Freight and General New England RR News

[F-Line to Dudley]

https://www.maine.gov/mdot/ofps/docs/Rockland%20Branch%20RFP-9.20.24.pdf

MEDOT’s Rockland Branch RFP was posted about three weeks ago. They’re seeking an operator for a 10-year term.

It also included the following language to set expectations for scheduling freight to accommodate Amtrak’s proposed passenger service pilot (I didn’t know the specifics before so I called them out in bold):

Unsignaled lines without Positive Train Control are limited to 4 round trips/8 track-occupancy movements daily, so 3 Amtrak RT's + 1 flex-slot RT for the freight or excursions or maintenance trains are the traffic limit for the line. Doesn't really make a difference if it's day or night...there's no time separation, just a per 24-hour traffic limit. Freight volumes are so sparse now that Dragon Cement is kaput that they could easily fit all carloads into one weekly run-as-directed slot.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

CSX unveils final heritage locomotive - Trains

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The 21st – and final – heritage locomotive in the CSX fleet is ES44AH No. 1981, a tribute to New England regional Pan Am Railways. CEO Joe Hinrichs unveiled the locomotive Tuesday, Nov. 19, in a post on LinkedIn, as has been customary. “Here is the 21st CSX Heritage...

www.trains.com

CSX has a pretty well-regarded "heritage" locomotive program done up in the paint schemes (or four-fifths of the paint schemes, as you can see from the 'backslash' near the front) of their network's glorious predecessor railroads. But....uhhhh....I don't know if this one really works for period accuracy unless the paint is peeling and the exhaust stack is actively on-fire. Would it have killed them to do a Boston & Maine maroon-and-gold or later-era blue-dip scheme instead?

There's ex-PAR employees causing a ruckus on RR.net actively wishing this unit gets wrecked in a non-fatal accident. Warm-and-fuzzies all over.

 

[DBM]

As promised [threatened] on this thread some time ago, the family and I did the Polar Express holiday train trip up the Blackstone River Valley this afternoon, on the Providence & Worcester's (yes, Genesee & Wyoming's, if one insists on being particular) charmingly restored vintage passenger cars (I assume they're Pullmans from ca. 1945-55 but someone may know for sure).

The tickets are rather pricey--$95--but if you have kids from between, say, 4-11, it's quite worth it. Very high production values; it's quite the boisterous, rollicking holiday train ride. The train turned around at a cute holiday village display somewhere in Whitinsville, 11 miles up the river from Downtown Woonsocket, about exactly an hour, so a nice pace for the kiddies.

Is it depressing to see Downtown Woonsocket's handsome Victorian-era "bones" utterly ravaged by nearly a century of ruthless deindustrialization and decay? Of course it is... that said, this Polar Express production is a very lovely effort--I think it's spearheaded by the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council--and absolutely worth it if you have the kids (or the grandkids) in that age range. Also, the Woonsocket train station (or depot, if one prefers), is in pristine condition and a delight to take in.

 

[Stlin]

Apparently CSX is exceeding expectations with uprating Pan Am track; it appears on track to hit class 3 40mph speeds basically everywhere mainline. While the underlying STB filing is redacted, apparently CSX hasn't seen massive increases in business yet - but it's expecting them as a result of its investments.

“Now that the railroad is up to the service levels that we expect and that our customers expect, what we’re seeing as we’re increasing the velocity of that network, as we’re increasing the reliability, the amount of opportunities coming our way are significant,” Chief Commercial Officer Kevin Boone said at the railroad’s investor day last month. “We expect outsized growth in the New England region based on the investments we made, and we have not realized those growth opportunities yet. We see those really materializing over the next three years.”

Traffic growth will flow from Pan Am track and service improvements, CSX says - Trains

WASHINGTON – CSX has nearly completed track and signal upgrades on the former Pan Am Railways, which the Class I says has improved service and will jump-start traffic growth in New England. When CSX acquired Pan Am for $600 million in 2022, the threadbare 1,700-mile regional railroad’s former...

www.trains.com

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Apparently CSX is exceeding expectations with uprating Pan Am track; it appears on track to hit class 3 40mph speeds basically everywhere mainline. While the underlying STB filing is redacted, apparently CSX hasn't seen massive increases in business yet - but it's expecting them as a result of its investments.

Traffic growth will flow from Pan Am track and service improvements, CSX says - Trains

WASHINGTON – CSX has nearly completed track and signal upgrades on the former Pan Am Railways, which the Class I says has improved service and will jump-start traffic growth in New England. When CSX acquired Pan Am for $600 million in 2022, the threadbare 1,700-mile regional railroad’s former...

www.trains.com

Increases in business really can't happen to tangible degree until they completely address their hiring deficit. There were so many retirements and employees jumping ship at Pan Am during the run-up to the merger that the New England network was barely functional by the time CSX formally took over. Not helped by the fact that the CSX mothership had a lot of regional vacancies itself to fill on account of COVID and their internally disruptive Precision Scheduled Railroading ops reorganization of about 5 years ago. And then they really couldn't start the process of filling the New England vacancies until they transitioned all existing employees off PAR's (far poorer) union agreements to CSX's nationalized agreements, which was an arduous process that's taken until this year to complete. So it's only now that they're staffed to a point of stability for existing ops, and they've still got a way to go before they're staffed up for aggressive expansion.

Sky's the limit from here on out, but they had some big internal staffing hurdles to overcome before they were truly capable of moving more goods throughout the region. You're already seeing the car counts on the Selkirk-Maine jobs exceeding 100 cars on a daily basis, so the tonnage growth is definitely starting. It won't be too long before they need to add another Portland train, because they'll be scraping the per-train car count limit of the B&A over the tallest Berkshires grades pretty soon.