Monday, January 07, 2013

BNSF Unit Oil Train!

The Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick has been receiving oil trains from North Dakota and the surrounding area. These have generally been coming over NB Southern's tracks as 80-car unit trains, although some oil cars have trickled in on CN via CN 406. Railfans were excited to hear that a unit oil train was coming with three BNSF engines on it. The train arrived at Hermon, Maine on December 29 with the BNSF engines, and ended up parked on MM&A rails for a few days, apparently waiting for a crew.

The train finally made it to McAdam this past Saturday (January 5) at 10:30. Jody Robinson reported that it dropped its train in track 28 and made up another train with the oil cars already in McAdam, then hit the road around 16:15. It was reported through Harvey at 17:00.

Jody Robinson and Gary Bowser did great work documenting the train in McAdam.

The train had BNSF 4649 (Dash 9-44CW), BNSF 9723 (SD70AC), BNSF 7589 (Dash 9-44CW) and HLCX 6332 (SD40-2) for power. Here are a couple of Jody's photos.


I think I can safely say that these are the first BNSF engines to ever visit McAdam... given that BNSF did not exist prior to NB Southern's existence.

Here are a few of Gary's photos, as well as a video he took.





Matt (aka Saintjohnrailfan) caught the train rolling through Grand Bay on its way into Saint John.

The power did not stay long in Saint John. It went west on Sunday the 6th with empty oil cars and some miscellaneous freight. This time both Matt and Dave Dineen (aka nbsrfan) caught the train. Here's Matt's video first.

Now Dave's:

Great work, Jody, Gary, Matt and Dave! Special thanks to Jody for keeping the Facebook RailsNB group updated on the train's progress.

1 comment:

Allen said...

Nice pics; I hope you see more BNSF units out your way. Any chance of sending a NS Southern units our way ( Minnesota )? :)