BostonUrbEx wrote:What was the maximum extent of Bay Colony's rights? Did they obtain those rights from one outright purchase from CSX? Or were the obtained from the Conrail break up?
Also, what happens if a customer seeks service on a line where no one has freight rights? Do they go to the state and tell the state to open up bidding for rights or something?
Bay Colony took over Newton-Millis and whatever remained on the outskirts of Boston from Conrail in 1982, same year it picked up the Cape, Dean St. Industrial in Taunton, Wattupa Branch, Plymouth Line, Greenbush Line (then still active to the military spur in Cohasset), Hanover Branch, and Framingham & Lowell north of South Sudbury. Just a pu-pu platter of low-margin stuff Conrail wanted to get rid of. I know rights never extended further into Boston, because the Needham Line was out-of-service to all traffic inbound to Forest Hills when the SW Corridor was being blown up and Conrail NEC rights were sliced off at Hyde Park (last customers on the south end) and Back Bay (Worcester side used for reaching Southie and the Boston Herald siding out of Beacon Park). Bay Colony did get a lot of outsource work rebuilding the Needham Line in 1986 in the outer neighborhoods when they were preparing for resumption of commuter rail service, simply because the SW Corridor wasn't finished yet and BCLR had the only active access point from Medfield. Not sure when rights east of Needham Jct. were abandoned. Probably when this same spur went dead. If it was even all that alive by the time Conrail got out in '82.
The Big Dig landfill moves were handled by BCLR, but those were special moves on a special routing forced by all the construction around the ex-South Station drawbridges.
If there's freight biz to be had on a line that has no freight rights or perpetual-rights freight squatters, it's an open bid. BCLR's contract for the Cape lines and Dean St. Industrial was on a 25-year MassDOT contract, so when Mass Coastal stole it away from them in 2007 it stole it away fair-and-square on an open bid. The MBTA as line owner can say no to doling out a new freight contract if there's no pre-existing rights or preemptions; that's their right as line owner. They definitely would say no on the Needham Line now that the Medfield Jct.-Needham Jct. segment fell to the NIMBY trojan horse trail, because they have good reason for not letting freight through the SW Corridor tunnel and Forest Hills. And they might say no on the Eastern Route + Branches north of Beverly Draw where Guilford didn't even retain squatters' rights, since the screaming and pitchforks from the locals wouldn't be outweighed by the business potential of a shortline bottled up at the drawbridge by PAR. Ditto Greenbush, which has even less on-line potential than Newburyport/Rockport for even worse NIMBY's.
But if, say, CSX offloaded the Old Colony south of Braintree Yard to Mass Coastal and MC wanted to open-bid on the Plymouth Line because it had interested customers (not too far-fetched)...that they'd probably be fine with (and CSX fine with since MC's still landlocked and it's more business to interchange). As would slight extension of MC's Dean St. rights up into Raynham after South Coast Rail reconnected the gap if they happened to find an interested customer south of the swamp (but probably not through the swamp because there's definitely no potential in Easton, and CSX still serves Stoughton-north with no possible reason to ever want to interchange with them in that area vs. at a proper yard like Braintree or Middleboro).
And...that's it. There are no other active or embargoed/OOS state-owned lines that are rights-less. CSX and PAR have their perpetual rights on the parts of the NEC, inner Fitchburg, and inner Reading that see no regularly-scheduled freight, as well as squatter's rights on inactive Track 61, Mystic Wharf Branch, and East Boston Branch. And likewise MC on the OOS part of the Fall River Branch to the tank farm at the state line. Everything else has been landbanked and expunged in the form of 99-year leases to rail trail groups ranging from the credible to the outright scammy.
