What's next for MMA?

>>She said the town owns the railway sidings in the municipality and will control what materials will be transported on them. Roy-Laroche said trains would carry only dry goods, and no dangerous materials"........

Sounds like a small town mayor with delusions of grandeur. If Canadian regulations are anything like U.S. regulations, the inter-state/province transportation of commodities is controlled by federal law, not provincial or local.

PBM

ferroequinarchaeologist wrote:>>She said the town owns the railway sidings in the municipality and will control what materials will be transported on them. Roy-Laroche said trains would carry only dry goods, and no dangerous materials"........

Sounds like a small town mayor with delusions of grandeur. If Canadian regulations are anything like U.S. regulations, the inter-state/province transportation of commodities is controlled by federal law, not provincial or local.

PBM

I would say generally speaking that Canadian regulations often aren't like U.S. regulations and that there is a chance that the Mayor is in fact well within her rights to imply that the local government will have a modicum of control over freight manifests over rails in that area. As best I could tell she was only discussing freight on municipally owned sidings, not the main line.

does this mean crude will no longer travel on mma to st.john? i believe mma regained profitability through the crude oil moves. can it survive fiscally on merchandise traffic alone? further, does cn now have a lock on the crude to irving or is pas a viable option? ken patrick

PAS/PAR has been moving crude oil all along.

What happens to MMA is anyone's guess but there are jobs depending on that line and it needs to be reopened.

remember my posts re: penny-wise? now that we've seen the destruction of a viable enterprise because of childish concern for frugal operations, what value does this railroad have absent crude oil moves? i would try to establish a fail-safe eeonomic benefit for the town. consider it a 'tax' to insure thoughtful operations through town. as an example, pay the town a 'supervisory' fee per train. since the railroad grossed a $100k per move, pay the town $10k to fund persons to oversee the train 're-crewing' and town transit. and for all you rail folk, this is not a normal situation. i understand irving ships out 300k barrels per day of product .i don't know shrink but that's 4000+ cars/day in. out? they do barge. where are the railroad thinkers? why not price to beat the barges? it should be easy since barge is 4mph. time does cost. i marvel at the moribund thinkling of railroads. they just never think out side their respective boxes. someone needs to hire me to remove the clouds from their eyes. ken patrick

KEN PATRICK wrote:someone needs to hire me to remove the clouds from their eyes. ken patrick

We definitely need to bookmark this trademark KP statement. I'm sure, going by his past performance in previous threads, we'll find a reason to bring it up again in the future...

KEN PATRICK » Mon Nov 25, 2013 12:56 pm
someone needs to hire me to remove the clouds from their eyes.

If anyone with hiring responsibility has read this post, your choice of words probably assures that you won't be getting a call, to the probable regret of many on RAILROAD.net.

Some points:
-The tank cars haul crude to Irving and are returned MT. The reason is that the crude residue would contaminate refined product without an expensive, labor-intensive, and environmentally challenging cleaning process. The cars sitting in Maine recently were temporarily not needed, so they were temporarily stored. Demand can be and frequently is elastic.
-Shipping refined product would require another fleet of dedicated tanks, construction of which would be years off.
-Because of earlier shipping patterns, coastal distribution points have marine infrastructure in place. As recent popular reaction to the proposed ethanol facility north of Boston demonstrates, building rail infrastructure where there is none is not guaranteed.
-Barging may be slow, but it is generally reliable and predictable. Just-In-Time may be the modus operandi and mantra for some items, but less so for commodities.

UTUconductor1 wrote:... childish concern for frugal operations...?"

What do you mean?

Mr. U2-C, your captioned quote from Mr. Patrick's material should be evident to any industry observers - and especially to you as you have worked for the outfit. Whether you return when recalled is not of my concern.

As such an observer (far more so than being a railfan) it certainly would appear that if there were a corner to cut, MMA found it. I guess it is one thing to operate a train with a one man crew with a lading of lumber or potatoes if you could care less when it gets over the road, but to again to use my metaphor, 'when you play in the Class I sandbox' handling HAZMAT, you best be prepared to play according to their rules, which includes two man crews ready to be relieved at established crew change points. You also do not create a culture of fear whereby anyone should have recognized the potential gravity of the situation at Nantes and knew that they would not be on the carpet for having recalled the only employee within 100 miles qualified on train handling. It would be 'pretty petty' to assess discipline against any employee (and, if the disciplined was Agreement, I'm certain it would be overturned on appeal) who chose to break Engineer Harding's rest causing his ten hour rest clock to be reset when he was released from the emergency scene.

There further appears to be a culture that if the Rules give wide latitude to tying down trains, take that latitude for to properly tie down a train takes time - and that time is under HOS. It's also money.

Continuing, to what extent was the need for proper insurance evaluated when MMA began handling crude? Over at the temporarily closed Lac Megantic topic, Mr. Jim Boylan, having Short Line managerial experience, suggested that MMA may not have been able to obtain higher policy limits. If such were the case, where was the fortitude to simply not quote and otherwise withdraw from any consideration to handle the traffic?

Finally, it would appear that when the oil bonanza came MMA's way, they gave little thought to whether or not they had the institutional capacity to handling a dangerous commodity (and there have been enough transport incidents, rail AND pipeline, to suggest it is more so than widely thought) in large volume. It almost seems analogous to my exposure within the not-for-profit sector when I either saw or learned of an agency getting a real eye-popper of a grant - and they had, and had no means to develop, a program to apply such 'pro bono publico'. Within the community, it is known as 'chasing funding'.

Moderator Note:

Gents, please do not turn this into a sequel to the Lac-Mégantic thread. I locked it for a reason. The topic here is What's Next For MMA, not What Happened In Lac-Mégantic. Thank you.

http://bangordailynews.com/2013/12/04/b ... this-week/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The headline is worth about as much as the meat of the article. Doesn't say much other than this "A half dozen “really committed parties” have shown “considerable interest” in MMA, Keach told the media outlet. He would not disclose the identities of potential buyers or what the sales price may be. He told Bloomberg that the sale would be complete before the company was reorganized." and gives a Dec 16 date as a the first chance the court would have to approve sale.

Prepare to rename the forum I suppose.

KSmitty wrote:http://bangordailynews.com/2013/12/04/b ... this-week/
The headline is worth about as much as the meat of the article. Doesn't say much other than this "A half dozen “really committed parties” have shown “considerable interest” in MMA, Keach told the media outlet. He would not disclose the identities of potential buyers or what the sales price may be. He told Bloomberg that the sale would be complete before the company was reorganized." and gives a Dec 16 date as a the first chance the court would have to approve sale.

CN9634 wrote:Prepare to rename the forum I suppose.

I've done it before; I can do it again.

From The Portland Press Herald:

The Portland Press Herald wrote:Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd. has chosen a “stalking-horse bidder” and expects to complete negotiations this week on an opening bid for the bankrupt railroad’s assets, the company’s court-appointed trustee told wire service Bloomberg News in a phone interview.

A stalking-horse bid is the initial bid on a bankrupt company’s assets that sets the low bar for other bidders.

The trustee, Robert Keach, told Bloomberg that there are a half dozen “really committed parties” doing “heavy due diligence” in preparation for submitting competing bids for the railroad.
. . .
Keach told Bloomberg that repairs to the damaged track in Lac-Mégantic are nearing completion, which would allow the railroad to resume carrying cargo between the U.S. and Canada as early as next week.

Read the rest of the article at: http://www.pressherald.com/news/MM_A_ra ... week_.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

UTUconductor1 wrote:"According to an operating report filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maine, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic operated at a net loss of $453,000 in October, the most recent month reported."

So the new buyer will need to be an existing carrier that can combine marketing, transportation and financial management with an existing company or plan on loosing money from the first day they take over. With the trustee's finance man raking in $650 per hour, at least booting him would save over $100,000 a month. With the oil gone, and the auto traffic gone, the Orford expr4ess could buy the place and run passenger trains all day long as there will not be much east to west freight train traffic!

Assuming that the B&A isn't self sufficient (which it certain is if ran properly). Also, this assumes a company never have purchased an asset knowing they will lose money initially yet that happens in the world we live in.

Doesn't have to be a existing carrier either, just someone who thinks they can turn a buck off running or salvaging a railroad.

MEC407 wrote:From The Portland Press Herald:

The Portland Press Herald wrote:. . . Keach told Bloomberg that repairs to the damaged track in Lac-Mégantic are nearing completion, which would allow the railroad to resume carrying cargo between the U.S. and Canada as early as next week.

What's this!!! Maybe an error in reporting? I think what all (well, at least me) had been assuming in this thread is that only the local (town-owned?) industrial spur in Lac Megantic was being rebuilt, not the thru-tracks. We really need a forum-poster with eyes on site. JS