Eastern Railroad Discussion > NS to Pocomoke

Does NS operate their line down the Delmarva as a round trip all the way to Pocomoke and back in one 12 hour crew duty cycle? Or is it an out one day back the next operation?

Is this a 7 day a week operation?

Doug, the NS local is the H92, called out of Delmar M-F at 07:00. If they run to the Moke, they'll head south about 10-11:00 and be back around 15-16:00. Problem is that they're often used to relieve the H61 night local turn to Harrington, as well as dump stone all day at I.A. Construction in Delmar. That, combined with lack of traffic for King's Creek or the ESHR, can make them hard to come by on certain weeks.

Of note, the cars travel the 12G road train to Harrington, the H61 nightly turn from Delmar back to its origin, and then H92 south from Delmar to the ESHR (virtually 0% of which come south via 12G)...


SH

SH,

So they don't go to the ESRR everyday? Guess that means ESRR gets the bulk of their traffic from the Norfolk end???? I was down in Chincoteague over the weekend. I went down on Sat. and returned on Monday to find cars at sidings along the way had been switched in that time span. I did not see the train itself.

A large amount of grain cars at a large feed mill close to Salisbury were missing on Monday. What is the name of this location?

Cameraman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So they don't go to the ESRR everyday? Guess that
> means ESRR gets the bulk of their traffic from the
> Norfolk end????

Cars, what cars? The ESHR gets a car here, a car there, but there's hardly any traffic to speak of going that way anymore. I chased the ESHR recently and they had 1 out of Pocomoke from NS, 6 out of Oak Hall on their line, and 8 out of Nassawadox on their line. As I understand it, this is max anymore, in fact I seemed to have caught them on a good day. The H92 usually rolls south through town anymore with just cars for King's Creek, or empties from King's Creek on the way north. The only traffic going via the ESHR since the coal disappeared is brick cars for the Mardella Industrial in Salisbury and Perdue soybean traffic (sporadic and tending to be in blocks of five or six tanks, with some covered hoppers also during the harvest).

The H92 probably heads that way about three times a week now. You can count on them relieving H61 around once a week when he gets overloaded, and also dumping stone about once a week since it is the season. There's no pattern to it, just based purely on when H61 outlaws and stone arrives.



> A large amount of grain cars at a large feed mill
> close to Salisbury were missing on Monday. What is
> the name of this location?

If you were south of Salisbury on Route 13, that is King's Creek, MP 118. I saw the cars over the weekend as well, and was quite surprised. Up until a couple years ago this mill used to get a 50-car unit train every two weeks during the season. Now owned by Mountairre, its rail shipments seem to have died. They'll take down two or three for them every couple days, but they now go a month (or months) between unit trains, and they aren't even 50 cars anymore, but more like 30.

To be downright honest, its a wonder NS even has Salisbury south anymore, as there's no big solid customer to speak of on the lower 24 miles. The days of 15 to 20 cars, and spiking to 40 and 50, each way every day are gone. Now its more like 2 or 3 when they run, and spiking up to a whopping 10 to 15 on a banner day...


SH