Chasing The NB Southern Pipe Train

My wife was working Monday afternoon, so I figured since it was such a beautiful day, I should pack all the kids in the van and go see some trains. I was getting withdrawal again.

A quick phone call and I found that the eastbound was going to be a pipe train. Bonus!

I decided to go to the Fredericton Junction area and wait for it there. After a bit of driving around, I went to mile 52 where route 645 from Harvey turns back into a paved road. After some waiting, Dave Dineen arrived, having seen my post about the pipe train. He said he had heard some chatter on the scanner so the train was en route. After some chatting and waiting, I made another call and found that the train was having some trouble, with one unit down. Apparently it was 45 minutes late coming into McAdam.

At 15:05, we saw headlights in the distance and set up to take some shots. I had the video camera on the tripod and took stills with my Canon S3. Dave took shots on his own S3 and I hope to see how he did with his stills. The train featured NBSR 2318, 2317, 2610 and 2612 with 7 doublestacks and 1 single stack, followed by 1 open boxcar , 47 loaded flatcars of pipe, and a trailing open boxcar.



I stayed to tape the whole train, then we hit the road to Fredericton Junction. We caught up to it but it beat us to the next road crossing. My son Nick shot this through the windshield.


Once the tail end cleared, we continued on and caught up with it again on the long straightaway in Tracy. Nick shot this video (using the Canon S3) through the window as we overtook the train.


I elected to continue through Fredericton Junction and shoot it on the overpass just east of the river bridge. It rolled through at 15:25 and gave me a little toot as it passed.


We easily got to Blissville ahead of it, and found Dave pulled over at the same spot I was going to. Nick and I jumped out, and I shot video while he shot stills. This still was Nick's:



After that, the kids were getting restless and I had to get back to Fredericton to pick my wife up, so we turned and headed back. What a great day for chasing trains!