Eastern Railroad Discussion > E Mass Potpourri - Sunday 4/12/15

We start the roadtrip at CSX North Yard in Framingham, MA where a pair of heavy CW44AH road units are doing the car kicking Sunday morning as the normal yard/local herd of GP40s slumbers.
Then we head out to North Grafton, ops center for the Grafton and Upton. Manifest freight led by road switcher and smokin' F unit appears to be ready to depart southward to Hopedale, although I suspect it won't head out until Monday AM.
Photo #3 shows the under construction propane transload facility that local residents are protesting even though the STB says G&U is within its legal rights to operate the facility. As the N Grafton interchange track is limited, the transolad area is temporarily being used to hold non-propane freight. IIRC, Additional yard trackage is to be built just south of the current yard.

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Next stop is CSX Intermodal yard in Worcester. Across the way, Loram RGS Specialty Rail Grinder LMIX-614 sits awaiting assignment to either CSX or MBTA, which owns the track east of Worcester to Boston. See RGS spec sheet: [url=http://www.loram.com/uploadedFiles/GapGrinder%209-2012Web.pdfAn eb M]http://www.loram.com/uploadedFiles/GapGrinder%209-2012Web.pdf[/url]

MBTA commuter train departs eastward out of Worcester Union Station to Boston passing a gaggle of road engines that haul CSX double stack intermodal trains.
Thirty minutes later mainfest S422 stops east of the signal at CP-45 to allow conductor to hop off to guide the back-up move into the P&W yard west of the interlocking. Intermodal Q012 showed up minutes later to terminate.

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I like your picture of the signal bridge in photo #6. Nice framing.
John

Two hours later, the weekend only Littleton - Fitchburg MBTA shuttle departs North Leominster westward to its final stop at Fitchburg. Major track/RoW/signal work is being done around Concord so buses are used between Littleton and Concord to connect to trains that go to from Boston North Station. Very shortly all weekend MBTA service on the line will be suspended as construction season begins in earnest.

About an hour later, lengthy Pan Am Southern 23K intermodal passes the site of the future Wachusetts commuter rail station on its way to Chicago with an interesting engine consist - it is the Pan Am unit that is odd here as NS and other run-through locomotives are almost always used on the 22K/23K intermodal and 14T/287 multilevel trains.

An interesting payload in the 23K today is a chassis of chassis. I guess Ayer has a surplus of NS container chassis to balance.

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And speaking of 14T here it is heading past the Ayer tower & MBTA station toward the auto unload facility at Willow Rd on the Stony Brook branch a few miles east of here.

And then there was this bi-plane on approach to Fitchburg Airport that buzzed me while I was waiting for RR activity on the top deck of the new N Leominster station parking garage.

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Nice pics....Getting ready for my spring trip to the Worcester area... I have a great spot in Roachdale I have going to for years on the B&A....Nice rock outcropping with a golf course behind you.....

So NS/PAR are now running the autoracks through to Ayer as a separate train, rather than adding them to the head ends of 205/206 east of Buffalo? Are 205/206 even running east of Mechanicville now?
 

Really interesting stuff, thanks for posting new england area photos.

Looks like the G&U is doing pretty good; nice to see.

toledopatch Wrote:
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> So NS/PAR are now running the autoracks through to
> Ayer as a separate train, rather than adding them
> to the head ends of 205/206 east of Buffalo? Are
> 205/206 even running east of Mechanicville now?
>  
My understanding of the changed train numbering used by NS Southern Tier and PAS is as follows:
- 22K/23K are Chicago - Ayer intermodals. 22K can carry full domestic container double stacks head out (I think) that must be dropped somewhere before 22K heads into the Hoosac Tunnel on PAS. I think such DS cars are dropped at Binghamton and are destined for NS' Taylor Intermodal facility in Scranton. But they might be dropped at the PAS Mechanicville intermodal facility for filleting - don't know. And I'm not sure if 23K carries DS from Mechanicville/Binghamton to Chicago.
- 205/206 are now Chicago - Mechanicville intermodals with double stacks so PAS doesn't handle these trains to/from Ayer anymore (hence the New England region's disappointment at not getting a chance to pursue the Pennsy heritage unit that recently came east on 206!)
- 14T/287 are extensions of the ML trains that ran to / originated from Buffalo. I suspect these trains might also handle Mechincville autos in addition to Davisville/Ayer autoracks but I don't know for certain.

Apologies for being vague here. Hopefully others more knowledgeable can jump into this discussion.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/15 14:59 by JPB.

Boy, North Leominster's station has changed a lot since I lived there between 1956 and 1961!

Bruce
Columbia, MO

It looks like the engineer on NS 8870 (14T) is telling you that you're Number 1.