Freight and General New England RR News

riptide said:

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):
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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.
 
www.trains.com

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 www.trains.com
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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. :poop:
 
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.

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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.”
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www.trains.com

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 www.trains.com
 
Stlin said:
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.


www.trains.com

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 www.trains.com
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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.
 
reno said:
President elect Trump picks David Fink, the man who ran a New England RR into the ground, to lead Federal Railroad Administration. Apparently former Pan Am owner Timothy Mellon's donations to Trump have paid off. Unbelievable. He is also known as a union-buster.
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To be fair, that was Fink's late father, David Fink Sr., who was leading Guilford/Pan Am during the 1980's and 1990's when the former Boston & Maine and Maine Central systems were systematically dismantled, the customer base pissed almost completely away, and the lengthy strikes completely crippled operations. Fink Jr. took over in 2006, 2 years before the inking of the huge intermodal deal with Norfolk Southern that created the Patriot Corridor. So Fink The Younger did oversee some substantial business expansion and some *modest* re-investment in the physical plant in his time at the helm. He's generally thought to be a more progressive steward of the company than his father was, though he was subject to Mellon's same unorthodox business whims.

He certainly fits Trump's politics, but unlike choosing a former reality TV star and undistinguished backbencher Congresscritter to lead the DOT this pick actually has very lengthy industry credentials and has low odds of being a complete disaster.
 
He certainly fits Trump's politics, but unlike choosing a former reality TV star and undistinguished backbencher Congresscritter to lead the DOT this pick actually has very lengthy industry credentials and has low odds of being a complete disaster.
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Are you saying that it's better to have real world experience than Real World experience?

Jokes aside, I'm cautiously optimistic for the reasons you mentioned. A big concern I have is lack of investment in infrastructure, and while I'm not holding out for significant investment in transporting people, Fink does have experience in transporting stuff and wasn't against government handouts for rail infrastructure.
 
www.mainepublic.org

Maine DOT selects new operator of Rockland rail line

While Maine Switching Services plans to resume freight service and scenic excursions along the line, the company has not proposed operating the long-envisioned Amtrak extension between Brunswick and Rockland.
www.mainepublic.org www.mainepublic.org

Maine Switching Services was announced as the winning bidder for MEDOT’s Rockland Branch RFP. The article notes that their bid did not include operating passenger service on the line, so no Downeaster extension to Rockland. MSS is involved with the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railway tourist operation, and they do intend to offer similar seasonal excursion trips on the Rockland Branch.
 
riptide said:
www.mainepublic.org

Maine DOT selects new operator of Rockland rail line

While Maine Switching Services plans to resume freight service and scenic excursions along the line, the company has not proposed operating the long-envisioned Amtrak extension between Brunswick and Rockland.
www.mainepublic.org www.mainepublic.org

Maine Switching Services was announced as the winning bidder for MEDOT’s Rockland Branch RFP. The article notes that their bid did not include operating passenger service on the line, so no Downeaster extension to Rockland. MSS is involved with the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railway tourist operation, and they do intend to offer similar seasonal excursion trips on the Rockland Branch.
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That's gonna be an uphill climb. Belfast & Moosehead Lake is a very cash-poor operation that relies on a lot of volunteer help and creaky old antique cars inadequate for an ADA-compliant regular service. The excursion fleet pretty much can't come from B&ML's current roster and be anywhere close to suitable for the envisioned service, especially for the longish length of the Rockland Branch (B&ML only operates excursion service on a few miles of its much shorter and poorer-condition branch). And Maine Switching Services' other operations are just a couple yard switcher jobs in the state at the major Rumford and Skowhegan paper mills. They don't have any other holdings with appropriate excursion fleets like previous operator Finger Lakes did, and they don't have a large wad of spare cash hanging around to acquire up-to-spec passenger rolling stock from other carriers. So it'll be interesting to see what their actual plan is, and whether they have the wherewithal to pull it off. Unfortunately a poor-man's operation is now all the line can sustain given what incredibly meager freight carloads are left in the wake of the big Dragon Cement plant's closure.

Not surprising that they're simply too tapped out to provide any support services or track maintenance for a Downeaster extension. That's going to fall squarely on the state to do the heavier lifting.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
So it'll be interesting to see what their actual plan is, and whether they have the wherewithal to pull it off. Unfortunately a poor-man's operation is now all the line can sustain given what incredibly meager freight carloads are left in the wake of the big Dragon Cement plant's closure.
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Part of me wonders whether the seasonal excursion trip idea is something they genuinely intend to pursue vs. something they’d say to MEDOT to signal consistency with “the spirit” of providing passenger service on the branch without actually intending to get involved with the Downeaster extension.

But assuming they get the logistics figured out, excursions between Brunswick and Bath could be manageable in scale for them (a little less than 9 miles one-way) and attractive to passengers (both station stops would be within walking distance of vibrant downtown districts).

I could imagine it doing decent business with Bowdoin students when their families come up to visit on Homecoming Weekend and want an “authentic Maine experience” as part of their visit. The college would draw new visitors to the area year over year, which would help.

I wonder about operating speeds, though. MEDOT’s RFP said the Rockland Branch meets FRA Class 1, 2, and 3 track standards “depending on location.” The devil’s in the details…if the Brunswick-to-Bath segment is mostly Class 3, and travel times will be reasonably competitive with the 11-minute drive down Route 1, that will help. But if it’s mostly Class 1 and the train is crawling for an hour, that’ll hurt its appeal. Other stuff comes into play, too, like the need to find sufficiently-comfortable rolling stock (i.e. better seating than wooden benches).
 
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