This was posted on today's Trains News Wire.... NS, Pan Am partner on New England corridor Print | Email | Contact Us May 16, 2008 NORFOLK, Va. - Norfolk Southern Railway and Pan Am Railways are jointly creating a new corridor for intermodal and auto parts shipments to New England, the two railroads announced today. Pan Am will transfer ownership of its Mechanicville, N.Y.-Ayer, Mass., line, plus 281 miles of New England branch lines, to the Pan Am Southern, a new railroad that NS and Pan Am will jointly own. The project is to be known as the Patriot Corridor. The Conrail split left NS competitor CSX with direct access to Boston, but NS without any. Instead, NS has relied on a partnership with Canadian Pacific Railway and Pan Am to get freight to New England destinations. The Pan Am Southern partnership represents another step in this direction. Pan Am's Springfield Terminal subsidiary will provide all railroad services for the joint venture. NS will provide $140 million in cash and property to the venture. Of that, $87.5 million is planned for investment in the next three years; it will go toward capital improvements. Those improvements, NS hopes, will give NS the capacity it needs to meet rising demand from customers.
This sounds quite innovative. Good. They're going out and competing. The way it should be done. Hmmm. Is this all ex-B&M territory? Boxcab E50
Yup, this was B&M's Fitchburg Division. I lived in Hoosick, NY between '47 and '53, a stone's throw from those tracks. The daily FTs, F2s, Moguls, Consolidations, and Minute Man, B&M's equivalent to the Q's Pioneer Zephyr, were wonderful to watch.
Wonder what effect this will have on the rest of the Pan Am system and theremaining class IIs and IIIs here in New England.
Are NS flagged engines running on the Patriot corridor or do they use the PanAm newly painted engines?
