This past week, CSX internal news reports that they are putting 1200 miles up for sale for short line purchase. Besides the earlier spin-offs such as Buckingham Branch, now they want to sell much of the former B&O/WM coal branches west of Cumberland; it’s evident CSX has written off the WV coal fields. All of the lines to go aren’t listed; however the Mountain Sub is.
…I wonder if that list will include the S&C branch, ex…B&O from Rockwood to Johnstown…? If so, hope it can be saved via short line purchase.
CSX has stated that more than 4,000 miles are to go within the next 5 years.
LC
I should’ve also said that includes the Rail America lease of 276 miles and the Buckingham Branch RR transaction and the recently announced WV and MD trackage.
LC
Csx will come to regret this decision as well.
stay safe
Joe
Oh, I forgot to mention the BBRR lease is 199.7 miles…
LC
im starting to think that CSX as a comp is the Titanic…and all corport wants to do is just keep rearanging the deck chairs…
…Sounds like they are going to destroy the system to “save” it…Perhaps they bit off too much to chew on the Conrail deal. What a shame…The Conrail line through here really looked prosperous prior to the takeover by CSX and now it reflects an appearance of a ragtag operation…Once major coal hauling lines are removed, if not sold…the routes will be lost forever. That just doesn’t sound good.
Some things to rememeber about the ‘leasing ploy’.
CSX still retains ownership of the lines. The lessor is getting the responsibility for maintenance.
CSX still retains operating ‘trackage rights’ over the territories, if they decide to excersie them.
CSX continues to dispatch the lines.
The Leasees get to abrograte the CSX labor agreement for the lines they lease and implement their own pay rates and work rules for employees they retain or hire.
The lines that are getting leased have limited interchage opportunities to competitng carriers and thereby insure CSX gets the ‘road haul’ portion of the revenue divisions of most traffic that continues to be handled on the leased lins, without the expense of dealing directly with the customer…
…Hoping lots of the milage we’re talking about does go to a lease…But I really wonder about any short line leasing the S&C and if not, that may spell out the end of that operation. Thats hard for me to accept remembering the major amount of coal drags that came out of that region plus Mill products out of Johnstown and new rail cars hauled to Rockwood to meet the main B&O line for delivery elseware. And other misc. products as well. Still some of the above occurs. No coal though that I’m aware of. Even passenger trains back in another era…
thier are still coal drags on the S&C once in a great while…not very common…and i dont know if any have come out in the past year or so…but they still do happen…
csx engineer
Saw a string of hoppers sitting on the S&C just outside of Rockwood at Wilson Creek area yesterday. Hopefully it (the S&C) won’t be outright abandonded.