Moncton Trip

Well today was a bit of a dissapointment. First I woke up late, I slept through my alarm clock I had set it for 0500. I woke up at 0750 and realised I missed the train so I I had decided to call the whole trip off figureing it wasn't worth it since there were no NBEC trains today and well it's a weekend so the yards in Bathurst and Miramichi were quiet I thought we diffently won't make it.

So I called the whole trip off by 0800, so I was up stairs makeing my morning tea and decided to turn on the scaner and mope around the house like a child upset about something when I heard the Ocean saying they were one mile from somewheres. My ears perked up, so I called the train station, the Ocean was late arriving and had left Campbellton at 0806 this morning so I rushed to get my self dressed and hastely got the girls dressed as well and we were out the door gunning it all the way to Bathurst to catch it arriving there. But I missed it by five minutes. So I hurried back to the highway and stayed in between 100 and 120 kph all the way to the chi. When we finally arrived I went to the station and again to my dismay I was fifteen minutes late. I shouldn't have stopped for the coffee! So we spent most of the day in Miramichi and had a quick lunch and decided to head back home. So the whole day was a complete failure however it was better than my typical Saturday. I figured I was about ten to fifteen minutes behind the 14 the whole time, it was quite dissapointing but I got to spend the day with my Daughters.

NBEC #403

This evening around 1750 I was on my way to Dalhousie to get some gas when I had noticed 403 hadn't arrived yet in Campbellton so just to take a look, I had decided to go to my unlucky spot in Dalhousie Jct and see if there was anything coming. As I approched the crossing I heard a crackling on the scaner. It could have been anything I thought, but just to be sure I decided to go have a look anyhow. I was about five hundred feet from the crossing when the hot box detector started talking. "OH CRAP!" I thought I knew it was 403 so very quickly pulled a "u-ey" and parked the car to the side and rushed out and reached into the back seat and took out my tri pod. I very hastely set my self up track side and less than a minute later I seen the lights of the lead power making the turn. I made a quick assessment of my surroundings and thought maybe I was too close to the tracks and as you might have seen in the video I was a little too close. So I moved over and noticed I was still close. All the while the train is getting closer. So finally I got a good safe distance away from the tracks and well the train went by.



As the train went by it kicked up a lot of the snow that fell all evening and I got a face full of it. You don't see me in the video but I ran back to the car because there was a lot of snow coming at me. It was quite funny as you could imagin, Melissa was there with me and you could hear her in the video telling me the train was one mile from Dalhousie Jct as she said that I had seen the head lights. She had a good laugh at my exspense when she seen all the snow hit me. Any how I took some pictures too they're not the best quality but they're good enough to post here. Also tomorrow I'll be heading to Moncton to chase the Ocean as far as maybe Miramichi and catch it as it arrives in Moncton. From there I hope to catch CN at Gort. Well I'll post my adventure tomorrow night when I return. One more thing the lead power tonight was NBEC 6900 and I didn't catch the other three. There were four in all.

Railfanning trip this weekend

This weekend I'll be heading to Moncton to do some railfanning there, I'm actually pretty excited about it, I was supposed to go tomorrow morning but due to an unforeseen incident I won't be able to chase the Ocean to Moncton like I had orgionally planned but not everything is lost though, I could still do that on Saturday morning. I may spend the night there not sure yet, I was considering chaseing Ocean 15 back to Campbellton but I think it's best if we returned with daylight rather than traval at night. I've never been to Moncton for this particular reason before so I'm not too sure on where to go, I've downloaded some maps to get to the Grodon yard and I know my way around Moncton pretty good so I think I'll do fine there. I'd like to goto Pacific Jct to take videos and stills from there that'll be a really great chance for me to get a lot of pictures I'm sure.

Yesterday I went to town get my coffee and 595 was one mile to Campbellton I knew it was the Dalhousie shunter so I parked my car on the side of the street and waited for the train to arrive and sure enough like clock work it arrived under ten minutes. I got the train it was all tank cars from the Chemical plant in Dalhousie. The power for this train was NBEC 1813 and five Procor tanker cars. I believe one of them was Sulphric Acid and the others were...well I'm not sure. After the crossing I went to the NBEC yard and 1840 was doing some yard work other than that it was a pretty quiet day. But here some pictures I took when I arrived in the yard.

Youtube videos

Among some of my favorite videos on youtube Trainmasterpat has some of my favorites, this one in particular is a cab ride on the 402-3 He's done an excelent job on editing and the video it self is just awesome. Also another notable videographer is Steve Boyko or Traingeek, his videos are really really good, always in a different location with different views and angles let's just say if I were to be up against these two in compatition of best videos I'd lose hands down in a flat second. (If that even makes sense.) Here's two of my favorites from both videographers.

NBEC #1816

Just a quick note on the NBEC plough train that went by this evening on the Cascapedia sub. RTC ordered the train to manually activate the lights at crossing 17.56(?) I'll assume they had either A. Physically activated the crossing lights or someone got out of the train and walked it across the crossing. They were also given caution at another crossing because the lights were not working at another crossing. I didn't catch the milage number I'm assuming it is the crossing in Pt la garde. There are several crossings in that area with no warning lights so that maybe it as well I'm not too sure.

NBEC Plough train

Today I was sitting in my kitchen enjoying my tea when my scaner started crackling, NBEC #1816 was switching from the Mont Joli sub to the Cascapedia sub in Matapedia. So I got my Daughters dressed up and we headed out to the crossing just down the road and waited track side and less than five minutes later the train had arrived. I chased it for a few Km's but not too far I was running low on fuel and also the train as you can see wasn't all that big only the lead power and a plough so there wasn't a whole lot to see. Anhow got some really nice pictures at one of my favorite spots.

Former INR line Campbellton to St Quentin NB. PT 3

For the past couple of weeks I've been out taking pictures of the former INR line through Campbellton and following up on a few tips. I receved an email about a week and a half ago about the remains of a bridge in Glencoe that was part of the former INR line. This bridge is aproximatly three hundred feet away from the line where the orgional 7.6 mile meets with the newer 2.4 mile long section. I was looking around further from my car and I noticed the bridge is now on private properity however you could see from the highway there has been considerable development over the past 90 years since the line was dismantaled back in 1919.




I've taken several pictures, of the former line this one here is of the bridge it self and directly across the highway is the newer bridge built in 1919 both bridges crossed Christopher Brook.

This is the newer bridge built in 1920 shortly after CNR bought the INR directly across the highway from one another.

This is the same bridge as ubove from where the tracks would have crossed the highway

In these pictures you could see the raised earth where the line used to be, this is about a hundred feet away from the old INR bridge.

This was taken just before the old bridge.This one was where the orgional 7.6 mile of track links up with the newer 2.4 miles that was built in 1919/20In this picture I'd like to point out the same in all of them you can still clearly see the raised earth of the track bed, it's quite interesting to see, knowing that your looking at New Brunswick Railroad history.

So there you have it, some of my latest pictures, and I'd like to thank Jim from NB Rails Yahoo group for pointing out that bridge for me, as I'm sure I've said many times before, I've seen a lot of these strutures and former road beds and never really gave them much thought and I guess to say ignored them all these years and not know what they really were but now that I know what they once were it gives me a certin appreciation for Railroad history. When the spring thaw comes I'll be sure to take more pictures before all the leaves come back for another summer so this way I could get a better view and better pictures of the old radbed as well as other pictures of the rest of the line to St Quentin.