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Welcome to the M&D Centreville Line Job Description Page!!
Below is a line description of the Centreville Line, as well as a description of it's local operations.

To preface this information, let's first establish what constitutes the Centreville Line. Generally, anything on the main that is EAST of the switch for Centreville is considered the Centreville Line. Anything WEST of the switch would be considered the Chestertown Line. This includes the industry of Royster Clark, located on the runaround west of the engine house in Massey.

Centreville Lines runs are a lot more rare than operations to Chestertown. The line is more seasonal, and the traffic base is correspondingly seasonal in the form of fertilizer and corn/wheat. On days when a Centreville run is going to occur, a few things can happen. If on a Wednesday or Friday, the crew is probably heading for the NS Interchange in Townsend, De., to pick up freight dropped off by NS on Tuesday and Thursday. When doing this, they may take empties that weren't taken to interchange earlier in the week. This is less likely to be the case, as the Centreville Line typically operates on either Tuesday or Thursday since the inbound Velsicol cars on Wednesday and Friday get priority. The second possibility is that the Centreville cars are already online, and the crew is just going to the MP 8 Runaround east of Massey to get the cars and head back west. This is a likely occurrence due to the interchange normalities mentioned previously. A good indication of this would be that the crew stops and lines the switch for Centreville after they head lite out of the engine house. A third possibility is that the crew heads out lite towards Centreville to pull empties. This isn't often the case, but it does happen, especially at the end of the fertilizer rushes when there is nothing left to take out, only the final empties to pull.

Proceeding west, the train will typically pass through Millington, Sudlersville, and Barclay before any potential stop at Roberts. A rare occurrence would be a boxcar to spot at Harbor Sales (just railroad-east of Sudlersville, though requiring a runaround move in town), or fertilizer being spotted at Southern States in Sudlersville. These stops will not normally be the case. At Roberts, Perdue has a mill that loads outbound corn, soybeans, and wheat. This mill, along with Perdue Lynch, will be discussed further later. From Roberts, it's on to the end of current operations at Carville, Maryland.

There are three industries in Carville. The easternmost is CPS, a receiver of fertilizer-related products. Right next door is the Southern States Co-op, another fertilizer receiver. Finally, a mile or so later and across busy Route 301, is Tidewater Publishing. Tidewater is home to the MDDE boxcar fleet, and one boxcar will be here getting loaded at all times, while one is usually waiting on stand by and another making the cycle to their destination and back (the fourth and final MDDE boxcar is a spacer on the Seaford Line). ALL three industries in Carville require that the engine be on the east end of the train, so the crew will use the runaround just west of Tidewater to get on the right end, then work back east, doing Tidewater, Southern States, and then CPS. The mill at Roberts may very well be worked going back east, with the crew picking up outbound loads there. Additional stops could be pulling empties from Southern States Sudlersville, and lastly, an empty from Harbor Sales, the latter of which will actually turn a car out empty in hours (the crew spots going west, picks up empty coming back east).

Upon arrival back at Massey, any cars that need to be weighed will be weighed (Perdue and Tidewater weigh), Wenger will most often be worked, and the crew will call the office to determine whether they are going to interchange if that decision had not yet been communicated. Local work around Massey is subject to crew preference and customer demand. If there are cars to go into Wenger Feeds in Massey, they may be placed before the train leaves or after the train returns. There is usually a sufficient amount of cars in the mill that they don't desire anything sitting in the Runaround first thing in the morning. The same can be true of Royster Clark (technically on the Chestertown Line), who unloads just off the west side of the road in downtown Massey by the engine house.

Current engine assignments on the Centreville Line are RS3M 1202 and SW900 801. There will normally only be one unit operating unless there are two trains running, one working each line. Standard power is the 1202.

All radio communications are done on 160.695mhz.
 
 

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