Freight and General New England RR News

[Subdivisions]

As per trains.com CSX seeks to buy New England regional Pan Am Railways

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

As per trains.com CSX seeks to buy New England regional Pan Am Railways

A protest that strenuous by Norfolk Southern makes this highly improbable to pass muster with the STB. That much is clear-cut. Even when Class I's get up in other Class I's grills over transactions, it's usually only glancing-blow type stuff like a consequential alliance up-for-grabs...not for-the-jugular territorial fights. This is a full-on hostile entanglement, and direct threats to primary traffic lanes. The feds get easily spooked by that. They'll telegraph that they want this spat redirected to more productive ground first...but if it comes to a final showdown NS's objections are going to be very hard to ignore.

CSX is looking to broker something...its Selkirk-Portland joint venture with PAR run via Worcester is a big moneymaker. But there isn't a chance in hell they want to run the duplicate Fitchburg route, not a chance in hell any purchase would be approved with them holding a duopoly of dominant trans- New England routes (yeah, MassDOT and a couple other states will have big problems with that too), and extraordinarily doubtful chance in hell that they want anything to do with the decrepit Portland-Bangor-Mattawamkeag mainline. So they're either dropping a smokebomb to get an alliancing partner to jump out of the weeds who'll help them somehow with the singular Worcester-Portland piece they value, or are planning for the system to be broken up into kajillion pieces (extremely unlikely if those pieces don't have names preselected by CSX up-front).


No closer to resolution than it was yesterday given what manifold legal hurdles CSX faces in getting anything close to what it says it wants...but definitely not a boring story anymore that's for sure!

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Prevailing speculation (WARNING: most prevailing speculation to-date has been hopelessly wrong) is that this seemingly impossible salvo is designed to force Norfolk Southern to shit or get off the pot on finally buying up the other half of PAS so the deal-killing route duplication Albany-Ayer gets taken out of the picture. Then CSX buys solo-PAR for the Worcester-Portland lane, with aims on doing something in Northern Maine to hook itself into haulage agreement to Port of St. John (via J.D. Irving Lines) where it can compete with Canadian Pacific for dominance at the maritime ports. NS would be compensated by CSX for its deed by getting a favorable cut on Ayer-Portland haulage.


There are LOTS of holes in that theory. Namely why CSX would ever want to tie itself to that many miles of godawful north-of-Portland track that's nowhere near up-to-snuff for tapping Maritime intermodal (Canadian Pacific is going much faster with its track upgrades across its re-acquired east-west Moosehead Subdivision line from Quebec to Brownville, ME than any Pan Am buyer could ever hope to from the south). Or how there's enough up-up-UPside in the Maritimes to begin with for all the pain and suffering when they're at no shortage of alliancing vectors. Or why the Worcester-Portland lane itself is such white-hot shit when daily 75-car round-trip "SEPO/POSE" ("Selkirk-Portland/Portland-Selkirk") doesn't seem to have enough gears to add frequencies or go 100+ cars anytime soon (i.e. it's big but not that big). Or why they'd want more of Greater Boston or forlorn New Hampshire when they've been nonstop dumping local territory to shortlines on the southside (i.e. why not work through another proxy on SEPO/POSE who'll take more interest in the locals?). And so on and so on.

But it at least explains the logic of cartwheeling headlong into an STB rejection if it gets Norfolk Southern to stop being complacent and finally act on taking over the PAS side of the system. The rest might involve similar multi-dimensional chess trying to smoke out action from other parties on the parts they don't necessarily want. Or they're just trolling everyone. You too can throw darts at a wall and come off sounding like an expert!!!


Canadian National hasn't been spoken of in a long time. According to (WARNING: same constantly wrong) insider-ishes it's mostly been the holding companies & hedge funds sniffing around of late. Gennessee & Wyoming + banks. Though honestly it makes more railroading sense to marry PAR Worcester-Portland-Bangor into a contiguous system with G&W holdings Providence & Worcester and St. Lawrence & Atlantic than it does frigging CSX at this point. All G&W needs to square that with the feds is offering up New England Central for sale as antitrust collateral and hoping NS gets goaded into buying up PAS so they can play Portland-alliancing kingmaker with both the Worcester County Class I's. But that makes too much on-its-face sense. No...we're in genuine crazytown now wondering where this is going to go next. And that's before attempting to speculate on what's going through Tim Mellon's terrifying little brain right this second.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Under the radar...

Apparently while working on the rehab of the Yard 21 tracks next to Sullivan, Keolis crews did some under-bridge pipe relocation on one or more of the Cambridge St./Maffa Way/Mystic Ave. overpasses to increase freight clearances to Everett Terminal via the Eastern Route and Everett Jct. freight turnouts. It is now tall enough for industry-standard Plate F (17 ft. tall) freight cars sourced via the Lowell Line and BET...up from its prior Plate E (15'9") rating.

This means New England Produce @ Everett can at long last take standard-size fridge cars for its wholesale produce. Their rail volumes have been fast declining because of national scarcity of the obsolete old shrunken-height fridge cars they were forced to take. This should enable an immediate reversal of fortunes, which is good for supermarket fruits/veggies long-term price stability in Eastern MA. Also may attract other signees to the Terminal, and sweeten the pot a little bit on Pan Am's sale price re: Port of Boston prospects.


If the Eastern Route is electrified per the Rail Vision they'd have to undercut the mainline trackbed under the Sullivan overpasses by +1.5 ft., or 19'6" total for Plate F cars under 25 kV wires. Not a big production...probably the stuff of 1 weekend shutdown and several days of staging for the shave-down, requiring no physical touches to the bridges themselves

 

[johnmcboston]

Under the radar...

Apparently while working on the rehab of the Yard 21 tracks next to Sullivan, Keolis crews did some under-bridge pipe relocation on one or more of the Cambridge St./Maffa Way/Mystic Ave. overpasses to increase freight clearances to Everett Terminal via the Eastern Route and Everett Jct. freight turnouts. It is now tall enough for industry-standard Plate F (17 ft. tall) freight cars sourced via the Lowell Line and BET...up from its prior Plate E (15'9") rating.

This means New England Produce @ Everett can at long last take standard-size fridge cars for its wholesale produce. Their rail volumes have been fast declining because of national scarcity of the obsolete old shrunken-height fridge cars they were forced to take. This should enable an immediate reversal of fortunes, which is good for supermarket fruits/veggies long-term price stability in Eastern MA. Also may attract other signees to the Terminal, and sweeten the pot a little bit on Pan Am's sale price re: Port of Boston prospects.


If the Eastern Route is electrified per the Rail Vision they'd have to undercut the mainline trackbed under the Sullivan overpasses by +1.5 ft., or 19'6" total for Plate F cars under 25 kV wires. Not a big production...probably the stuff of 1 weekend shutdown and several days of staging for the shave-down, requiring no physical touches to the bridges themselves

Always the perpetual rumors of rail returning to the Charlestown autoport?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Always the perpetual rumors of rail returning to the Charlestown autoport?

Autoport can't take industry-standard tri-level autoracks, which are 19'2" tall. Can't get any closer to Boston than Ayer at those clearances. Bi-level racks, which do fit on the Lowell Line, are nearly extinct nationwide so there's no way to concentrate enough of those cars to meaningfully serve the Autoport. So that will not be driving any return to service of the Mystic Wharf Branch.

Boston Autoport mostly distributes locally in Metro Boston, though. Pan Am Southern's Ayer autoport and CSX East Brookfield autoport collect lion's share of the long-distance car deliveries, and P&W delivers racks to Ayer straight off the boat from Quonset Point, RI...so we've got good wholesale auto distribution lanes in New England already. Boston Autoport is more a complementary puzzle piece with hyper-focused local distribution.


Mystic Wharf reactivation probably comes via the cement plant not far down from Scraffts...a customer Pan Am's shit customer service scared off 20 years ago but who would probably eagerly come back under a new regime. Couple other buildings next to the port also ripe for rail marketing, with tales of occasional passing interest from prospective tenants. Massport long-range wants to carve out some niche at Moran for specialty loading...as the easternmost ship docks are on the Harbor side of the Tobin and height-unrestricted. This would suit certain jobs like, say, unloading wind turbine parts for some future offshore wind farm...amongst other possibilities. That would reactivate the street-running track through the vast asphalt expanse of the Autoport's lots...but it wouldn't be for serving Autoport biz at all.

 

[Wash]

MassDot's "Industrial Rail Access Program", which in their words "Is a competitive state-funded public/private partnership program that provides financial assistance to eligible applicants to invest in industry-based rail infrastructure access improvement projects," just announced the 2021 recipients of grant funding. A link to a list of grant recipients is appended to this post.

Possibly the most interesting grant recipient this time around is...The city of Lawrence, which will use its $356,670 to rehab the Lowell Hill industrial track that runs from Lawrence yard to the Lawrence Industrial park (Look on Google Maps for the concentration of industry near the Lawrence Boy's and Girls club). Unlike the rest of these grants, which really only provide service to one customer, this track rehab has the potential to add multiple customers in one fell swoop.

This kind of program may seem un-sexy and could probably do with further expansion, but little differences add up over time. It also seems like a model for other state- (or even federal)-level programs that aim to increase rail's freight mode share and get trucks off the roads.

MassDOT announces $2.42 million in Industrial Rail Access Program (IRAP) grants | MassDOT Blog

blog.mass.gov

 

[BeeLine]

 

[Arlington]

Hey, Mods, what's a photo from Philly doing in here? (Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1871) ;-)
In addition to geeking out directly on steampunk details, we can also geek out on the photo process itself, which is a Woodburytype (a crazy mashup of gelatin, lead and intaglio)--the earliest process that could capture middle tone shades.

 

[brazile]

Hey, Mods, what's a photo from Philly doing in here? (Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1871) ;-)
In addition to geeking out directly on steampunk details, we can also geek out on the photo process itself, which is a Woodburytype (a crazy mashup of gelatin, lead and intaglio)--the earliest process that could capture middle tone shades.

"Mashup" being an important point: they require an industrial-scale press to make. Gelatin is tough stuff!

 

[GP40MC]

MassDot's "Industrial Rail Access Program", which in their words "Is a competitive state-funded public/private partnership program that provides financial assistance to eligible applicants to invest in industry-based rail infrastructure access improvement projects," just announced the 2021 recipients of grant funding. A link to a list of grant recipients is appended to this post.

Possibly the most interesting grant recipient this time around is...The city of Lawrence, which will use its $356,670 to rehab the Lowell Hill industrial track that runs from Lawrence yard to the Lawrence Industrial park (Look on Google Maps for the concentration of industry near the Lawrence Boy's and Girls club). Unlike the rest of these grants, which really only provide service to one customer, this track rehab has the potential to add multiple customers in one fell swoop.

This kind of program may seem un-sexy and could probably do with further expansion, but little differences add up over time. It also seems like a model for other state- (or even federal)-level programs that aim to increase rail's freight mode share and get trucks off the roads.

MassDOT announces $2.42 million in Industrial Rail Access Program (IRAP) grants | MassDOT Blog

blog.mass.gov

There are rumors of a new customer coming to this branch..

 

[Tallguy]

Under the radar...

Apparently while working on the rehab of the Yard 21 tracks next to Sullivan, Keolis crews did some under-bridge pipe relocation on one or more of the Cambridge St./Maffa Way/Mystic Ave. overpasses to increase freight clearances to Everett Terminal via the Eastern Route and Everett Jct. freight turnouts. It is now tall enough for industry-standard Plate F (17 ft. tall) freight cars sourced via the Lowell Line and BET...up from its prior Plate E (15'9") rating.

This means New England Produce @ Everett can at long last take standard-size fridge cars for its wholesale produce. Their rail volumes have been fast declining because of national scarcity of the obsolete old shrunken-height fridge cars they were forced to take. This should enable an immediate reversal of fortunes, which is good for supermarket fruits/veggies long-term price stability in Eastern MA. Also may attract other signees to the Terminal, and sweeten the pot a little bit on Pan Am's sale price re: Port of Boston prospects.


If the Eastern Route is electrified per the Rail Vision they'd have to undercut the mainline trackbed under the Sullivan overpasses by +1.5 ft., or 19'6" total for Plate F cars under 25 kV wires. Not a big production...probably the stuff of 1 weekend shutdown and several days of staging for the shave-down, requiring no physical touches to the bridges themselves

So, the T is planning on high platforms in Winchester that, word has it, would preclude freight, hence the move of the gravel run to the WR. How true this is, I am unclear.

 

[The EGE]

Winchester (currently in limbo due to budget) will be getting a gauntlet track for freight moves.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

So, the T is planning on high platforms in Winchester that, word has it, would preclude freight, hence the move of the gravel run to the WR. How true this is, I am unclear.

Winchester (currently in limbo due to budget) will be getting a gauntlet track for freight moves.

Theoretically if a full-high is absolutely 100% tangent you can crawl Plate F's or bigger through there sans gauntlet by slowing way, way down to minimize the lateral movement on axles. Raw car width is exactly the same for everything under the sun except special over-dimension moves like transporting a giant electrical transformer by flatbed (i.e. the rail equivalent of same special-escort/special-permission types you need to do a highway Wide Load). Double-stacks, autoracks, maxi boxcars..they're all the same physical width as a passenger coach. It's the turning radius that makes them "high-and-wide". A 60-footer boxcar will swing out of the high-platform clearance envelope if there's any curve, and an autorack traveling at full speed has more allowances for lateral movement on its shocks for balancing the very tall 19'2" height with running forces, so those can swing out and clip a platform edge too. Curved high platforms can be no-go entirely, but if it's straight enough you can indeed pass "high-and-wide" loads through them by going extra slow to limit the lateral movement from the train's suspension.

P&W, for example, does this on both ends of a daily Ayer-Davisville, RI autorack train round-trip through the full-highs at T.F. Green Station on the Providence Line. The wire on the electrified Amtrak tracks is a touch too low, so they use the T'sd unpowered platform turnout to get by. Extremely slow, at not much over 10 MPH. But that's permissible because single side platform is on a non-mainline turnout, and the commuter schedule is currently so light down there that the crawl doesn't cause traffic conflicts. Moves like this get harder to fudge real slow when there's more schedule pressure. Indeed when RIDOT Intrastate CR expands its schedules and adds the matching northbound platform, RIDOT will be adding a gauntlet here to allow P&W to pass at-speed (which will let the autoracks squeeze *between* sets of low-hanging wires at the point of biggest pinch, thus allowing the current/southbound platform track to also get wired-up).


With Winchester Ctr., up until now Plate F railcar moves to Boston-proper have been very infrequent, with Boston Paperboard in Somerville only taking a 60-footer maxi-size boxcar a few times a year. So it was thought/debated that the Winchester gauntlet could be omitted for now to save cost, and Pan Am would just slow down while keeping a "swear jar" for reimbursement to any strikes of the full-high's wood bumper. While fully adequate for that tiny level of high-and-wide traffic, it's probably not doable anymore now that NEPC @ Everett is going to be taking Plate F fridge cars. That's full-on daily traffic attached to BO-1 six days a week every week instead of those three-per-year boxcars Boston Paperboard was getting. The gauntlet's pretty much a must-have now, because too many commuter schedules would get messed up by BO-1 (which is a typical PAR crapshoot as to whether it's running on-time to begin with) having to throttle to 15 MPH a half-mile before the station. And indeed can't picture any potential PAR buyer--least of all hot new rumor CSX--being okay with no-passer/slow-zone + "swear jar" sloppy seconds there. CSX on the southside is insisting on gauntlets for future inner Franklin LIne raisings like to-be double-tracked Windsor Gardens, so even if PAR does a "whatever" to waiving the Winchester gauntlet requirement now Keolis is going to be installing one within a year because the new buyer will demand it.


NOTE: This whole "can you crawl?" vs. "should you pass?" debate is moot with any platform curvature. Wedgemere got an MAAB exemption for its <10 year-old mini-high because of that, and will be a tough last outlier to square. You also can't do gauntlets reliably enough (i.e. minimal derailment risk) when they have to go through an adjacent grade crossing as extra in-road flanges...which is why both Ballardvale and Andover (each too constrained for 3rd track passers) have been pre-approved for MAAB mini-high exemptions when they eventually get their matching second platforms. The abutting grade crossings make gauntlets a no-go. And there's some question about whether some extremely low-use stations are worth modding at all with P.I.T.A. gauntlet interlockings, like Mishawum. But there are very few stations overall with such dilemmas...pretty much just Ballardvale/Andover + Wedgemere/Mishawum. All others systemwide impacted in any way/shape/form on a designated freight clearance route have straightforward enough solves for passage that things won't ever need to get kludgy.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

There are rumors of a new customer coming to this branch..

Wonder if they're going to eliminate the street-running at long last. Glenn St. was paved right on top of the old ROW when the former Lowell & Lawrence was chopped from Tewksbury to only this small industrial track ~80 years ago. There's room across the street most places to relocate the track to slot between curb and the power line towers, but I'm assuming low utilization kept that from ever going on City of Lawrence's radar. It's not like the Lawrence yard switcher ever needs to take more than 1-2 cars at a time down that chewed-to-spit street track to spot Whittenmore Co. at the end of the branch. But if there's more customers coming to the industrial park might actually be worth everyone's while to finally relocate that 800+ ft. of track out of the road.

 

[BostonTrainGuy]

Just have to wonder why everyone isn't going "Brightline" with this high-level platform situation. Just use slide-out gap-fillers on the passenger cars and end all this expensive gauntlet craziness.

 

[RandomWalk]

The T doesn’t have a good maintenance record. A slide out mechanism seems ripe to break in useless ways.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Just have to wonder why everyone isn't going "Brightline" with this high-level platform situation. Just use slide-out gap-fillers on the passenger cars and end all this expensive gauntlet craziness.

The T doesn’t have a good maintenance record. A slide out mechanism seems ripe to break in useless ways.

The Brightline method is:
(1) full-highs without the wood gap-filler that goes flush with the door, so freights can pass. That wood edging is the sum total of all the conflicts with "high-and-wide" freight cars. Brightline had to do that because the Florida East Coast mainline they run on is one of the 10 busiest/most lucrative freight carriers on the continent.

(2) Flip-out mechanisms from the door to the platform covering the gap with a level interface. But not slide-out mechanisms like you have in the entirety of non-Northeastern 8-inch platform territory. This is because a slide-out ramp will uselessly bang against the edge of a Northeastern-style 48-inch platform, and thus the mechanism must flip from a position somewhat above the platform level to come cleanly to a rest. Slide-out ramps are for low-platforms--buses, low-floor trolleys, 8-inch platform railcars like Amtrak Superliners and commuter BLV's or gallery cars.


Flip-outs are unfortunately not conducive to managing commuter rail dwell times efficiently, because there will be a built-in door delay at each door for the flip mechanism going up and down. Brightline being more of a regional system like the most frequent Amtrak routes it isn't constrained by quite the same dwell pressures. Indeed, Amtrak has already specced gapped door flips for any/all flavors of Amfleet replacements when that massive order is placed, which will finally allow routes like the Downeaster to go full-high. It's technologically tried and true for that level of pretty-frequent, mid-distance service that isn't overloaded with stop selection.

However, when you have a dense-stop native commuter system that's on a growth track to RUR-like frequencies throughout where our inside-128 Urban Rail runs prioritize quick on/offs or have places like the innermost NEC, Eastern Route, and NH Main taking very rapid frequencies for all the branching patterns they feed...that extra door-open tape delay starts to accumulate on schedules systemwide and extract its penalty. It would be an especially poor idea to do the gapped full-highs on the Lowell Line West Medford thru Wilmington, for example, because the alternating Lowell + Haverhill trains will be coming fast and furious all-day. You need the fastest door open/close sequences physically possible on that stretch, so gapped platforms don't offer a solve for hard ones like Wedgemere and Mishawum. Generally speaking any commuter system with that high a traffic ceiling is going to do it right from the get-go with full gap plugs like we have now. So you won't ever see Metro North or NJ Transit or SEPTA or the T make a specific investment in rolling stock with flip mechanisms for gaps, because it'll always make more dollars and sense to them to renovate any remaining low-platform stops as full gapless high platform with minimum-most dwell time right from the get-go. The fact that so many Northeastern agencies are hopelessly behind on their ADA mods (esp. SEPTA/NJT) isn't a point in favor of a vehicle-side solution...they still have to build the full-high in the first place any which way. The $100 in 'consumable' bolted-on lumber that fills the actual door gap is pennies on an ADA project budget, and there are very few remaining non-ADA commuter stations in the Northeast that sit on are on any sort of freight clearance route to begin with.

For the T, almost the literal only place you could see a long-term need for vehicle-side gap flips are Ballardvale + Andover on the Haverhill Line, which don't have any readily available physical solutions for full-highs because of the busy freight main, the lack of space for passing tracks, and the abutting grade crossings making gauntlet track flanges a bad idea for derailment risk. Those are literally the only two that are unsolvable. Either that or if the Haverhill Line were improbably re-extended to Dover like it used to go pre-1967 and started picking up the NH Downeaster stops for commuter duty...but that's improbable for a lot of reasons (including soft demand). But one single line probably isn't going to float a car purchase, so it may just be more suitable to leave Haverhill as the system's literal only mini-high outlier. Those 2 stops are and will continue to be 100.00% ADA-compliant in their current configuration regardless of whether they ever get the full-high treatment, so it's not a bad single outlier in the slightest if there isn't a good solution available.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

MassDot's "Industrial Rail Access Program", which in their words "Is a competitive state-funded public/private partnership program that provides financial assistance to eligible applicants to invest in industry-based rail infrastructure access improvement projects," just announced the 2021 recipients of grant funding. A link to a list of grant recipients is appended to this post.

Possibly the most interesting grant recipient this time around is...The city of Lawrence, which will use its $356,670 to rehab the Lowell Hill industrial track that runs from Lawrence yard to the Lawrence Industrial park (Look on Google Maps for the concentration of industry near the Lawrence Boy's and Girls club). Unlike the rest of these grants, which really only provide service to one customer, this track rehab has the potential to add multiple customers in one fell swoop.

This kind of program may seem un-sexy and could probably do with further expansion, but little differences add up over time. It also seems like a model for other state- (or even federal)-level programs that aim to increase rail's freight mode share and get trucks off the roads.

MassDOT announces $2.42 million in Industrial Rail Access Program (IRAP) grants | MassDOT Blog

blog.mass.gov

Yeah...if you look at the past IRAP grants it's been a very good and high-ROI program for getting customer sidings (a non-trivial expense) hooked up. It's been a particular godsend for shortline RR's like Pioneer Valley (Westfield-Holyoke), Mass Central (Palmer-Ware), Mass Coastal (Cape, Taunton cluster, Fall River, New Bedford), Grafton & Upton (North Grafton-Milford)...as well as for bringing back some ancient "bad old days"-squandered Pan Am customers back into the fold with siding rehabs.

I wish that press release would've at least named the towns those new awardees were based in so there's some sort of geographical marker to where the money was spread statewide. Alas, takes a Google stitch job. . .

• Broco Oil, Haverhill -- PAR Freight Main/Haverhill Line. Stone's throw past Haverhill Station, visible on the Downeaster...served by LA-(1?) local out of Lawrence Yard.
• Leominster Packaging & Warehousing, Leominster -- No idea if this is going to be connected to PAS Freight Main/Fitchburg Line or CSX Fitchburg Secondary...since company HQ is at the midpoint in-between the two lines by I-190 sans rail access. If on PAS it would be served by the FI-(1?) local out of East Fitchburg; if on CSX it would be served by local B724 out of Framingham. Fitchburg Secondary has a lot of warehouses with derelict sidings, so odds favor that one. Would be a game-changer, as 1 short year ago the traffic beyond Clinton had dried up to just 2 days per week with the line past the lumber yard in Sterling looking like an abandonment-in-wait once the last Leominster pickups dropped out. But then a brand-new CSX signon in downtown Leominster instantly doubled the frequencies back to 4 days a week, and CSX has been doing a shitload of track renewal across the branch to get the (generally horrible) state-of-repair back to par. If this grant is theirs instead of PAS's the Framingham local could go back to full 5 days a week past Northborough/Clinton, an incredible and totally unforeseen turnaround.
• Lynch Materials, Wilmington -- Either on Lowell Line-proper or on currently out-of-service Wilmington Industrial Track just north of Anderson RTC. Company HQ is on MA 62 in Wilmington nowhere near a rail line, but their website says they recently purchased a former factory for this new facility (but didn't spec the address). Would be served on PAR's LA-(?) Lowell Line overnighter out of Lawrence Yard that runs as far south as Tighe Warehouse in Winchester.
• Old Boston Road Recycling, Wilbraham -- CSX B&A mainline, visible from Lake Shore Ltd. Served by a local out of West Springfield.
• United Materials Management -- locations in Leominster on CSX Fitchburg Secondary, Millbury (no rail access), and Taunton on CSX Taunton Industrial Track (shortly past where it splits NW off the Middleboro Secondary west of downtown). Would be another notch in the Fitchburg Sec.'s improbable turnaround if that were Leominster, but Taunton facility looks bigger so is more likely to be the grant target. B724 out of Framingham if it's Leominster; if Taunton it's by the Attleboro-Middleboro-Braintree overnight local staged out of Walpole Yard.

 

[BostonTrainGuy]

• Leominster Packaging & Warehousing, Leominster -- No idea if this is going to be connected to PAS Freight Main/Fitchburg Line or CSX Fitchburg Secondary...since company HQ is at the midpoint in-between the two lines by I-190 sans rail access. If on PAS it would be served by the FI-(1?) local out of East Fitchburg; if on CSX it would be served by local B724 out of Framingham. Fitchburg Secondary has a lot of warehouses with derelict sidings, so odds favor that one. Would be a game-changer, as 1 short year ago the traffic beyond Clinton had dried up to just 2 days per week with the line past the lumber yard in Sterling looking like an abandonment-in-wait once the last Leominster pickups dropped out. But then a brand-new CSX signon in downtown Leominster instantly doubled the frequencies back to 4 days a week, and CSX has been doing a shitload of track renewal across the branch to get the (generally horrible) state-of-repair back to par. If this grant is theirs instead of PAS's the Framingham local could go back to full 5 days a week past Northborough/Clinton, an incredible and totally unforeseen turnaround.

Thinking it's going to be the restoration of this siding just north of the Route 117 bridge crossing

.