Short line mysteries

[dmaze]

So now this NHN thing really fascinates me. They seem to own a half-dozen or so engines and some amount of rolling stock; who maintains them, and where? It doesn't seem like it'd be economical to build a repair facility for that little equipment, but you also can't really let your trains rot. And how do trains get from point A to point B? It seems like NHN's main purpose is to move sand between Ossipee, NH and Boston, but even if NHN/BSG owns the rail on both ends, you still need to move across MBTA and Guilford/B&M track in between, which presumably involves some exchange of money and some scheduling. (Apparently NHN owns about 40 miles of track between the Guilford main line in Dover, NH and Ossipee.) Though the "scheduling" aspect does explain why I've only seen NHN trains parked at the Boston BSG facility or after midnight.

And of course, the final question is, "is it actually economical for Boston Sand and Gravel to own a railroad"? Presumably BSG could contract with someone like Guilford to actually move the sand (and for all I know NHN does subcontract to Guilford for maintenance and crews); the only issue is the capital, and I could see it being convenient for various federal regulations to have a separate company doing that. I could also seeing Guilford saying "but we'd have to buy sand hoppers then, and you'd be our only customer for that, so no".

Comments

[eichin.livejournal.com]

They might have on-time constraints - traditionally railroads would not guarantee arrival time at all. But I think the sand-hopper issue seems unlikely - I thought a lot of industrial processorts owned their own boxcars and such, even if they owned no locomotives and had all the transit handled by railroad companies - wasn't there even a shortage of boxcars in the early 90's due to some large companies hoarding them (and a drop in manufacture of new cars...)?