but since they collect pennies of rent from the Peabody Municipal Light power lines on the ROW and will need the extended tail storage for Rousselot described ^^above^^, its worth enough net-positive profit to keep as-is forever. City of Peabody hasn't given up on luring a rail tenant to the industrial park at the end of the line, but that's entirely their bag. If the city gets lucky, PAR will serve the customer they lure. But most likely it's just going to remain OOS forever to collect the power line rent.

-- Lewiston IT, anywhere past Grimmels (MEDOT-owned). There's literally nothing to potentially serve now that the mill site in Lisbon that MEDOT had such high hopes for when it overpaid for track rehab has been demolished and all redev plans for it dropped. Mill site's now pretty much the future trail head for when the municipalities finish their land purchase of the abandoned PAR-owned half of the corridor to Lewiston.

-- Mountain Div. anywhere past Sappi-Westbrook (MEDOT-owned). Fryeburg already voted down Poland Spring in this fall's local referendum, so that one far-fetched proposal is now deader than dead. The Mountain Div. thread in the B&M/MEC subforum details at length every reason why any freight service out here fails to pass a hyena's laugh test.

-- Hillsborough Branch, MBRX territory to Bennington (NHDOT-owned). Billerica's still trying to get Milford & Bennington booted from the quarry conveyor belt job for reasons that defy all rational explanation, but there is absolute zero chance that if they succeed at putting MBRX out of business that they will ever volunteer to serve the paper mill at the end of the line should the mill come calling. It's too tiny a mill for too few carloads over too many lonely miles past Wilton. MBRX probably can't even break even serving the mill with all the track maint that would entail, so past the Lyndenborough quarry it's all most likely a rail trail in-wait.

-- Mountain Div., St. Johnsbury-Gilman (PAR-owned). Only exists on the company ledger as legacy paper cruft from Twin State/Lamoille Valley's convoluted trackage rights agreement there. Twin State's rights expire 12/31/2018 if the estate of LV's deceased owner does not step forward and explicitly claim their 10-year extension option to 2028. PAR would've sold this track to VTrans years ago were it not for a fight LV waged claiming they had rights to sell all the rail hardware for scrap. If LV passes quietly into the night next Xmas then this gets scraped promptly off the books in a sale to the state. Mellon does not want any shennanigans up here causing headaches when he puts the company up for sale.



Obviously anything that was officially abandoned and/or expunged is never coming back for innumerable practical reasons. And they don't have any other paper barrier preemptions for taking back previously shed territory other than the Augusta Lower + Hillsborough Br. + St. Johnsbury-Gilman special situations (and odds therein) detailed above.
 #1452906  by CPF363
 
A lot of very viable comments from your post that could become realities in the future. Few comments however:
F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:
Conditionally realistic if stars align, but unlikely real-world odds:
-- Lower Road, Brunswick-Augusta (MEDOT-owned). PAR retains right-of-first-refusual ability to take back the trackage rights at any time. Some scenarios could force it back into play, such as future Downeaster extensions to Augusta rationalizing/pooling costs by switching the Waterville mainline from the Back Road to the Lower Road to max out cost amortizations. A combo of NNEPRA needing freight revenue to underwrite its extension costs and a new company owner needing to rationalize D1 operating costs could easily result in a decision to bootstrap the freights on new Class 4 / signalized / 286K weight / double-stack cleared track Brunswick-Augusta with a reciprocal company investment to rehab the Augusta IT to Class 2 + 286K + DS mainline status. Any such scenario would have a trade-in of ASAP abandonment of the Lower Road from Leeds Jct. to Waterville and stripping of all usable re-lay hardware to plug state-of-repair elsewhere on the system, but this may be the public-private price for keeping D1 viable if new ownership puts the screws to the state to help them rationalize further investment in Northern Maine
This could be very possible in the future. The Back Road will remain as a through route for freight until both the Jay and Rumford mills shutter operations. No indication the owners of those two mills are looking to close those mills today. Just can't see Pan Am or anyone else running a new branch line from Royal Jct. to Rumford for a few mills and the SLR interchange while all of the rest of the freight is on the Lower Road. However, once that happens, there will not be any reason to remain on the Back Road east of Danville if the Lower Road to Augusta is rebuilt by NNEPRA. The Waterville to Augusta segment has 115lb rail that could be rebuilt with new ties, ballasted and surfaced to bring to 25MPH. Surprising that NNEPRA has not brought the Downeaster to August yet as that is where all of the funding for the Downeaster service comes from. The section of the Back Road from Danville to Royal Jct. could become an extended main line for the SLR provided they get direct access to Portland and can capture some of the Canadian bound freight from there. Their old line to Deering is not as well positioned geographically as the MEC is.
F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: -- Mountain Div., St. Johnsbury-Gilman (PAR-owned). Only exists on the company ledger as legacy paper cruft from Twin State/Lamoille Valley's convoluted trackage rights agreement there. Twin State's rights expire 12/31/2018 if the estate of LV's deceased owner does not step forward and explicitly claim their 10-year extension option to 2028. PAR would've sold this track to VTrans years ago were it not for a fight LV waged claiming they had rights to sell all the rail hardware for scrap. If LV passes quietly into the night next Xmas then this gets scraped promptly off the books in a sale to the state. Mellon does not want any shennanigans up here causing headaches when he puts the company up for sale.
Amazing the entire line still has rail on it to include the Vermont segment and segment between Westbrook and North Conway. Why the State of Maine put welded rail on the portion of the line that Guilford removed some years ago is baffling when that welded rail should have been installed on the Lower Road for the Downeaster.

When all is said and done, the Maine Central could be a through route from Portland to Mattawamkeag via the Lower Road with the Hinckley Branch and a few industrial branches off the main line here and there.
 #1452913  by KSmitty
 
While not a huge problem to a rebuilding effort, the lower road is no longer continuous, and is broken in 2 more expensive spaces, along with any number of unknown washouts, downed trees and clogged flangeways.
-The Pan Am owned section from just west of Cives' Steel to the bridge is missing rail. This is clearly visible from the Rte.3 bridge. It was a cheap source of rail for other light-rail sections of the property, like Old Town-Keag. Considering the rail would have had to have been replaced in a large scale-government funded rehab, which is the only way that line reopens, it was a savvy business decision.
-The bridge over Rte.24 in Richmond has been removed, after years of truck and tall vehicle strikes it was doomed anyway.
As for 115# rail, just because it is of good weight doesn't mean simple roadbed work can fix the line. If the joints get beat into the ground the rail bends, and no amount of tie, rock and tamping can straighten it. This is eminently clear on the far eastern end of the system where rail has been beat into waves. Even after serious tie, stone and tamping work the joints are still low.

The Mountain is also incomplete. Rail is missing from a section in Windham. The Rte.202 crossing marks the eastern end of rail, with the rails running right to the edge of the pavement. The SoM/MEC property line sign can be seen clearly. The rail has been removed from the road, and a crosswalk extends from the trail that runs on the old main line to the east, to the trail that runs adjacent to the west. Interestingly, one of the crossbucks still stands, flashers and lenses still intact with an exempt sign protecting a crossing that no longer exists. I've never explored, looking for the other end of the trail, but a quick look at Google Maps shows the Pan Am owned section to be rail-less from that crossing down to somewhere behind the Maine Correctional Facility in Windham. A break of about 4000'.