Saint John Railway Scenes

NB Southern #911

I was in Saint John, New Brunswick last week for work. I didn't have any specific plans for seeing trains, as I wasn't sure how long I would be working each day. As it happened, things went pretty smoothly so I did see some trains.

My plane landed in YSJ (Saint John airport) pretty much on time at 17:35, and fetching the rental car and luggage was quick. One big bonus of small airports is doing the renting in sight of the only baggage carousel!

I decided I would head straight to the former train station in Rothesay to photograph it with the fall colours. I had a hope in the back of my head that I could catch CN 406 passing by (to reproduce this), but I wasn't counting on it.

As I approached Station Road by the Rothesay station, I saw the last couple of tank cars on CN 406 roll by on their way to Moncton. Missed it by that much. You can't catch 'em all.

There was no point in pursuing them. It would have taken a lot of time to get back to the highway and the light was failing.

Fall colours and the Rothesay train station

At least I got the shot I wanted.

I headed into Saint John. As I drove along Rothesay Avenue, I spotted a set of locomotive headlights on the track leading to Courtenay Bay / Irving Oil / Irving Paper. I headed up and found GMTX 2226 working the crude oil terminal at Courtenay Bay. The sunset light was pretty sweet.

GMTX 2226 at sunset

I thought about staying to watch them switch, but I decided against it and continued on along past Island Yard. I was going to head to the NBSR Dever Road yard and see what was going on there before turning in for the night.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this excursion train at Harbour Station!

NBSR 9801 and an excursion train at Harbour Station, Saint John

I believe they had taken some people from a visiting cruise ship out for a spin. I saw a large cruise ship leaving Saint John that night.

In the photo above, you can see the crewman walking back to the cab. I must have looked pretty comical running back and forth as I wasn't sure which direction they were going. As it happened, they headed toward the Dever Road yard / NB Southern yard.

The train had NBSR 9801 with the three ex VIA Rail coaches (5448, 5471 and 5537) along with their "new" #508 and the Metis. NBSR 2317 was on the other end.

NBSR 508 and the Metis

The light was pretty low so I was shooting with a 1/20s shutter speed, meaning the blur was inevitable.

They took off and I gave chase. I decided I would try to catch them crossing the Reversing Falls bridge. I got to the Falls well before them, so I parked and ran up the hill to get a broad view of the bridge.

This was at 7:15 PM so the sun was already down below the horizon. Tricky light!

NBSR crossing the Reversing Falls bridge

I decided to stick to my original plan and headed to the Dever Road yard. I didn't think I would beat them there, and I was right. They were rolling under the Green Head Road overpass when I arrived.

I did managed to catch them passing the night switcher, NBSR 911. I like how this turned out.

NBSR 911 and the excursion train, by night

That was it for me for the night.

In part 2 I shared my catch of CN 406, twice.

Until then, you might wish to read about my visit to New Brunswick in 2011..

CN Slugs Going to NB Southern

NB Southern has purchased four CN slugs. The four are CN 251, CN 269, CN 501 and CN 508. Two are currently in Winnipeg (CN 269 and CN 501) and the other two are in Edmonton.

The four were part of a long list of units for sale on CN's web site this summer.

A little history of these units:

• CN 251 was converted from a GP9 in 1990.
• CN 269 was converted from an MLW S3 in 1991.
• CN 501 and CN 508 were purpose-built as slugs in 1978 as  CN 261 and CN 268 and were renumbered in 1990.

You may recall that NB Southern bought a CN slug, ex CN 519, and it is now NBSR 008.

I understand the four slugs needed some work before they were road-worthy. I don't know when they will be heading east but I expect it won't be too long.

Personally, I've only seen CN 501 (my picture above), both times working the hump at Symington Yard here in Winnipeg. Two 5xx slugs are paired with two GP38s to work the hump yard. The 2xx units are usually paired with a GP9 or GP38 and work industries, as far as I have seen.

Another Passenger Car for the NB Southern

The New Brunswick Southern Railway is getting another passenger car. "Table car" #508 was in Moncton, New Brunswick on Saturday evening, having arrived on CN 474 from Joffre Quebec where it has been since September 26.

#508 was originally built by the Canadian Car and Foundry company for CN as a coach. It was rebuilt into a 60-seat table car and was owned by the New York Susquehanna and Western. One end has a little snack bar area and it looks like it would be perfect for serving snacks on a little excursion.

I found this listing showing the car was listed for $33,300 and was sold. Judging by the photo of the shiny car, it seems to have weathered quite a bit before being sold again by Ozark Mountain Railcar to NB Southern.

This album (by Ozark Mountain Railcar, apparently) has some very detailed photos of #508. Here are a few samples.







Thanks to Ron Pelletier, JP Veilleux and Mike R for the sightings, and to Steve Hunter for the detailed information on #508.

The Gare de l'Est

You may have noticed that I haven't posted much in the past few weeks. Well, there are two reasons, the most important of which was that my wife and I were in Europe on vacation for our 10th wedding anniversary. We were in Paris (and then Normandy) and then in London. So blogging was not high on my priority list!

I did see a few trains while I was there, although railfanning was also not high on my priority list. In Paris we were staying half a block south of the Gare de l'Est ("east station"). This station serves high-speed trains heading east as well as local trains and is on several subway lines. We chose to stay near this station because of the easy connections to the subway ("Metro" as it is called).

One evening I took a quick walk through the station, shooting the trains waiting at the platforms, and then walked around the outside a bit. There were TGV trainsets there and a few local trains. Note that most passenger trains in France seem to be electric, not diesel-electric, so there is a lot of caternary wire around.

SNCF 17076 is a "class BB 17000" running on 25 kV AC power. I'm assuming the BB means two trucks, two powered axles on each truck. These engines are about as old as I am and are nicknamed "danseuses" (dancers).

Some of the local trains are called RER, which stands for Réseau Express Régional (Regional Express Network). They are electric trains and are basically the same as subway trains but do run outside and the stops are much farther apart than subway trains. Also the RER trains are powered by overhead caternary wire whereas the subways use a third rail for power.

I walked out to the back of the station to see the train platforms. It's hard to see the trains because of the roofs. Here we see two TGV tracks, with the left track having two TGV trainsets connected together and the right track having a single TGV trainset. Note that the TGV sets have an engine at each end so there is no need to turn them.


The TGV pictured at the top of this post is one of the TGV Réseau trainsets and would be the train on the left in the photo just above. This particular trainset is dual-voltage (25 kV AC and 1500 V DC). Other trainsets are triple-voltage, adding 3 kV DC for use in Belgium and Italy. They have a capacity of 377 seats and a top speed of 300 km/hr. I saw a couple of TGV trains running while I was driving on the highway and they easily outpaced my 130 km/hr (legal top speed), probably doing at least 200 km/hr on the stretches I saw.

The area behind the platforms is nice and airy, but covered with lots of advertising signs.


I took a shot of the arrivals and departures board.


After this, I walked up to the Gare du Nord, about 10 minutes away. The Gare du Nord handles TGV and local trains as well as the Eurostar "chunnel" trains. Another post.