Today’s news of the creation of Pan Am Southern suprised me. The new railroad company is jointly owned by Norfolk Southern and Pan Am Railways. Pan Am’s mainline between Mechanicsville, NY and Ayer, MA, as well as over 200 miles of secondary and branch lines (including Pan Am’s line here in Connecticut) will all be operated by Pan Am Southern. Locomotives will be provided by the Springfield Terminal. All this is a result of Norfolk Southern wanting to compete for traffic with CSX in the northeast. So what should we expect from this? Do you think Norfolk Southern’s involvement will actually increase train traffic on these lines? I hope so. I would like to know what other railfans think about this…
The official announcement .pdf file from NS is in this thread:
My prediction is, the NS is in this venture to grow the business, so you will see more traffic on most of the PAN AM Southern lines. The NS is good at marketing and being involved with industrial development. They also have far more resources than Pan AM, so you should see a lot of infrastucture improvements. Pan Am always seemed to be in shrink mode and abandoned a lot of lines that could have/should have been viable, they also have some serious customer service issues. I hope now things will get better for New England.
Jim
That is exactly what I believe. There is no way that NS would let this deal fall apart. I’m not crazy about the name. Pan Am Southern? I can understand Connecticut Southern and New England Southern, but Pan Am Southern? Oh well I am sure I’ll get used to it. I hope that the changes begin to take effect soon regardless of whatever they name it. Improved track and train service is something New England has been waiting for for a long time…that being said Guilford did not do an aweful job. I’ll miss the old “reticent regional” as quoted by Trains Magazine.
My friend (username Guilford Guy) bought the domain name for panamsouthern.com…[:O]
Wonder if the company will want it…[:)]