Monday, August 25, 2008

Moncton this past weekend





This past weekend I was in Moncton on a three day furlough just to relax and enjoy the finer things in life. Well I couldn't resist it, I just had too! Jess and I went to the Gort yard and tried to catch a few trains however if I had known before hand there isn't much shunting in that yard I would have went else where. The only shunting I seen there was a truck hauling containers around and getting them ready to be loaded onto a flat car for I'll assume either the 120 or 121.


HOWEVER....All was not lost! At around 1330 VIA 614 arrived around the bend, and I got a couple of shots and a great video. Not too bad. Afterwards we went to the station and I got a few shots of the lead unit there. The lead of 614 was 6426 I didn't catch the second unit's number.


I posted on the Yahoo groups asking a question when will the CN trains go screaming through Moncton, I got a few times (Thanks Matt!) and well I wasn't so lucky interms of videos and pictures. The pictures well it was too dark for my camera and the videos well....I waited fro CN 405(?) the signals at the west end of the station in Moncton was red over red, however after about ten minutes of waiting the signals changed to yellow over red than moments later to yellow over yellow. So I waited and in no time at all a freight came rumbling through. However I was looking in the wrong direction for the train. It came from the east I was looking in the west. By the time I got out of the car (I was in the car because the Moncton Airforce was attacking me. Mosquitos.) and got my camera out and ready the lead had already gone by but I did manage to press the record button (Or so I thought) and filmed what was going by on the distant track. After the train went by I looked over at the signals which had changed back to red over red and stopped recording. When I went to check my video and look a the quality of the video I seen it was still recording.....I had either didn't press the button hard enough or I was never recording at all till I had thought I had stopped the recording and actually started recording. Which is the latter. I didn't record the train at all! I was not impressed!


I figured the freight that had gone by was the 405(?) So we had gone back to the hotel and began to unwind from a long day. Our hotel room was on the side faceing the VIA station (We were staying at the Crowne Plaza) I heard the familier bell of a loco outside the window, I looked out and there went the 405(?) screaming past Moncton station. I wasn't too impressed again.


Other than that, that's been my weekend as far as trains go, so keep chaseing those trains and have fun!

6 comments:

Adam p. said...

Sounds like what you saw would be a 407 if it came from the east and went past the Via station. 405 would come from the other end of Gordon yard from Saint John. 407 would usually arrive in Moncton from Nova Scotia in mid to late afternoon.

clam502 said...

Yes I believe you are right, The first train I had seen and failed to hit the record button properly came from the east and the second one I seen from my hotel window was from the west. The second one was the one I wanted to film. However not all is lost though I still have the 614 arriving in Gort! Thanks for stopping by!

Canadian Train Geek said...

I've done that, Chris. One time at Halifax I wanted to record 148 arriving, thought I had everything done right, and when I went back to the video camera it wasn't on. Turns out I videotaped my feet as I walked to the tripod but nothing else. :P

clam502 said...

This isn't the first time that has happened to me! I wonder if there is a railfans blooper video out there that would be simiiler to what we have discribed? haha

Saintjohnrailfan said...

I've done that plenty of times! There's been a few times also where I don't zoom completely back out and then half way through the video, I wonder why the train looks so big on my screen..oops!

So when did you see 407? Dave(nbsrfan) and I were in McGivney & Moncton on Sunday!

clam502 said...

I was in Moncton for the weekend, I tried to get this freight on saturday night at the VIA station. Yeh that's happened to me several times, especially when your filming a train at night. I can't recall how many times that's happened to me. Too many to count.