Pulling Win Waste
CSXT L007, the weekday Middleboro to Attleboro turn, is climbing the hill up from the Win Waste facility back toward the Myles Standish Industrial lead with their three GP40-2s and a cut of outbound loaded trash cars. This important and relatively new customer that has breathed new life into the Myles Standish Industrial Lead which is accessed from Attleboro Junction at MP 8.6 on the Middleboro Secondary mainline a bit over a half mile behind me where they dropped the balance of their train on their way back east from Attleboro.
The Middleboro Sub is strange in that it is owned by MassDOT and dispatched and maintained by Mass Coastal, but CSX still operates it and serves the customers as the direct corporate successor of CR, PC, NH, and all the way back to the Old Colony Railroad. In fact this particular segment of line here on the Myles Standish was opened in 1836 by OCRR predecessor Taunton Branch Railroad making it one of the oldest rail routes in New England. Becoming a mainline for the Old Colony it survived as a secondary through route under New Haven aegis seeing its last passenger train pass shortly before the connection with the shoreline was severed at Mansfield in 1955 to make way for a highway grade separation project. The tracks into Mansfield center lasted until about 1966 for freight service served from this end, but then were abandoned leaving only the present 1.5 mile stub still in use today up to the large industrial park.
Taunton, Massachusetts
Friday December 22, 2023
Pulling Win Waste
CSXT L007, the weekday Middleboro to Attleboro turn, is climbing the hill up from the Win Waste facility back toward the Myles Standish Industrial lead with their three GP40-2s and a cut of outbound loaded trash cars. This important and relatively new customer that has breathed new life into the Myles Standish Industrial Lead which is accessed from Attleboro Junction at MP 8.6 on the Middleboro Secondary mainline a bit over a half mile behind me where they dropped the balance of their train on their way back east from Attleboro.
The Middleboro Sub is strange in that it is owned by MassDOT and dispatched and maintained by Mass Coastal, but CSX still operates it and serves the customers as the direct corporate successor of CR, PC, NH, and all the way back to the Old Colony Railroad. In fact this particular segment of line here on the Myles Standish was opened in 1836 by OCRR predecessor Taunton Branch Railroad making it one of the oldest rail routes in New England. Becoming a mainline for the Old Colony it survived as a secondary through route under New Haven aegis seeing its last passenger train pass shortly before the connection with the shoreline was severed at Mansfield in 1955 to make way for a highway grade separation project. The tracks into Mansfield center lasted until about 1966 for freight service served from this end, but then were abandoned leaving only the present 1.5 mile stub still in use today up to the large industrial park.
Taunton, Massachusetts
Friday December 22, 2023