WASHINGTON — Canadian National says its proposed acquisition of CSX Transportation’s line linking Montreal with Syracuse, N.Y., will improve service for cross-border traffic.
CN, last week, sought U.S. Surface Transportation Board approval of the transaction involving the sale of 236.3 miles of track in New York state. CN also proposed a schedule for review of the deal, including an effective closing date of May 7, 2020, under the board’s rules for minor transactions.
The Massena Line sale totals 278.1 miles between Beauharnois, Quebec, and Woodard, N.Y., including 41.8 miles of trackage in Quebec and branch lines and spurs on both sides of the border. Among them: CSX’s 31-mile Fulton Subdivision.
CN will house the U.S. trackage under its Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad subsidiary. The acquisition cost was redacted in CN’s Oct. 10 regulatory filing, which was posted to the board’s website on Oct. 11.
The deal will move the CN-CSX revenue interchange to Woodard, N.Y., just north of Syracuse, from the current location at Huntingdon, Quebec. From an operational perspective, however, the railroads will exchange traffic at CSX’s Dewitt Yard in Syracuse and CSX’s Belle Isle Yard near Solvay, N.Y.
Janet Drysdale, CN’s vice president of financial planning, wrote that CN sought to acquire the line in order to preserve CN’s direct connection with CSX.
“CNR did not want an additional railroad to operate over the Massena Lines as a bridge carrier between the CN System and CSX,” she wrote. “Inserting an additional railroad into that CN System-CSX joint route would reduce operating efficiency, increase costs, and increase transit times by adding another interchange and requiring coordination with and participation of a third carrier in addition to the CN System and CSX, to the detriment of existing interline customers of the CN System and of CSX that move overhead traffic over the U.S. Massena Lines.”
New CN through trains M327 and M326, which will carry mixed manifest and intermodal traffic, will run between CN’s Taschereau Yard in Montreal and Dewitt.
The trains will replace two pairs of trains CSX currently uses to handle through traffic, which includes Selkirk-Massena, N.Y., trains Q620 and Q621 as well as a pair of transfer jobs, B798 and B799, that run between Massena and Huntingdon.
“Eliminating these two transfer assignments will avoid delays that result from coordinating crew schedules for those trains,” CN says. “This will improve overall efficiency of operations, reducing total transit time by approximately 24 hours.”
Another transfer job, Massena-St. Agnes, Quebec train B762, will be abolished as well.
Trains M327/M326 will haul traffic gained under the new interline intermodal service CN and CSX launched last week to link Montreal with New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.
“If sufficient demand for this CN system-CSX interline expedited intermodal service develops at a later time, new intermodal trains will operate between Montreal and the new interchange with CSX at Woodard, N.Y., but these trains would constitute organic rather than transaction-related traffic growth,” CN says.
About 45% of the carload traffic moving over the Massena line is through traffic linking Canada and the U.S.
CN says it will work with local customers to develop additional business on the line.
The railroad’s regulatory filing included a letter of support from Alcoa, which operates an aluminum smelter in Massena that is served by Genesee & Wyoming short line Massena Terminal Railroad. Massena Terminal also says it supports the line sale to CN, as did two members of the New York congressional delegation, Reps. John Katko and Elise Stefanik.
CN will boost employment on the line to 53 positions, up from 50 under CSX.
Under the terms of the deal, CN will not gain or seek connections to either the New York, Susequehanna & Western or the Finger Lakes Railway.
CN also will drop inactive trackage rights on the St. Lawrence Subdivision between Fort Covington, N.Y., and Massena. CN gained the trackage rights in 1989, when it sold the Huntington-Massena segment to Conrail.
CN on Aug. 29 announced it had reached a deal to acquire the Massena Line from CSX.
The line sale is part of CSX’s ongoing effort to spin off low-density routes that are not considered core to its system. The route was among those put out to bid last year.
Herb that’s now what it started out about it was to get to the jersey ports and lower NY. state and Mass ports, also, a more direct routing .
I think the primary rationale behind this move is assuring access to the mid-west U.S. market and, of course, mid-Atlantic, from the expanded Port pf Montreal. Those were publically stated intentions at the time the Port expansion was announced. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I don’t thinl we’ll see any 100 mph running per the predecessor Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg.
Still say the former Delaware & Hudson route that Canadian Pacific took over that runs thru Rouses Point is a more direct route to New Jersey and lower New York State and the Port of Albany from Montreal they should have made a deal with Canadian Pacific
wow….another change of owners for the “Fulton secondary” if the new York Ontario owners could see it know! Well from fulton north to Oswego anyways……Not much anymore going on there anyways!
Since the propossil how would FT Drum be getting supplies if CN gets the line?
Trains magazine – thanks for great maps to follow along. Better than older attempts at a google map with a dot on it – keep up the great new mapping
Leo Ames, you got it right.
CN should buy the Susie Q and CN should tell CSX to provide a connection or else. I’m not familiar enough to suggest the or else but CN is big enough to figure out an or else.
Brayden: I think the end statements in the article sum it up pretty well. Absolutely no interchange to anyone other than CSX, paper barriers galore… they even went as far as to include Finger Lakes in this. CSX will never sell their shares as long as NYSW can be used as a detour route.
Would have thought any self-respecting company would have told CSX to pound sand with the kind of contractual baggage they’re throwing in. EHH was correct as far as reciprocal switching goes, if a class 1 is willing to spin off a line purely to save money, they should have to face market competition from any new interchanges created and not be holding the constituent shippers hostage.
Why not a connection to NYS&W at Syracuse?
My guess is that CSX made that a condition of the sale.
A connection to Susquehanna could potentially route CN-NJ traffic away from CSX.
“Under the terms of the deal, CN will not gain or seek connections to either the New York, Susequehanna & Western or the Finger Lakes Railway”
The above statement say it all about CSX and CN — anti-competitive collusion between 2 class 1’s to the detriment of the public and shippers.
Woodard is certainly not a logical interchange, and the physical separation between Woodard and the NYS&W and Finger Lakes is done for the explicit intention of not allowing bridge traffic.
Another reason why we need regulation to enforce a competitive industry
I think I figured it out.
I thought Adirondack Junction was here in Delson (45.3690396,-73.5500256), with the idle NYC/PC/CR/CSX line in question heading off the SW and connecting to the Canadian National portion of the Massena line at 45.089505, -74.181136 in Huntingdon. So this instead is the abandoned CN line?
I’m assuming this is the section you’re talking about, starting about here in Beauharnois (45.309885, -73.882987) and continuing on to what must be Adirondack Junction (?) at 45.402169, -73.653810?
Thanks for setting me straight after many years of confusion about this idle part of the line.
Sounds like I’m confused, Jf Turcotte.
Any chance of posting the start and end coordinates for this section for me, so I that could check it out on an online aerial map? Clearly I was following the wrong route before.
For all of the faults in Hunter Harrison’s philosophy, the one thing he was right about was the importance of competition. If he were still alive today running CSX, the paper barriers to interchanging with the Finger Lakes and the Susie-Q would never have been included as apart of this sale.
As for the possibility of CN taking over the Susie-Q, they would have to acquire either CSX’s or Norfolk Southern’s shares (they both own 40% each), and Deleware Oswego’s shares (they own 20%), to get thr majority of the board to vote in favor of the purchase. When EHH first took over CSX it was rumored that CSX would sell their shares, but this appears not to be the case. CSX under Jim Foote seems to be more defensive when it comes to retaining lines then EHH.
Leo Ames, I think you’re mixing two separate lines. The former CN Massena subdivision between Huntingdon and Delson is indeed gone (it was severed in 1993 and the last remnants were removed in 2007); its former right-of-way was indeed severed by highway 30, and it will never come back.
But the former New-York Central line from Beauharnois to Adirondack Jct (where it connects with Canadian Pacific’s Adirondack sub) is still partly intact, except, as I said, where the track was destroyed through vandalism by Kahnawake residents. Word is that Exo was considering restoring the rails that were illegally removed and running a commuter rail service between Beauharnois and Lucien l’Allier station, joining path with the existing Candiac line at Adirondack Jct.
I don’t how serious this proposal is; these days, everyone in Montreal is raving for the new REM low-capacity light-rail scam and nobody sees any future for a classic commuter rail service. But a REM-type service simply would not be feasible for this corridor (no available bridge to cross the St.Lawrence river), and overcrowding on the nearby Mercier bridge won’t easier anytime soon.
One item that lingers.. Are CSX, NS, and Mr. Rich owners of DOCPA LLC which in turn owns the NYS&W willing to sell their shares to CN down the road? If a plan ever develops for CN to directly serve the NYC market?…
I wonder if the CN road trains will work at Valleyfield and Cecile or if traffic originating and destined there and at Beauharnois will be pulled back to Montreal and then handled by locals?
I don’t think there’s anything to wonder about with the Huntingdon to Adirondack Junction portion, at least in regard to Canadian National wanting anything to do with it. The tracks have been gone for many years now, the right of way has been built over by a major highway, and CNR has no reason to want to spend many millions rebuilding it just to short haul themselves by delivering their traffic to the CPR at Adirondack Junction.
Thanks for the explanation JF!
My former employer had a production site at Valleyfield (now closed) and the local that served us and the CSX interchange at Cecile was based out of Coteau. I hadn’t given much thought to how CN was getting traffic from Montreal to Coteau but your explanation nicely addressed that!
Curt Warfel, trains 326 and 327 already work at Coteau yard, so I suspect this is where Beauharnois and Valleyfield traffic will be lifted or dropped. CN already operates many locals out of Coteau (532, 536, 538, 591) and some already serve Valleyfield, so it would just add more local traffic there (for instance, a new Coteau to Beauharnois turn).
What I really wonder is what about the dormant portion of the line between Beauharnois and Adirondack Jct. It doesn’t seem to be part of the deal, but I don’t see CSX retaining it either, as the route has been severed through extreme vandalism in the Kahnawake reserve.