Thursday, September 29, 2005

VIA 15 at Night

At 10:40, UPM 711 was working inside the UPM-Kymmene complex in Miramichi. Traffic looks a lot more like normal there, now that the strike is over.

CFMG 6907 was in the NBEC yard in Miramichi. No sign of the RS-18s but there was a ram of tank cars at the Ultramar facility. A flatcar, CN 668014, was on the team track in Miramichi by the VIA station. It was quite surprising because I haven't seen anything on that track in a few years, and before that the only thing that was there was an MOW crane. The flatcar was empty, by the way.

Since I'm staying in Bathurst tonight, I thought I'd try some night video of VIA 15 as it passed through. I set up at the one-lane bridge over the tracks just south of Highway 11. The friendly station crew had told me they were running about 30 minutes late.

I heard the hum of the train, then the scanner said "Approaching subdivision at Bathurst", whatever that means. About 10 seconds later, VIA 15, with 6412 leading a Budd consist, rolled into sight. This was 20:40.


The engineer was having fun with the horn. 6412 led out quite a series of short toots as they approached the next crossing.

I zipped onto the highway and beat it to Beresford to catch them at the overpass there. I arrived about five minutes ahead of them. I decided to stand on the slope below the road surface to keep the car noise down and quit being blinded by headlights. It was a good location. The Ocean showed up at 21:00.
By the way, there were no engines in Bathurst.

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