Three Way Meet

I went up to St. James Junction on Tuesday (March 23) to see the Hudson Bay. Another railfan, Andrew, was already there, so we chatted for a few minutes. It turned out that RTC Janice had scheduled a three-way meet, because the north track was out of service west of our location.

CN 199 was waiting at Fort Rouge. An eastbound CN freight was coming in, and of course the Hudson Bay had to get out. Here's how it played out.

CN 199 waited on the south track at Fort Rouge. The eastbound came in on the south track, then crossed over to the north track just west of the CN-CP diamond. This train had CN 5610 and ex-BC Rail 4644 pulling a solid container train.


Here's a shot of BC Rail 4644... nice to see it on the train.


They paused east of Waverley Street. The Hudson Bay appeared on the north track, and crossed over to the south track in front of CN 199 and continued up to St. James Junction. VIA could not continue any farther because the remainder of the CN eastbound was still on the south track.


Once the eastbound cleared the south track, the engineer put the hammer down and rocketed out of there.

Nice to get a toot from the engineer. Those F40PH-2's seem to smoke quite a bit when they are put under heavy acceleration.

I didn't have time to stick around to wait for CN 199, but it was interesting to see how the meet was handled.

Consists for March 23