Norfolk Southern launches its first New England double-stack service

AYER, Mass. — Norfolk Southern marked a milestone on Tuesday morning when its first New England double-stack train arrived in Ayer, Mass., behind its Conrail and Delaware & Hudson heritage units.

With NS engineer Matt Bushart at the throttle and conductor Adam Feeley in the left-hand seat, Chicago-Ayer intermodal train 264 made its inaugural run over CSX trackage rights between the Albany, N.Y., area and the Ayer intermodal terminal 40 miles northwest of Boston.

Accompanying them in the cab of ES44AC No. 8098: Bushart’s father, Randal, an engineer who now is CSX’s manager of passenger operations. “This was a big deal for us to be together on a nice run over the railroad,” the elder Bushart said. “It was special having the Conrail and D&H heritage units on since I worked for both railroads.”

The 4,057-foot train, designated Z618 on CSX east of the new NS connection at Voorheesville, N.Y., delivered double-stacked J.B. Hunt and EMP containers to Ayer. The train previously ran via Pan Am Southern’s former Boston & Maine main line from Mechanicville, N.Y., to Ayer — a route that cannot accommodate double stacks due to clearance restrictions in the 4.75-mile Hoosac Tunnel in western Massachusetts.

As part of CSX’s 2022 acquisition of Pan Am Railways, NS and CSX reached a trackage-rights agreement that allows NS to run the daily pair of intermodal trains over CSX between Voorheesville and Ayer via Selkirk, N.Y., and Worcester, Mass. NS has a separate trackage rights agreement with Genesee & Wyoming short line Providence & Worcester to use a short segment of its track in Worcester to connect with CSX’s former Pan Am Railways line to Ayer.

Before the trains could shift to CSX’s faster route over the Selkirk, Berkshire, and Boston subdivisions, NS funded-clearance work was required in and north of Worcester. The project included lowering the floors in a pair of P&W tunnels in Worcester and raising three bridges on the former PAR line between Worcester and Ayer.

Also required: Rebuilding the 15-mile former D&H Voorheesville Running Track from Delanson to Voorheesville. Short line SMS Rail Lines used roughly a mile of the line between the D&H main and an auto terminal in Delanson. But east of there the line had not seen a train since the 1990s.

Fittingly enough, Matt Bushart was an engineer with SMS before hiring on with NS 2½ years ago to handle the stack trains between Voorheesville and Ayer. While awaiting the launch, he was based at the NS hub in Binghamton, N.Y., and ran trains to Mechanicville, N.Y., and Enola, Pa.

Eric Hendrickson, the NS manager of strategic planning who oversaw the 4½-year, $63 million effort to shift the trains to the CSX route, says the conversion to what’s now dubbed East Edge Double Stack service will allow the railroad to double its New England intermodal volume.

The railroad’s New England intermodal traffic has been growing since G&W’s Berkshire & Eastern became the operator of the Pan Am Southern in 2023 and made its operations consistent and reliable, Hendrickson says. Pan Am Southern, initially a joint venture between Pan Am Railways and NS, has been an NS-CSX partnership since CSX’s acquisition of PAR.

The new route is 10 hours faster than the Hoosac Tunnel route, with roughly half the time savings due to the trains not having to work the intermodal terminal in Mechanicville, N.Y. (New Binghamton-East Deerfield, Mass., trains 17R and 18R now work Mechanicville.)

Locomotive gremlins delayed the inaugural train’s departure from Binghamton, where blocks of traffic are set out for Mechanicville and the Taylor, Pa., terminal near Scranton.

The train was ready to depart on schedule. But a balky electrical component in the cab of the D&H heritage unit SD70ACe No. 1080 would not allow the cab signals to function as required for the trip over CSX’s former Boston & Albany main line. After attempts to fix the glitch were unsuccessful, the power was uncoupled from the train and turned so the D&H unit was trailing.

The train was 2 hours, 7 minutes late when it departed Voorheesville, but made up time en route over CSX and entered the terminal in Ayer about 30 minutes behind schedule. “Had we not had the locomotive problem we would have been early,” Hendrickson says.

The cab signal problem was fixed in Ayer in time for the D&H unit to lead today’s first westbound stack train 265, which ran as Z619 on CSX. Subsequent runs of the train will carry Z264/Z265 symbols while on CSX.

Norfolk Southern New England Intermodal Project Details

Voorheesville Running Track Upgrades

• Rail and ties: 15 miles of dual rail replaced; more than 13,600 crossties installed
• Speed: Operating speeds boosted to 25 mph
• Support: Two NS capital production gangs — R4 (rail replacement) and TS8 (crosstie replacement)
• 15 miles of brush cutting and ditching
• 14 crossings renewed or replaced
• 7 greaser pads installed
• 2 walking pads built for crew changes

Clearance and Structural Upgrades

• Bridges: Beaman Street, Hartwell Street, and Squareshire Road on PAR in Massachusetts raised 10 to 15 inches
• Tunnels: Worcester project modified two box culverts across a combined 2,000-foot stretch for safe clearance
• Other work: 150 bridge ties replaced; 27 culverts replaced and inspected

Signal and Safety Enhancements

• Nine crossings enabled with renewed operations
• One new crossing installed with CSX in Voorheesville, N.Y.
• Crossing warning speeds boosted from 10 mph to 25 mph
• Automatic Equipment Identification (AEI) reader installed to track railcars and locomotives via radio frequency tags
• New approach signal added in Delanson, N.Y.

Source: Norfolk Southern