9/11 PATH Car Dedicated at Shore Line Trolley Museum

(SOURCE:  Shore Line Trolley Museum)

PATH subway car 745 received a ceremonial welcome on Thursday, August 6th at the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, where it has joined one of the most diverse collections of historic transit vehicles in North America.

The car which is being donated is one of two that were found in a cast iron tunnel, the strength of which protected the cars intact from the pressures from the collapsing buildings above. On the morning of 9/11 they were sent to the World Trade Center to pick up passengers, but with evacuation underway, the cars were simply left standing in the tunnel.  No passengers were found inside when the car was discovered during excavation. Car 745, which since that time has been housed in an airplane hangar at JFK Airport, is still in the same condition as when it was excavated from the tunnel in the World Trade Center clean up. The car was to be included in the 9/11 Memorial Museum but was determined to be too big for their site.
 
Shortly after 11:00AM, the procession began from the East Haven Green down River Street, which was lined with emergency service vehicles and several hundred onlookers.  An honor guard and bagpipe ensemble from FDNY were joined by men and women from local emergency services departments, elected officials, and museum representatives in the march.  The beginning of the route was marked by passing beneath an American flag waving in the breeze between the extended ladders of of an East Haven and Branford tower aerial truck.  The end of the route was the trolley museum’s Sprague Station, where a small podium had been constructed for several short speeches.

Presentations were given by East Haven Mayor Joe Maturo, Branford Selectmen James Cosgrove and Joseph Higgins Jr., State Representative Sean Scanlon, CT U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, and museum representatives president Jeff Hakner, trustee Alan Zelazo and general manager Wayne Sandford.

Later in the day, the Silk Road trailer upon which car 745 rode was carefully placed into position so the car could join the museum’s collection.  With a few onlookers still watching, another New York subway car, NYCTA “Redbird” 6688, was coupled into position to bring 745 onto museum rails.  The grit and grime of 14 years of stationary confinement was shook loose and 745’s wheels turned for the first time since as it touched down around 2:25PM.

In the late afternoon, the car was switched through the back end of the museum’s trolley yard and into position where it can now be seen by the public as part of the museum’s main guided tour route.  In 2016, 745 will be joined by WTC station signage, tunnel pieces, and other artifacts in a more permanent exhibit.  We welcome this opportunity to interpret another important and society-shaping component of American history.

The Shore Line Trolley Museum wishes to thank everyone who helped to make the day a success, especially those first responders who came to participate and remember a day of terrible self sacrifice.  Additional photos of car 745’s arrival are found below.  Car 745 is expected to be on exhibit for the public to see for remainder of the museum’s 2015 season of regular trolley operations & tours.

Amtrak Downeaster in Recovery Mode After Dismal Year

(SOURCE:  Portland Press Herald, Tom Bell)


For the first time in four months, Downeaster trains returned to normal schedules Saturday, signaling what supporters hope will be a new era following the service’s dreadful performance over the past 15 months.

“The great New England passenger rail nightmare is over!” exclaimed TrainRiders/Northeast, a pro-rail citizen group, on its Facebook page.

A nightmare it was.

When the rail service’s books closed June 30, it reported an annual on-time performance of only 30 percent – less than half the Amtrak national average of 71 percent. In May, the Downeaster’s worst month, not a single train arrived on time. In June, fewer than 8 percent arrived on time. In addition, 13 percent of trains – 488 trains in all – never made it out of the station in fiscal year 2015 because their trips were canceled, mostly due to construction.

Two bridge repair projects in Massachusetts last spring and this year’s harsh winter caused numerous delays and cancellations, but most of the woes were due to a massive tie-replacement project that took months longer to complete than anticipated.

Passengers responded by finding other ways to travel. In all, the service had nearly 100,000 fewer riders than the 536,524 in the previous fiscal year, an 18.2 percent drop.

One former fan is Kristina Egan, who lives in Freeport and travels two to three days a week to Massachusetts.

Before the construction began, Egan rode the Downeaster all the time because she enjoys its smooth ride and roomy seats. But after missing several meetings in Massachusetts, she switched to the Concord Coach Lines bus.

“I can’t afford to miss an important meeting because I like the train better than the bus,” said Egan, who heads Transportation for Massachusetts, a group that advocates for transit funding.

Another is Anthony Zeli of Portland, a longtime fan of trains who now rides the Concord bus to Boston if he needs to get somewhere on time. The train, he said, is only suitable for a “lazy and enjoyable weekend trip.”

A CREDIBILITY PROBLEM
Winning back disgruntled rail passengers is now the goal for the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which operates the Downeaster. Once touted as a national model for how regional rail lines should be operated, the service is in recovery mode. The rail authority plans to lure back passengers by stepping up its advertising efforts, which had been put on the shelf during the construction project, and launching promotional fares, such as a 25 percent discount for travel on the midday trains, which were the most disrupted by the construction.

In the end though, marketing specialists say, what matters to the public is performance.
Amtrak and the rail authority have a credibility problem, said Karen DeMitto of Portland, who depends on public transportation because she does not own a car.

She said Amtrak employees who staffed its toll-free line didn’t seem to know what was happening with the service whenever she called to ask if a train was running. She said rail authority officials, in communications with the public, consistently underestimated how long the construction project would last.

“It was always, ‘Maybe next week it will be fixed,’ ” she said. “I was trying to get to Brunswick for the last seven weeks. Every week they said next week might be better, but it wasn’t.”

Any time a transit agency is experiencing major problems, it needs to tell the public what the problems are, why they are occurring and when they will be fixed, said Kenneth Hitchner, a former spokesman for New Jersey Transit who now manages public relations for Creative Marketing Alliance, a firm in New Jersey.

“When you are selling a service, it’s always about managing expectations,” he said.

But the delays and cancellations are symptoms of a deeper problem, said Dennis Bailey, who owns a public relations firm in Portland. The entire Amtrak system is plagued with decaying infrastructure because of inadequate funding, said Bailey, who last year worked for a Brunswick group that opposed the rail authority’s plans to construct a layover facility in Brunswick.

“They are not going to spin their way out of it,” he said. “There are some real issues they are going to have to resolve to match their PR.”

SINGLE-TRACK BLUES
It wasn’t always like this. For years, the Downeaster was seen as a model for expanding rail service elsewhere in the country. Its customer satisfaction rates, ridership growth and on-time performance were regularly among the highest in the Amtrak system.

The Downeaster’s woes began in April 2014, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority began to rehabilitate three railroad bridges spanning the Merrimack River in Haverhill, including a bridge the Downeaster uses.

Then, in May of that year, rail inspectors determined that harsh winter weather and heavy snow melt had destabilized the ground under about 27 noncontiguous miles of track, mostly between Portland and the New Hampshire border. Because the Downeaster operates on a single track, trains were canceled or delayed to give the crews time to make repairs.

Last winter’s harsh weather caused numerous delays and cancellations. In February, a southbound train was stranded in a remote area of North Berwick because of an engine problem. The train eventually arrived in Boston more than six hours late.

The weather delays were compounded by a project to replace 30,000 rail ties on the 78-mile line that Pan Am Railways owns between Portland and the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border. The rail authority bought the ties for $2.3 million, and Pan Am paid for the equipment and labor to install them.

Pan Am replaced 8,000 ties last year. This year, however, the “tie gang” – the Pan Am crew that removes the old ties and replaces them with new ones – didn’t begin work until late May. The project was delayed by a number of factors. Some heavy equipment Pan Am needed for the project was delivered late by the manufacturer. Amtrak tried to send heavy equipment to Maine, but the shipment was delayed by an Amtrak derailment on May 12 in Philadelphia.

Now that the tie-replacement project is finished, the rail authority plans to increase its marketing effort. It has $520,000 to spend, including $40,000 carried over from last year’s budget.

The authority plans to use television, print and search-engine advertising. The message will be the same as in recent years, which is to highlight the “high quality, high value” experience of the rider, said Natalie Bogart, marketing director of the rail authority.

She said the authority won’t be talking about how it will overcome its recent poor on-time performance because a large segment of the target audience never rode the train before or encountered a problem.

“There are a lot of people who have been disrupted,” she said, “but a lot of people didn’t know anything happened.”

Patricia Quinn, executive director of the rail authority, said she’s confident she can get those who have abandoned the train to give it another chance.

“We are going to be more reliable than we have been in a long time,” she said. “It will take some time, but we will have to earn that reputation back.”

Promotions are a nice gesture, but passengers will return if they trust the service, said Wayne Davis, who heads TrainRiders/Northeast, which successfully lobbied the state in the early 1990s to establish the train service.

“I think just delivering people on time is the most important thing we can do,” he said.
Egan, who now rides the bus to Massachusetts, said she will be looking at the service’s performance carefully before deciding to take the train again.

“I need to see a couple of weeks of close-to-perfect performance and an explanation of why all the delays happened over this past year and how they are not going to happen over the next year,” she said.

Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Rwy Seeks to Dump Rail Tie Yard in Hermon ME

(SOURCE:  BDN Maine, Darren Fishell)

PORTLAND, Maine — The trustee for the bankrupt Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway wants to abandon property at Northern Maine Junction in Hermon that contains a pile of railroad ties treated with chemicals state and town officials believe may pose a long-term environmental threat.

The railroad’s trustee, attorney Robert Keach, has filed a motion seeking court approval to abandon the 5.5-acre property that contains piles of railroad ties treated with creosote to preserve the wood.

The most common type of creosote comes from coal tar, which the International Agency for Research on Cancer has found is likely carcinogenic to humans. Rats and mice that ingested small amounts of creosote over a long time developed kidney and liver problems, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection and town officials in Hermon have expressed concern about the railroad ties.

But Keach wrote that the railroad ties do not pose an imminent threat to human health and that continued ownership by the bankruptcy estate stands to take away from creditors for the railroad.

“The estate lacks sufficient resources to cover the considerable costs associated with maintenance or to address any potential environmental liability,” Keach wrote in a motion to abandon the property. “Further, the Hermon parcel does not produce any value for the state or its creditors. The Hermon parcel, however, poses no imminent threat to the health, safety or welfare of the public.”

Hermon Town Manager Roger Raymond said town officials are concerned about the possibility of springtime grass fires igniting the creosote-treated rail ties adjacent to the tracks, or of creosote leaching into the ground.

“We’re concerned that that area will catch on fire and that some of these ties will burn during the fire,” Raymond said.

Raymond said the town has shared its concerns about piles of railroad ties along tracks that run through the town. Hermon is home to the junction of the north-south line of the former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway and the east-west line of Pan Am Railways.

The issue came up at a Town Council meeting months ago, Raymond said, and town officials have attempted to get in touch with the relevant owners of the railroad tracks and shared their concerns with the Maine DEP.

The railroad’s bankruptcy started after a massive oil train crash in 2013 on its line through Lac-Megantic, Quebec, which resulted in the death of 48 people. Those victims and their families have been offered a settlement to split $85.7 million ($111.2 million Canadian) for damages. Victims and other creditors are set to vote on the settlement package by Sept. 10.

Just more than one year ago, the useful assets of the railroad were sold to the New York-based Fortress Investment Group for $15.85 million, in a deal that excluded the 5.5-acre railroad tie yard.

Keach wrote the land is of no value to other potential buyers and that Fortress refused to take the parcel as part of its purchase agreement.

State environmental regulators this week asked for and received an extension to file a response to the request to abandon the potentially contaminated parcel of land and the related railroad ties stored there, noting it learned of the abandonment plan July 27.

The DEP has an Aug. 13 deadline to evaluate the abandonment request and prepare a response.

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Man Fatally Struck by MBTA Train | NECN

Man Fatally Struck by MBTA Train | NECN

A man in his 30s is dead after being struck by an MBTA train around 2 p.m. Saturday, according to Transit Police.

The man was with two other people trying to cross the tracks at Brockton Station when he was hit by a Middleborough Line train.

The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

The train involved was a test train meant to check the conditions of the tracks.

Transit police and and the Plymouth County District Attorney's Office are
investigating the incident. Foul play is not suspected.

Irving Ends Rail Shipping of Crude Oil Through Maine

(SOURCE:  Portland Press Herald - By Tom Bell)

Irving Oil has stopped shipping crude oil on railroads through Maine and has no plans to revive the practice.

The Canadian company, which operates an oil refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, confirmed the policy change in a June 30 email to the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.

The change means there will be no more oil shipments though New Hampshire and southern and central Maine on Pan Am Railways. In addition, there will be no more oil shipments on the Eastern Maine Railway, which connects with Pan Am at Mattawamkeag and continues through Washington County to the Canadian border.

The cutback is because of global oil-supply-and-demand issues and is not related to the fallout from the Lac-Megantic rail disaster, Mark Sherman, Irving’s chief operating officer, told the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting. The U.S. demand for Canadian-produced petroleum products has declined in the wake of an oversupply of oil from domestic and Mideast sources.

In 2012, Maine railroads shipped 5.2 million barrels of crude oil, but shipments declined sharply after the July 6, 2013 accident in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, when an unattended 74-car freight train carrying Bakken crude oil rolled and derailed, resulting in a fire and explosion that killed 47 people.

The railroad involved in the disaster, the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, never carried oil again and went bankrupt. Its successor, the Central Maine & Quebec Railway, also has never carried oil because of political opposition in Lac-Megantic.

Pan Am, whose trains travel through Portland, carried just 15,545 barrels of oil in all of 2014, according to records the company filed with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. In 2015, Pan Am has carried 37,128 barrels. All those shipments occurred in February, the last month the railroad delivered oil to the Irving refinery, according to the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.

An official with Pan Am could not immediately be reached for comment.

John Giles, CEO of Central Maine & Quebec Railway, had been seeking an agreement with Lac-Megantic officials to restart oil train shipments through the Canadian town. On Tuesday, Giles said the railroad does not need to carry oil to be profitable.

“I was never counting on moving crude oil in the first place,” Giles said.

Giles said his railroad spent $10 million to upgrade the rail line last year and is spending $6 million this year, with about half of that investment in Maine.

An investigation after the Lac-Megantic accident found that the tank-car labels understated the flammability of the oil. Twenty-five companies have offered a total of $431 million (Canadian) to settle lawsuits arising out of the disaster. Irving Oil’s contribution is $75 million. The settlement is being considered by U.S. and Canadian courts.

Providence & Worcester Rail Yard in Line for $450K from State

(SOURCE:  Telegram.com -By Lisa Eckelbecker - Telegram & Gazette Staff )

BOSTON - State grants worth more than $2 million will go to industrial railroad projects in Massachusetts, including a grant of almost $456,000 to Providence and Worcester Railroad Co. in Worcester.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation said it awarded five grants as part of the state's Industrial Rail Access Program, which gives money to businesses and municipalities to boost economic growth by improving rail networks.

In Worcester, the state grant will go toward work at the Providence and Worcester Southbridge Street railroad yard, the state reported. The railroad is a freight carrier.

Catania Spagna Corp. of Ayer, which processes and sells oils, was awarded $500,000 for rail siding track expansion and unloading improvements in Ayer, DOT said in a news release.

The state reported other grants were awarded to Borden & Remington Corp. of Fall River, $383,910; Pioneer Valley Railroad of Westfield, $175,045; and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and Fore River Railroad Corp. of Quincy, $500,000.