Freight Service
On the North Side lines, as part of the original sale agreement, B&M and its successor Pan Am Railways (formerly Guilford Transportation Industries) retains 'perpetual and exclusive' trackage rights for freight service. Pan Am provides freight service on those lines.
Boston Sand and Gravel has an agreement with Pan Am to operate its shortline New Hampshire Northcoast Railroad trains from Conway, New Hampshire to just north of Boston's North Station to supply aggregates to its plant on the Boston/Cambridge border. An occasional move occurs with run-through power from Norfolk Southern Railway to supply coal to a power plant in Bow, New Hampshire, over the Fitchburg Line.
On the South Side lines, CSXT retains trackage rights over much of the former New Haven territory. Limited service is also provided by the Providence & Worcester Railroad on the Providence Line, principally from Central Falls (the intersection with its main line to Worcester) through Providence towards New Haven (although some freights go as far east as Attleboro before leaving the corridor).
CSXT provides intermodal, autorack, and general merchandise over the Worcester Line, a part of CSXT's Boston Line. This part of the Commuter Rail network can host over 12 mainline freight trains per day, including descendents of Conrail's expedited intermodal Trail Van trains. Currently freight service runs east to Beacon Park Yard in Allston; however, CSX is scheduled to stop using the intermodal yard in 2013.
On its former Old Colony division, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (NYNH&H) essentially vacated its right of freight operations by abandoning the tracks in 1959. As MBTA rebuilt the tracks, it gained freight service rights, and those rights were franchised to Conrail (predecessor to CSX), which provided freight service on the former Old Colony division.
Read more about this topic: MBTA Commuter Rail
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