Power Short Pan Am Extends Run-Throughs, Acquires More Locomotives
SINCE LAST SUMMER, PAN AM RAILWAYS has been moving unit trains of oil from North Dakota bound for the New Brunswick Southern railroad and the Irving Oil refinery at Saint John, New Brunswick. Most of these trains use BNSF/CSX power running through Rotterdam Junction, N.Y., to Waterville, Maine. Unfortunate- ly for PAR (but fortunately for railfans), the road has been having mo- tive power issues this winter and the big BNSF power has been run-
modal terminal in Worcester, Mass., reducing transit times by as much as 24 hours. The project involved increasing overhead clear- ances at 31 locations between Worcester and New York State to 21 feet. Now, southern New England is an integral part of the CSX double- stack network. Before, double-stack traffic to and from New England stopped in Syracuse, N.Y., to be converted from a double-stack to single-stack configuration, and vice versa. The clearance project was part of an agreement with Massachusetts wherein the state ac- quired 90 miles of CSX trackage in the Boston area. The CSX intermodal terminal in the Beacon Park neighborhood was closed while Worcester was expanded to take its place. In northern Massachusetts, competitor Pan
Am Southern’s double-stack traffic to and from Norfolk Southern continues to be “fillet- ed and toupéed” at the new NS yard in Me- chanicville, N.Y. Preliminary engineering is under way to increase the Hoosac Tunnel’s overhead clearance to accept double-stacks.
NEW QUÉBEC INTERMODAL FACILITY: Construction has started on a new CSX Inter- modal container facility in Salaberry-de-Val- leyfield, Québec, a suburb of Montréal located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. With easy access to Autoroute 30, the 89-acre yard will handle up to 100,000 boxes a year when it’s finished in 2015. The railroad will al-
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RAILFAN.COM
ning east of Waterville on the old Maine Central, all the way to New Brunswick. (The line between Bangor and Mattawamkeag had been restricted to four-axle power.) On Saturday, January 5, 2013 (above) a northbound oil train crossed the Kennebec River at Fairfield, Maine. Pan Am moved to relieve the motive power shortage by leasing ten ex- Burlington Northern SD40-2s from Helm. They’ll join 21 six-axle EMD’s (some in SD45 carbodies) Nos. 600-620, acquired in 2010.
so relocate part of its main line, which now curves through a residential area, to a shorter and straighter right of way outside of town along highway 530. In January, CSX initiated priority intermodal service between Montréal and the continental United States via Syra- cuse, N.Y., and the Northwest Ohio inter- modal hub in New Baltimore, Ohio. The Mon- tréal to Syracuse line was a possible spinoff candidate just a few years ago.
Canadian National/Indiana Rail Road
WEST COAST TO INDY INTERMODAL: In late June, Canadian National and the In- diana Rail Road will begin a new intermodal service to and from INRD’s Senate Avenue intermodal facility, which is currently under construction in Indianapolis, Ind. To provide Indiana importers and exporters with an all- rail route for containerized products moving to and from Asia, the traffic will move in ded- icated CN intermodal trains between ports at Vancouver and Prince Rupert, British Co- lumbia, and Chicago. Existing CN trains will handle the traffic between Chicago, Effing- ham, Ill., and Newton, Ind., where INRD will take over for the move to and from Indi- anapolis. INRD spokesman Eric Powell says the intermodal service will initially run three times a week, with the goal of developing enough business to support daily service.
Canadian Pacific
WILL PULL OUT OF PHILLY: Canadian Pacific will pull out of the Philadelphia, Penn., market on March 4. In spite of a growing busi- ness in unit trains of Bakken crude moving to Philadelphia area refineries, the railroad de- termined that handing Quaker City traffic over to CSX or Norfolk Southern will be more prof- itable than it would be to make the required in- vestment to move the traffic on CPR rails through Canada to Montréal and then down the former D&H. The railroad acquired the Scranton-Allen- town-Philadelphia route over Conrail track- age with its 1991 purchase of the Delaware & Hudson. In 1976 the United States Railway Association awarded the route to D&H in an attempt to provide two-railroad service in what otherwise would have been a Conrail monopoly. D&H was also given access to Buf- falo via Binghamton, N.Y.; to Potomac Yard in Alexandria, Va., via Sunbury and Harrisburg, Penn.; and to Newark, N.J. via Allentown. The Newark operation was cut back to Al- lentown last summer, and D&H had pulled back from Pot Yard to Harrisburg around 1989 concurrent with the yard’s demise as a result of the CSX merger. CPR still runs be- tween Buffalo and Binghamton over former Erie Lackawanna trackage that is now part of Norfolk Southern’s Southern Tier line.
JUSTIN FRANZ
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