Patiently Waiting
Recently Norfolk Southern has won the contract for unit grain trains destined to the Ardent Milling facility at the Willows east of Ayer. For the last several years they have been moving via CSXT and were interchanged to Pan Am at Rotterdam Junction and since the CSXT acquisition they have often moved via the old Boston and Albany to Worcester before turning north to Ayer. Now they are traveling Norfolk Southern's Southern Tier and former Delaware and Hudson route via Binghamton and Mohawk Yard before handing off to the new Berkshire and Eastern.
Here is one such loaded grain train holding just west of the North Leominster MBTA station on Main 1 at MP 325.1 on the old Freight Main (and 45.1 as measured from North Station via the Fitchburg Line). The train would ultimately sit here for hours unable to go east to Ayer until after intermodal train B101 was built and departed west from Ayer. This train had a nice power consist of two NS units sandwiching a run thru BNSF unit with a Pan Am SD40-2 trailing. Alas, due to the need for an ACSES equipped unit for operation over the commuter territory it was capped with this ugly patch job C40-8 at East Deerfield.
BERX 7489 is a a former Pan Am unit (that used to have MEC reporting marks) part of a group of 30 ex CSXT C40-8s (24 standard cab and 6 wide cab) acquired by Pan Am in 2017 in a deal brokered by GE. With the sale of Pan Am to CSXT effective June 1, 2022 they all once again became the property of their former owner. Finally after a protracted delay Genesee and Wyoming's newly created Berkshire and Eastern Railroad began operating the former Pan Am Southern property as a neutral third party on behalf of parents Norfolk Southern (49%) and CSXT (51%). Consequently 10 of the remaining C40 variants were transferred to the new startup including the three here. Most were quickly patched with new BERX reporting marks and the Pan Am Railways or legacy CSXT logos were painted over.
Leominster, Massachusetts
Friday February 16, 2024
Patiently Waiting
Recently Norfolk Southern has won the contract for unit grain trains destined to the Ardent Milling facility at the Willows east of Ayer. For the last several years they have been moving via CSXT and were interchanged to Pan Am at Rotterdam Junction and since the CSXT acquisition they have often moved via the old Boston and Albany to Worcester before turning north to Ayer. Now they are traveling Norfolk Southern's Southern Tier and former Delaware and Hudson route via Binghamton and Mohawk Yard before handing off to the new Berkshire and Eastern.
Here is one such loaded grain train holding just west of the North Leominster MBTA station on Main 1 at MP 325.1 on the old Freight Main (and 45.1 as measured from North Station via the Fitchburg Line). The train would ultimately sit here for hours unable to go east to Ayer until after intermodal train B101 was built and departed west from Ayer. This train had a nice power consist of two NS units sandwiching a run thru BNSF unit with a Pan Am SD40-2 trailing. Alas, due to the need for an ACSES equipped unit for operation over the commuter territory it was capped with this ugly patch job C40-8 at East Deerfield.
BERX 7489 is a a former Pan Am unit (that used to have MEC reporting marks) part of a group of 30 ex CSXT C40-8s (24 standard cab and 6 wide cab) acquired by Pan Am in 2017 in a deal brokered by GE. With the sale of Pan Am to CSXT effective June 1, 2022 they all once again became the property of their former owner. Finally after a protracted delay Genesee and Wyoming's newly created Berkshire and Eastern Railroad began operating the former Pan Am Southern property as a neutral third party on behalf of parents Norfolk Southern (49%) and CSXT (51%). Consequently 10 of the remaining C40 variants were transferred to the new startup including the three here. Most were quickly patched with new BERX reporting marks and the Pan Am Railways or legacy CSXT logos were painted over.
Leominster, Massachusetts
Friday February 16, 2024