wood pellet mill in gilman, vermont

which railroad would service this mill? google maps shows a track from st. johnsbury to new hampshire.

http://www.caledonianrecord.com/news/lo ... 57b3b.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Can you quote the article please? It's asking for an account to read the article.
If serviced by rail, I imagine it would be out of St. J, but I wouldn't be surprised if NHCR tried to get this.

here's an earlier article on this mill in gilman. it's great to see potential business for this area.

http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/128 ... mont-plant" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

there are previous posts concerning this mill and the condition of the rails.

Looking at the mileposts here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_ ... _mileposts" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; It is about 8 rail miles from Whitefield to Gilman and 20 miles from Gilman to St. Johnsbury, so that would seem to indicate it would be cheaper to rehab the Whitefield to Gilman line to be serviced by the NHCR.

However, some questions arise on that trackage. It is owned by the State of NH. How likely would "tightward" NH come up with any funding for a business in Vermont. Also, I have no idea of what condition the bridge over the Connecticut River is in, with probably no maintenance or even
inspections for many years. On the St. Johnsbury to Gilman side, I believe that is still owned by GRS/PAR, although there either is or was a legal claim by the former NHVT on the line, as they wanted to remove the rails for scrap. Even if that section was returned to service, a 40 mile round trip to service one customer would seem to be close to a non-starter. On the other hand, as was mentioned above, the NHCR would likely provide service. Of course, both the origination
point of incoming material and outgoing product would be major factors in using rail service.

I believe that ownership was settled and it was determined that the MEC still retains the ROW. With that said, I believe Pan Am would have to foot the bill for rehab which could be interesting. Talk about a potential customer stuck in the middle!

I think the State of Vermont has at least "looked" at acquiring the St. Johnsbury to Gilman line.
However, PAR would want to put restrictions on routing traffic from St. Johnsbury to Whitefield
and up to the SLR at Groveton and down to Danville Jct., thereby bypassing PAR/PAS from East
Deerfield to Maine.

To my knowledge that language already exist with NH as part of the purchase.

MEC owns it all points west of the state line, but the trackage rights on it are currently in possession of the last operator, Twin State RR. Twin State was a subsidiary of Lamoille Valley RR, which ran west out of St. Johnsbury until it folded in the mid-90's. Twin State went dormant in '99. Since then the former owner of Lamoille Valley/Twin State has died, with his controlling interest passed into a trust. The only activity the trust has engaged in since has been to try to leverage permission to strip the railbed of its steel scrap value, which Pan Am blocked and VTrans protested. Nothing has happened with the ownership of the line since because of that hostile action by the Twin State trust and the blocking move from Pan Am. No one has been willing to blink because status quo is keeping the peace while attempts at resolution may get the Twin State trust trying to pull more shannanigans.

Worse, nobody is entirely sure who controls the Twin State trust or what former Twin State/Lamoille Valley minority investors may still have stakes in it. So it takes fresh legal proceedings and research for the state and Pan Am to even chart who they're dealing with before they even make an attempt at extricating Twin State from that trackage rights agreement. Another reason why "no news is good news" as far as they're concerned.


VTrans would ideally like to buy up this line and bid it out to new trackage rights; it says so in plain English in their State Rail Plan. It would need a lot of work because it's in horrid shape on the VT side of the state line (although, curiously, has gotten new crossing equipment installations in the last 10 years), but minimally stable Class 1 track would be all that's necessary so absolute price tag is not a backbreaker. The Gilman plant is still an interested customer. NHCR has rights to the New Hampshire state line, though it doesn't go west of Whitefield for any reason. NH, having shorter distance, requires less rehab. NHCR would definitely covet a gateway to interchange with VRS at St. Johnsbury. It may be the best move they can make for securing their long-term survival. VTrans would, however, have to pick up nearly all the cost of track rehab because NHCR is just too tiny to do it themselves. VRS has also expressed cursory interest in a gateway to the east, potentially giving them an interchange with SLR and pricing options SLR vs. CMQR for interchanges from Montreal. Unclear if that's just talk or not. At any rate, at least one of those carriers has enough to gain to put this segment to good use. And that is VTrans' prime motivation for going on-record saying it wants the ownership.


We just have no idea when they can pull it off because those 3-way talks state vs. Pan Am vs. Twin State trust are so unappetizing, especially if Twin State tries to grandstand for leverage. What may kick off some initial action is Pan Am being bought out within the next couple years. I doubt any of their potential buyers want to deal with the Twin State riff-raff on track they will never ever use. So PAR transacting to VTrans to get it off their books as they prep themselves for sale is plausible action for limiting the new buyer's risk. Doesn't solve Twin State in any way, shape, or form or necessarily motivate VTrans to go after them, but it would simplify the "Go away" negotiation to just 2 parties--state vs. TS estate--instead of 3 whenever the state is ready to go to battle.

F-Line,

I actually believe that the State of NH bought up to the western Gilman town line from Pan Am with NHCR having trackage rights. I can't remember if I saw that here or on the VRS Yahoo Group page. Of course, I have been wrong before, ask my wife!

Eric

Yes...that has been the case ever since Twin State ceased operations in '99. NHDOT immediately bought up their Dalton-Groveton trackage and installed NHCR as operator. NHCR began servicing after spring thaw 2001, so service was only interrupted for at-most the 2000 operating season.


We're only talking the trackage inside the state of VT where the ownership and trackage rights situation remains murky, disputed, and unresolved 17 years after the last train ran. The NH side of the border transacted cleanly and immediately.

Can't MEC petition the STB to end the defunct railroads trackage rights?

b&m 1566 wrote:Can't MEC petition the STB to end the defunct railroads trackage rights?

Here's VTrans' official statement in VT's 2015 State Rail Plan, p. 42:

Until 1999, the Twin State Railroad operated over a route connecting St. Johnsbury with Whitefield, NH that was once part of the former Maine Central’s Mountain Subdivision between Portland, ME and St. Johnsbury. Embargoed and out of service, the estate of Clyde Forbes continues to hold operating rights leased from its owner, Pan Am Railways. The legal status of these rights is unclear, and little effort has been made by the parties involved to resolve the issue following Mr. Forbes passing in 2011.

So...yes, they could. But it would be a royal P.I.T.A. to untangle the fine print because the trackage rights agreement didn't provision for a situation like this where the owner would disappear 12 years after shutdown and control of his stake would pass to parties unknown. Nobody has the motivation to touch it with a ten foot pole because it's so very very bottom-priority and they know/suspect there are some exploitable loopholes in there that the trust can leverage to make lives difficult if so inclined. As I mentioned a couple posts up, one thing that may finally force some action here is Pan Am prepping itself for sale to new owners. No prospective buyer wants to deal with trouble on some near-worthless piece of track they'll never use very far detached from the rest of their system. So for sake of making its house more presentable PAR may nudge VTrans to transact the MEC ownership. Doesn't mean VTrans is going to be immediately more motivated to lock horns with Twin State after buying it, but it would get them halfway to real control and PAR is probably the easier party to deal with right now.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

ericofmaine wrote:F-Line,

I actually believe that the State of NH bought up to the western Gilman town line from Pan Am with NHCR having trackage rights. I can't remember if I saw that here or on the VRS Yahoo Group page. Of course, I have been wrong before, ask my wife!

Eric

Yes...that has been the case ever since Twin State ceased operations in '99. NHDOT immediately bought up their Dalton-Groveton trackage and installed NHCR as operator. NHCR began servicing after spring thaw 2001, so service was only interrupted for at-most the 2000 operating season.


We're only talking the trackage inside the state of VT where the ownership and trackage rights situation remains murky, disputed, and unresolved 17 years after the last train ran. The NH side of the border transacted cleanly and immediately.

They also, more recently, bought trackage in the state of Vermont, to Gilman, to potentially serve the mill. The 2012 State Rail Plan lists it as such (page 31 of the 2012 report.)

Eric

So, the state of NH owns the ROW from the state line through Lunenburg, VT... that seems odd.

ericofmaine wrote:

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

ericofmaine wrote:F-Line,

I actually believe that the State of NH bought up to the western Gilman town line from Pan Am with NHCR having trackage rights. I can't remember if I saw that here or on the VRS Yahoo Group page. Of course, I have been wrong before, ask my wife!

Eric

Yes...that has been the case ever since Twin State ceased operations in '99. NHDOT immediately bought up their Dalton-Groveton trackage and installed NHCR as operator. NHCR began servicing after spring thaw 2001, so service was only interrupted for at-most the 2000 operating season.


We're only talking the trackage inside the state of VT where the ownership and trackage rights situation remains murky, disputed, and unresolved 17 years after the last train ran. The NH side of the border transacted cleanly and immediately.

They also, more recently, bought trackage in the state of Vermont, to Gilman, to potentially serve the mill. The 2012 State Rail Plan lists it as such (page 31 of the 2012 report.)

Eric

I've read that line in the NH State Rail Plan, and it's contradicted by other NHDOT sources such as the Q&A summaries from the recent Mountain Div. freight RFP that cite ownership on the other side of the state line as "unresolved". As well as VTrans sources that put ownership to the state line as private. It is highly improbable that NHDOT has any legal standing as a state cabinet-level agency to own and administer transportation assets in an entirely different state. They don't delegate the asset management to any sort of regional authority that could conceivably be chartered to administer across state lines, so direct administration is going to run afoul of federal interstate commerce law. Doubly dicey: it's also not clear where the NHCR division post truly is if their contract with NHDOT says it's inside of Vermont but NHDOT is proven to not actually own inside Vermont.

When official DOT docs from both sides of the state line describe the status of Gilman as "unknown"...↑this↑ failure to properly document things is why. Supposedly "official" stories contradict, and record-keeping was abysmally bad because it was done fast and as an afterthought. Nobody knows for sure who has what authority over what, and it'll take a roomful of lawyers to sort all that out. As for Twin State's operating agreement, the term expires at the end of 2018 but there's a 10-year renewal clause to 2028 that Twin State can unilaterally execute. One hurdle gets cleared if Dec. 2018 comes and goes with no one claiming to represent Twin State steps forward to exercise the extension. But it'll be one royal mess if somebody does because it's unknown who exactly IS Twin State right now and who has the legal standing to act on their behalf. And even if TS does go away, further action is still going to involve a roomful of Pan Am, VTrans, and NHDOT lawyers doing contractual forensics to figure out the Gilman ownership and NHCR's division post.

Don't expect quick action on any of this even if Twin State evaporates in 19 months. It'll be a paperwork slog and @#$%show all the same.