Freight opportunities on the NEC route?

[johnmckenzie]

Hi guys

Being a non-American and not being overly familiar with the route, what's the likelihood of being able to run realistic freight scenarios on this route?

If so, which road names are likely to be seen nowadays, and which types of freight traffic are handled?

Many thanks!

[micaelcorleone]

Hi guys

Being a non-American and not being overly familiar with the route, what's the likelihood of being able to run realistic freight scenarios on this route?

If so, which road names are likely to be seen nowadays, and which types of freight traffic are handled?

Also being not an American, I had to look it up myself.

This is what wiki says:
"Freight service is provided on the Northeast Corridor by trackage rights. The Norfolk Southern Railway operates over the line south of Philadelphia, and CSX Transportation has rights from New York to New Haven and in Massachusetts. CSX also has rights between Landover, MD and Bowie, MD, where the CSX Landover Subdivision and Pope's Creek Subdivision, respectively, diverge from the NEC. Between Philadelphia and New York, Conrail, which formerly provided service on the whole line, still operates over the line, as a local switching and terminal company for both CSX and Norfolk Southern. (See Conrail Shared Assets Operations.) The Providence and Worcester Railroad operates local freight service from New Haven into Rhode Island and has incidental trackage rights from New Haven to New York."

So, Norfolk Southern operates on the Railworks version.
I think that NEC freights are much shorter than the freights that run on predominat freight lines.

[styckx]

Freight is rare on the NEC in the day and mostly happens at night before the morning rush. During the day it isn't uncommon to see equipment moves or a couple lone geeps running down the stretch. Best equipment move I saw was a geep pulling a ALP44 and about 18 arrow III's. Other than that it is hard to say since most freight runs under the cover of night.

[kevarc]

There are very few freights on this section. Most through freights were moved off of the line when CR was formed. They moved to the parallel B&O/Chessie/CSX line to the west.

If I was at home and had access to my material I could give you a better answer. I may get to go home next weekend and if I do, I'll bring back a few things.

[Toripony]

Good question! I am U.S. (near the east coast even) and I didn't know this either. Even ridden the route once (9 hours from DC to Boston); saw trains but couldn't tell what tracks they were on. One thing I noticed is that we seemed to be riding the most eastern track available; all other traffic was out the west-side windows of my train. Similar to the highways in this region (check your maps) it is truly a corridor with multiple paralleling highways. It sounds like the rails are the same way. Would be great to see an overview map showing just the mainlines and who/what owns/runs on what.

[kevarc]

Tori - go here - http://softrail.com/
Their dispatching sim has a real good NEC coverage

At TS file library try
gdepack.zip
nec40map.zip
neguide2.zip

While they are for MSTS, they still will apply.

[Chessie8638]

This is the only thing freight related I'd ever seen on the NEC. Must have been a quick move since it was the height of the evening rush: http://youtu.be/hA32KiT8YlQ?t=2m35s

[micaelcorleone]

and who/what owns/runs on what.

Doesn't Amtrak own nearly all the tracks on the NEC?

[Chessie8638]

"Amtrak owns the track between Washington and New Rochelle, New York (Just north of NYC). New Rochelle to New Haven is owned by the states of New York and Connecticut. North of New Haven, ownership again reverts to Amtrak, whose tracks stretch to the border between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The final segment from the border north to Boston is owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_ ... escription

[kevarc]

Amtrak does own the track, but Conrail Shared Assets serves any customers on the line.

NS does run a couple of manifests over it as does CSX, mostly to serve Oak Island Yard and a few other places.

The line between Philly and NY are divided into to areas - North and South Jersey Shared Asset Areas.

While Dated, this will give you a handle on things
http://centralnjfan.railfan.net/njsaa.html

[johnmckenzie]

Thanks, guys!

[Spin]

If you run an earlier era, the line was part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, later the Penn Central Railroad. At that time, it was part of the NY-Chicago mainline, and saw lots of freight trains and passenger trains. With more and more PRR stuff coming out, it'll be possible to "backdate" the NEC.

When Penn Central became part of Conrail, they were able to use other routes between Philadelphia and NYC, and into Washington DC, and the line was sold to Amtrak.

[ChuckF]

Hi! I'm building a CSX scenario for my own use, in which I first cloned the route, and then I've made extensive modification to track and assets on the south track. I can now run from Philadephia to NJ Hudson Yard doing lots of pick-ups, drop-offs and classification. The next part is to have this interact with AI traffic. A lot of work for one scenario. Cheers; Chuck F.