The end of TOFC on NB Southern

I should have mentioned this earlier.. NB Southern Railway ceased to run truck trailers on flat cars (TOFC) about 3 weeks ago. I'm told the last of the flatcars made their run (empty) back to Saint John yesterday and will be sold off. The service was apparently unprofitable, especially due to the byzantine Customs regulations on the U.S. side. It's a shame. When they were first introduced in late 2003 a separate TOFC-only train was run. That was terminated in 2005 and the TOFC were tacked onto the end of the regular trains. It was not uncommon to see 15-20 trailers per train at the peak.

R.I.P. TOFC

On a related note, I believe I posted earlier that NB Southern 2317 and 2319 (the two yellow units) will be repainted to green. I'm told the Sunbury logos have been removed from at least one of them. Here's where they were.

There was a rumour that the units had been "returned" to NB Southern from Sunbury. In truth they were always owned by Eastern Maine Railroad, a subsidiary of NB Southern.