Eastern Railroad Discussion > Opening Day of the East Brookfield & Spencer Railroad

Opening Day of the East Brookfield & Spencer Railroad

October 18th, 2004 marked the opening day of a new railroad. From the ballast up, the East Brookfield and Spencer Railroad was constructed along a controlled siding on the north side of the CSX Boston & Albany line at MP63. It is an unloading facility for two and three level autorack flat cars.

Security is very tight at this facility. It will be a 24 / 7 operation. There is no public location where the entire facility is visible.

Today the EBSR received its first shipment of autorack cars to be unloaded for Chrysler and General Motors dealerships across New England. Even before it was completed, the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus offered to buy the facility (they were turned down) and Ford began clearing and blasting a nearby hillside to make room for a staging area of their own.

The unloading operation begins with the arrival of a CSX train. The train is shoved east into the facility and up a 2.6% lead to the staging area. Then, five car cuts are brought back down the hill and shoved into the unloading area. Six cuts of five cars each can be unloaded at once.

The EBSR uses CSX motive power and a leased EMD SW1200 (RailTex #1273). A second SW1200 is on the way.

-PRR 5711

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Nice to see this project finally was completed. I was involved with the very beginning phases of the project while I interned with CSX in 2002-03, and at the time there was a lot of worry about environmental issues and storage capacity inside the facility (addition of tracks alongside the main, as per the initial plan provided to us at D&C, would have involved a tremendous amount of either wetland invasion or retaining walls).

I'm guessing this means Framingham is now closed? And by your Ford comment I figure that Ayer is next on the list.

-Dave

At 6 cuts of 5 cars each, this yard doesn't sound big enough to close both Framingham and Ayer. I think Framingham gets ~ 40-50 MLs per day from 2 trains while Ayer gets 30-40 from a single train. What train stops here - is it Q420 to Framingham/Boston, Q264 to Framingham/Westboro or Q274 to Ayer? Or does the multilevel train terminate here?

More good paying jobs lost to a cut-rate outfit.

I wouldn't think that's something to feel good about.