Pioneer Valley Railroad
| Pioneer Valley Railroad | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1982 |
| Seat |
Westfield , Massachusetts ,
|
| Branch | Rail transport |
| Website | https://pinsly.com/ |
The Pioneer Valley Railroad ( AAR reporting as mark: PVRR) is a Class-3 local railroad - railway company , which since 1982 rail freight in the western US state of Massachusetts provides. The subsidiary of the Pinsly Railroad Company owns two routes with a total length of 27 km.
history
Westfield , located on the east-west link Worcester – Albany , and Easthampton , a good 18 km to the north, were linked by the New Haven – Shelburne Junction of the New Haven and Northampton Company since 1848 , which from April 1, 1887 to New York , New Haven and Hartford Railroad (NH). Easthampton was also accessible from 1871 on the five-kilometer-long Mount Tom – Easthampton railway on the Connecticut River Railroad , which was operated from January 1, 1893 by the Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M). Between Westfield and Holyoke there was from October 1871 the 16.6 km long railway line Westfield – Holyoke , which was also operated by New Haven and Northampton and from 1887 by the NH. From the 1920s, the routes served exclusively for freight traffic. At the end of 1968 Penn Central took over the NH and after bankruptcy it was again transferred to the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) on April 1, 1976 .
In 1969 and 1976, Penn Central closed down the sections of the line connecting to the south in Westfield and north in Easthampton. Conrail and the Holding Pinsly Railroad Company agreed in 1982 to sell the two remaining sections of the route north of Westfield to Pinsly. The company Pioneer Valley Railroad (PVRR), which was founded for this purpose and named after the local section of the Connecticut River valley, took over the infrastructure in July 1982. In addition, the PVRR acquired the Easthampton – Mount Tom connection from B&M in 1982. Westfield became the transfer station between PVRR and Conrail, while in Holyoke there was a comparatively seldom used option to swap cars with the B&M. In Mount Tom, where the tracks of the PVRR and B&M were also connected, no cars were handed over as planned.
After there was only a small volume of freight north of Southampton , the PVRR no longer used the approximately seven kilometers of route from there to Easthampton and the subsequent route to Mount Tom from 1983. Formal closure of the Easthampton – Mount Tom line was approved on March 10, 1998. The section between the northern outskirts of Westfield and Southampton has not been used since the turn of the millennium, but has not yet been closed despite partially dismantled tracks.
In Holyoke, the connection between PVRR and the 1983 in the Guilford Rail System - since 2005 Pan Am Railways - transferred B&M from around the end of the 1990s no longer used and fell into disrepair in the following years. In 2018 and 2019, the link was re-established using a $ 0.495 million state grant.
Infrastructure
The PVRR is the owner and operator of the 16.6 km long railway line Westfield – Holyoke and an approximately 10 km long section of the railway line New Haven – Shelburne Junction between Westfield and Southampton, which is only used in the urban area of Westfield.
traffic
In the mid-1990s, the PVRR transported around 2500 freight wagons per year, which were used to transport wood, plastic granulate, basalt and industrial goods, among other things.
As of spring 2020, the PVRR had 14 regular freight customers in Westfield and Holyoke who, among other things, have wood, paper, salt, plastic granulate, household and paper waste and liquid gas transported. In Westfield, Railroad Distribution Services, part of the Pinsly group of companies, operates a facility for storing and handling various goods between rail and truck.
vehicles
When the PVRR started operating, two EMD SW1 and one ALCO S-2 diesel locomotives were available. In 1985, the PVRR acquired four CF7 diesel locomotives from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which were rebuilt from EMD F7s in the 1970s . Three vehicles (with the numbers 2558, 2597, 2647) are still in use there today; the fourth machine (number 2565) was given to a Pinsly affiliate in Florida. The locomotive fleet is supplemented by two EMD GP9s .
Systems in Westfield are used to maintain the vehicles.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d Edward A. Lewis: American Shortline Railway Guide (5th Edition) . Kalmbach Publishing, Co., 1996, ISBN 978-0-89024-290-2 , pp. 248-249 (English).
- ^ Brian Solomon: Working on the Railroad . Voyageur Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1-61060-014-9 , pp. 62-63 (English).
- ^ Pioneer Valley Railroad Company, Inc. - Abandonment Exemption - in Hampshire County, MA. (PDF; 11 kB) Department of Transportation - Surface Transportation Board, March 18, 1998, accessed October 6, 2017 (English).
- ↑ MassDOT awards $ 3 million in grants to industrial rail projects - Railroad News. Progressive Railroading , May 13, 2020, accessed October 6, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Pioneer Valley Railroad (PVRR); A Pinsly Railroad Company. (PDF) Pioneer Valley Railroad, May 13, 2020, accessed on July 5, 2020 (English, company presentation with route map).
- ^ Brian Solomon: North American Locomotives: A Railroad-by-Railroad Photohistory . Voyageur Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-61058-685-6 , pp. 229 (English).