SFEX 4204 Update

SFEX 4204 in Miramichi, NB 2006/07/18

Ed Weisensel reported that SFEX 4204 was spotted on Norfolk Southern's train M4NB22 in Ohio. He confirms it is heading to the Morristown and Erie Railway in New Jersey.

You may remember that SFEX 4204 worked on the New Brunswick East Coast Railway for a time before its retirement. When CN purchased the NBEC it became CN property and made its way to the boneyard in CN's Woodcrest facility in Illinois. At that time I figured it was destined for the scrapper.

Apparently 4204 left CN's Woodcrest shops over 4 months ago and has been rattling around the system in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and so forth before returning to Woodcrest before heading to its "final" destination.

The Morristown and Erie Railway is a short line railway in New Jersey and Maine. They also operate the Maine Eastern railway. They operate a number of Alco units including other C-424 engines. See their all-time roster.

It's nice to see the old lady is still around!

By the way, check out Ed's photos on Flickr. He has quite a few nice Canadian Pacific shots.

Bathurst and Miramichi

There was no power in the Bathurst yard this morning either. I wonder if the switcher is still stationed in Bathurst now that Smurfit Stone is shut down?

Speaking of Smurfit Stone, their snowplow is in their outside yard with no other railcars visible inside or outside the fence.

I just saw the tail end of VIA 14 at Belledune at 0846. I proceeded to the same location I was at last night to wait for them to leave the station. While I waited, another railfan showed up, David Chiasson. As it happens, we were about to take a photo at the same location as one he has on Railpictures.net.

VIA 14 passed under us at 0929 with 6409, 6424 (Spiderman) and 6403 (CBC) leading 17 Renaissance cars, one Park car, and 5 more Renaissance cars. I presume the extra Ren cars are going to IRSI for maintenance.




Later in Miramichi, I noticed that the NBEC RS-18s were still sitting at Ultramar around 1130. There were four cars at the LaFarge cement plant, but they weren't the usual cylindrical CN cars. The RS-18s were gone from Ultramar at 1330.

NBEC 402 arrived in Miramichi at 1340, with CFMG 6906, NBEC 4214, NBEC 4210, NBEC 6900, and SFEX 4204 heading up 27 cars (about 5 boxcars and 5 tankers, plus the 17-car TankTrain). It seemed like a lot of power for a smallish train, until I saw the crew setting 4204 off and moving from 6906 to 6900. I guess 4204 is going to IRSI as well.



There were several MOW trucks at McGivney around 1530.