CSX running mainline freights through the Kendall Square grade crossings? That'll be a clusterf*ck of epic proportions.
Not likely...because the Grand Junction has the tightest vertical clearance on the entire system imposed by the plausibly un-raiseable (due to already possessing one wicked-ass 'hump') Memorial Dr. overpass. Track-level grade changes impossible because it's at the foot of the Charles bridge which can't go any lower without decapitating the BU Kayak Team. The GJ is the whole reason why CSX was stuck with those obsolete shrunken-height reefers to New England Produce Center which were losing them business. Dishing Everett off to PAR haulage while retaining the Everett customers as their signees was the literal only way out of that pickle...which was why the Plate F clearance project under Sullivan was quietly expedited 1 year after the switcheroo off the GJ.
However...picture the political/regulatory posturing that is going to have to take place to make this earthquake of a sale survive STB scrutiny. Qualifying runs and rate proposals via a B&A + GJ "mainline" run? Sure will! It doesn't matter if it's physically impossible absent an implausible infrastructure megaproject (not to mention T payola to reverse their voluntary sunsetting of Plate F from Framingham to Beacon Park that took effect August 2019). The exercise is useful for flooding the STB with sample rate comparisons for the kitchen-sink's worth of similar shennanigans Norfolk Southern is going to throw at the feds. The 'fun' part of this transaction is just getting warmed up as we watch a couple Class I behemoths spend the bulk of 2021 trolling the everloving shit out of each other in dueling federal filings (which can occasionally be fun reads when the law office doing the writing starts burying lolzy sarcasm amid the blocks legalese). With pile-on filings from all of the warriors' interested alliance partners. That's where we'll get to Crazy Freight Pitch some truly wild theoretical scenarios as they mutually chum each others' waters with route-war math problems. It won't be boring as aB thread evolution goes despite the boring-sounding spec subject.
This will not be a fast process. The end-product transaction probably will not closely resemble the pre-Holiday CSX press release when all the domino-falls are accounted for. Events far, far away from New England will intervene...for example: a similarly shitshow-complex ongoing line sale
from CSX
to CN of their Buffalo-Montreal intermodal lane stalled for >year in counter-filings from enraged alliance partners, whose flailing fortunes for damn sure influenced this pounce. The rumor mill will probably go even wilder than it went pre-sale over who's got to horse-trade what assets/ to make it work.
RE: Boston ops...'any' buyer is going to see more in Boston than PAR did. The end-to-end NH Main is a bunch of free-throw shootin' for quick pickups PAR simply let rot. Look at what CSX Marketing has managed to do (per this very page of thread) in just the last 12 months on the forlorn Fitchburg Secondary in Leominster: so recently an abandonment-in-wait, now doubling in frequency back to daily. Just...like...that. We wholly expect Class I Marketing Dept.'s to not care about bland zit branchlines on some micro part of their national network. But when something compels those Mktg. behemoths into give-a-shit mode all of a sudden (which clearly and suddenly just happened by them in Eastern MA for reasons we still don't know)? Yeah...you get an immediate lesson in just how MASSIVE a Class I's marketing arm truly is when it locks onto a target fixation. Boston and Eastern MA writ-large proportionately don't have to "make sense" as growth opportunities vs. the enormity of CSX Corporate or the enormity of the CSX-Worcester lane. If they decide to send some resources in...they simply crap bigger'n anyone else on the planet. CSX has apparently decided that shootin' free throws in Boston is worth the bigness of their Marketing Dept. That's...uh...
unexpected to say the least. But they can fill up all those niche sidings with frightening speed if so inclined because they're just that huge. Look what's happening in suddenly undead Leominster...then project that resurgence to the bucket list of freight nice-to-haves around 128 and down to the underutilized Port of Boston trackage.
Norfolk Southern thought it was sitting pretty on future Boston considerations having an elbow lodged into Ayer. That's being challenged right now. So watch the rate comparisons fly on every goddamn routing in the land, the sensible and nonsensible. MassDOT has to be loving this at the macro-level, but Urbie is right that it is enough to make one's head spin if you're with T dispatch and wondering what weaknesses might have to be shored up by sudden/unforeseen traffic explosion on a given route.
This is also where I disagree with Urbie that Keolis saying it's A-OK to blow past a full-high with a dodgy-suspension train full of Plate F's is some kind of lasting condition that'll stay OK after PAR is gone.
Keolis being OK with the platform-strike "Swear Jar" is lousy best-practice too; they're willfully suspending reality on any maint costs that outstretch their incumbent contract term, which is a tax we the public pay up in exactly the sort of escalated maint cost cycle loop we're mired in now. But it's also not a condition that--whether T/Keolis are institutionally lax enough to want to uphold or not--is everlasting...solely because of the "CSX craps bigger'n thou" factor. CSX is
not okay with Plate F passage waivers on some "don't worry, we don't mind" condition. They don't even run on the Springfield Line but were the party that held ConnDOT's feet to the fire on 100% Hartford Line gauntlets/passer coverage because Connecticut Southern's SPG-NHV rights are a CSX-captive haulage source and they decided national insurance rates on cars sourced via West Springfield trumped the local-yokels. Those same national insurance rates on tens of thousands of self-owned cars similarly trumps T/Keolis's wishes. They have a number theshold that says passers required...and it's nationally-sourced so they won't budge on it. There's a triad of freight clearance protection orders on the northside: the Freight main comprising outer Fitchburg Line (Willows Jct. to Wachusett) + outer Haverhill Line (Lowell Jct., Andover points north), the Wildcat Branch, and the Lowell Line (currently all, although with Bow power plant in NH soon going by the boards they probably don't much care about Plate F's north of Nashua Yard and might be willing to barter an inner-B&A analogue sunset clause Nashua-Concord if NHDOT buys the line and sweetens their pot elsewhere). That's all baked into the legalese from the 1976 B&M-to-T asset sale and horse-trading of assets for the Red Line Alewife extension that switched the high-and-wide route from Fitchburg-Cambridge + Fitchburg Cutoff to NH Main. CSX can cite back to any of that legalese to get the Winchester gauntlet and anything else made mandatory on those routes, no matter how much Keolis says "but we
said we're okay with wrecking our platforms!" As a crap bigger'n 'em concern, that's exactly what Corporate CSX will do.
Now...remember, Winchester Ctr. renos has wholly devolved into the project from hell because of the delays. So right now this will-they/won't-they question on the gauntlet is a moot point because the project schedule is slipping towards the heat death of the universe. It's a depressing years away from completion to begin with. All it means right now is that when the CSX behemoth states its case to the T, crew flips of the mini-high platform edges are going to start happening again and Crawford/Wilbur Interlocking switches controlling the Anderson passer will get renewed daily use (no doubt PAR's passivity sourced from Mellon-esque refusal to contribute for any preventative switch maintenance whatsoever there).
