Eastern Railroad Discussion > Casual observation regarding NS train 370

For those who believe boxcar traffic is dead, I offer up the example of NS 370 which operates from Greenville, SC to Chattanooga via Atlanta and the Atlanta North District. This train is typically at least a third boxcars.

Watched this train pass the Dalton railcam earlier and today it looks to be at least 50% boxcar traffic.

NS must have a good sales team over in the Piedmont region who haven’t forgotten what a boxcar is.

Posted from iPhone

That region has several large paper industry mills which probably account for much of the volume you are observing.

Just a couple of examples, paper mills and beer breweries are still big users of the boxcar.  Manifest trains to and from the Mexican gateways, especially Eagle Pass, are very boxcar heavy due to the beer traffic.

Andrew



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/20 06:50 by florida581.

I was kind of suspecting a lot of it was pulp and paper related myself. Between COVID related shortages of toilet paper and paper towels, there would have to have been an increase in pulp movements just to keep the paper products plants humming along.

DJ-12 Wrote:
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> That region has several large paper industry mills
> which probably account for much of the volume you
> are observing.

Posted from iPhone

Same applies over on the East End District with trains 153, 186 & 187. Don't see 154 that often as it is a night crawler running thru here between midnight and 6am.
Yesterday afternoons  NS 186 Birmingham, AL - Macon, GA had two cuts with the shorter one here.  Rembered reading this post yesterday morning after the longer one
passed but did catch the second cut.
NSSpike
 

Phil Maton
Villa Rica, GA

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