Return to McAdam

I was in New Brunswick last week, in the St. George area. On Tuesday the 26th I decided I would take a run up to McAdam to try to photograph the station around sunset. It had been 4 years and 5 days since I had last been in McAdam - and that time I never even got out of the car!

I set the GPS for First Street in McAdam and took off.

Of course, my GPS had its own idea of how to get there. I had never gone to McAdam from St. George but I had a hazy notion of taking route 127 to route 3, but that's not what my GPS thought.

I spent a lot of time on route 755 through backwoods New Brunswick. All I can say is that I was glad it was still daylight! I'm pretty sure at one point I did a few kilometres on a gravel road. I crossed the St. Stephen subdivision in Honeydale, then encountered the McAdam subdivision at the intersection of route 4 and route 630. By this time the sun was pretty much below the horizon.

This is facing west, toward the USA.

A few more kilometres of driving brought me into McAdam. I spotted headlights in the yard and it turned out to be GMTX 209 and HLCX 906 (with caboose NBSR 434919) working the night shift.


I've seen HLCX 906 before but GMTX 209 was new to me. The paint looks nice and shiny.

You might notice a railfan peering out at me...

They went down to the west end, out of my view from the station, so I took some stills of the station, then went for supper at Terry's. When I returned, it was totally dark. I shot a few more stills and this one was my favourite.


The engines returned and did a bit of switching near the shop building. Gary got down from the engine and chatted with me for a bit. I did get a still of GMTX 209 at night and I like the headlight effect here.


I hit the road for St. George after that, taking route 4 to route 3 then to route 1. No backwoods trips in the dark!

HLCX 906 in Saint John

On my last day in New Brunswick, I had some time before I had to catch my plane home. I drove by the NB Southern Dever Road yard and found NBSR 3703 and CN 4141 shunting the west end of the yard. I took a quick video...

On the east end of the yard, it looks like the mainline train was just putting its train away. NBSR 2318, slug NBSR 008, Maine Northern 9801, HLCX 906 and HLCX 917 were the power for this train. I watched them for a while and took a few shots.

One obvious difference I see between HLCX 906 and HLCX 913 is that 906 has the headlights in the short hood, whereas 913's lights are above the windows. It's clear that the headlights on 906 used to be above the windows. 906 also has the struck-out UNION PACIFIC on the side instead of the grayed-out version on 913.
I'll leave you with the video I took from the Green Head Road overpass. The engineer was really making some noise!

HLCX Units in McAdam

My friend Jody Robinson sent me these photos of three of NB Southern's four leased units working the yard in McAdam, New Brunswick. HLCX 906, 911 and 917 were on the eastbound freight with NBSR 2610 on Tuesday and stopped in McAdam to do some switching.

Here they are by the "shop" / building by the wye.


Obviously none of them have been repainted yet.

Thanks for the photos, Jody!

More NB Southern Leased Units Arrive

The second pair of NB Southern leased units arrived in Saint John yesterday. HLCX 917 and HLCX 913 were nose to nose behind CN 5723 and CN 2280 on train 406 out of Moncton on Wednesday. CN #406 did some work in Sussex, and arrived in Saint John at 16:18.

HLCX 911 has been out on the main line a few times, and I believe it went to St. Stephen at least once, on July 21.

HLCX 906 has been working in Saint John but no one has spotted it on the main line yet, to my knowledge.

Hat tip to Wendell Lemon, DC, and Danny McCracken for the information.

Gary Lee has posted some videos of HLCX 911 in McAdam. Thanks for those, Gary!

"New" NB Southern Power

The NB Southern Railway will be leasing four GP38-3 engines from Helm Financial. Since NBSR will be operating the Northern Maine lines, it will need more power. The units are HLCX 906, 909, 913 and 917. They are all ex Union Pacific units. Apparently one of those was a GP40 but was rebuilt into a GP38-3.

NB Southern has leased locomotives before, but it has been a number of years.

The rumour mill says they will arrive in New Brunswick before mid June. They are currently in UP yellow but will be repainted to NBSR green after they arrive.

I look forward to seeing pictures from out East soon!