Northern New Brunswick, Part 1

Today was a good train day in northern New Brunswick.

VIA 14 was pretty much on time as it arrived in Miramichi. It had VIA 6413 and 6421 leading a Renaissance set.


Here it is leaving Miramichi, just before passing the crew shack.


I noticed an SD40 over at Ultramar but didn't have time to go see which one it was. It definitely looks like there are no RS18s stationed in Miramichi any more. That's a shame, although I can't say I blame NBEC, given the lack of customers there.

As I passed over the NBEC main line at Bathurst, NBEC 1851 pulled train 597 right under me toward the yard, with several loaded woodchip cars and a few empty lumber cars. I assume those were from the UPM-Kymmene lumber mill on the Nepisiguit Subdivision.

I heard train 597 asking the dispatcher where train 402 was. They hadn't checked in, but I soon heard a track foreman call in to say that 402 was at mile 132 (Belledune). I hastened there and saw train 402 stopped on the main line by the Chaleur Lumber spur. After a couple of minutes, they throttled up and NBEC 6900 and CFMG 6906 pulled a long train toward Bathurst.


There was an interesting car in train 402. It looks like a relettered CN cement car.


I heard and saw train 586 (the empty ore train) leave Belledune at 16:20 but I didn't get any photos. There are a bunch of empty gypsum cars at Belledune, but given that the plant is shut down for a maintenance outage, I doubt they will be loaded for a few days.

Later, I was approaching Bathurst again around 18:20 when I heard some shunting over the scanner. I assumed that was the ore train getting its train together before heading to Brunswick Mines. Imagine my surprise when I saw the tail end of train 403 leaving the yard! 403 was quite late today.

There was an interesting MOW item in the Bathurst yard. I'm guessing this is a tie remover?


I saw and chased train 587, but I'll put that in the next post.

I decided to catch VIA 15 at Nepisiguit Junction. They were pretty much on time, and I didn't quite get to the east switch when Loto-Quebec VIA 6414 came around the bend.


They had to stop to reline the switch left open by train 587. The conductor did the job then climbed back into 6414 as they accelerated toward Bathurst.


I shot VIA 15 leaving Bathurst from the St. Anne overpass in the failing light.


That was it for today! Next post - train 587. I promise I'll blog about the NB Southern excursion train soon.

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