Portland Waterfront Rail Ops (Yard 8, Intermodal, etc)

[alcohh660]

Hi, I walk my dog across the Veterans Mem bridge and around the Sprague (Merrill's) Terminal almost on a daily basis and I think what you are seeing is a project being done by Cianbro on top of a large barge that is docked at its pier.
A few steel cylinders with rebar were built on the barge and poured concrete in them while on the barge...seems odd. I haven't noticed any dredging though.
I'll ask one of the workers what's going on if I happen to see one on my walk.

You must have noticed the start of the new Veterans' Outpatient Hospital on old yard (8)? My old playground as a kid- I think that's the number-across Commercial Street from Phinney Sprague's boatyard.
S

[alcohh660]

I had a chance to talk with a Cianbro employee re: the goings on on the barge. They are pouring concrete into the 4 steel forms to be used as piers for a bridge they are building. They will remove the steel forms and tow the barge to the job site then place the concrete piers in place with a crane.

S

[markhb]

Hi, I walk my dog across the Veterans Mem bridge and around the Sprague (Merrill's) Terminal almost on a daily basis and I think what you are seeing is a project being done by Cianbro on top of a large barge that is docked at its pier.
A few steel cylinders with rebar were built on the barge and poured concrete in them while on the barge...seems odd. I haven't noticed any dredging though.
I'll ask one of the workers what's going on if I happen to see one on my walk.

You must have noticed the start of the new Veterans' Outpatient Hospital on old yard (8)? My old playground as a kid- I think that's the number-across Commercial Street from Phinney Sprague's boatyard.
S

Per the map on the Portland Terminal Company's Wikipedia entry, the VA site (which I will forever think of as the Freedom Train site) was Yard 5. Yard 8 is the waterside complex that comprises Portland Yacht, the container port / intermodal facility, and the Gorham Sand & Gravel snowpile. (I should add some photos I took of PanAm maintenance equipment that still sports PTM marks.)

[alcohh660]

Thanks for the clarification of the yard number. We used to call it the 'car grounds'. It was the only place in my neighborhood where er could play baseball with a hardball.

S

[alcohh660]

Hi I have an update on the item being constructed on the barge in Cianbro's facility. It is apparently a component being built for the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

S

[fromway]

There is an announcement of a 4.1 Million dollar grant to Portland's International Marine Terminal . The purpose was to connect Merril's Marine Terminal and the International Marine Terminal plus other projects related to container and warehousing operations. Susie sure is trying hard to get re-elected. There was mention of Sappi and LL Bean receiving and shipping materials that they use and need.

[bostontrainguy]

They really blew it allowing that ship yard smack in the middle of the area.

[fromway]

The Portland Planning Board by a 6=0 vote has approved a 30M dollar Freezer/Warehouse on the waterfront. Eimskip is expected to break ground in December with a completion date in 2022. It is expected that they will be handling frozen seafood products along with other frozen goods. Let the court challenges begin.

[Sir Ray]

Simple enough question that I am sure was answered in this thread, but at 100+ page and no 'This Thread only search", well...
The propane facility that used to be in the Portland Waterfront yard (the IM yard was kind of built to accommodate IIRC), well while looking for something else in the area, I noted the propane tracks are disconnected and the facility seems gone. Now, using Google Street View (the historic Street View option where the dates are somewhat relevant, in Oct 2015 the facility looks busy enough (4 ranks), but by 2017 it seems to have been closed.
So is this correct, and where did the propane traffic end up going to?

[Hux]

I believe the propane facility is now located adjacent to the Rigby yard in South Portland.

Though looking at a satellite image of the yard and surrounding area I do not see anything resembling a propane facility.

[MEC407]

There is a small propane transload operation at Rigby but it's not the operation that used to be on Commercial Street. I don't know where that one moved to but it did not move to Rigby.

[690]

The transload at Rigby is Amerigas. They can take ten cars, and they transload directly into trucks there, there's no storage. Used to be a nice easy switch whenever I worked PO-6, not sure if they still switch it, or if another switcher does it now.

[Sir Ray]

After Hux posted his reply about Rigby yard, I searched around and found this article from March 2016 stating that plans for a proposed propane terminal at Rigby yard were scrapped.
It was made clear that the facility would have been located in Rigby yard, but the local government felt it would be too close to the 'Cash Corner' neighborhood ('nice' locale name, buddy) , which looks to already have some heavy industry in it, so...yeah.

Anyway, I guess the mystery of what happened to the Propane distributor from the Waterfront Yard after 2015 sadly remains...

[S1f3432]

Was the gas plant on Commercial St. operated by Suburban Propane? My fuzzy memory seems to recall
a proposal to swap some city property on Riverside St. for the waterfront property. Just checked Google
Earth and found photos of what appears to be a gas distribution plant under construction between
Schnitzer and Lucas Tree with the access road labeled Suburban Propane.

[MEC407]

Was the gas plant on Commercial St. operated by Suburban Propane? My fuzzy memory seems to recall a proposal to swap some city property on Riverside St.

You're thinking of the Suburban Propane depot at Thompson's Point. That's unrelated to the facility on Commercial Street. The Commercial Street facility was owned by NGL Supply Terminal Co. and operated by Downeast Energy.

...the local government felt it would be too close to the 'Cash Corner' neighborhood ('nice' locale name, buddy) , which looks to already have some heavy industry in it, so...yeah.

There was a lot more to it than that. The proposal by NGL was prohibited by an ordinance passed decades ago that limited the capacity of all new fuel storage facilities anywhere in the city. NGL and MaineDOT, unfortunately, didn't do their homework (or didn't do it well enough) before they aggressively pushed forward with their Rigby proposal. Had they done their homework (or done it correctly), they would have discovered that what they were proposing was illegal and they could've looked for a site in another community, saving themselves and South Portland taxpayers a lot of time and money.

The Cash Corner neighborhood got its name from a family whose surname was Cash. Many neighborhoods in the Greater Portland area are known as corners and were named for families who were early settlers in those areas, e.g. Crocketts Corner, Morrills Corner, Nasons Corner, Woodfords Corner, Cash Corner, Bradleys Corner, et al.