Canadian Railroads > Catching Up - May 9th in Nova Scotia

For someone who is supposed to be officially retired, I was suddenly very busy with work projects for the first part of the month. Although I've been able to get out and shoot what few trains CN offers me, getting around to processing the images has been another matter, at least until this afternoon. Here are some highlights from May 9th in Nova Scotia.

Things got off to an early start. I had information that 120's crew had been called for 01:30 that morning in Moncton. With an hour to get the train together and a 4:40 running time, that would put them in Rockingham at 07:10. At 06:38, when 407 was leaving Dartmouth, 120 was at Milford, and I was at Moirs Mills at 07:16 to catch 2121, IC 2719, 5759 and 2882 on the big curve nearing mile 9. The ex-CNW Dash-8 as leader is very uncommon here. In fact having 4 distinct models of locomotive on the same train is rather rare. This train was conventional, but when 121 left that night, 2121 was working as the DPU.

407 was 6000 feet long and had to wait for 120 at Windsor Jct. That meant there was a slight chance I could catch up to them before they got to Truro. I did, but I also ran into some rather heavy fog in low lying areas. Since the sun wasn't a factor anyway, I picked this location in Brentwood, at the eastward approach to Alton siding, for 407's portrait on what would normally be the dark side, at 08:14.

407 had rather unremarkable power (2590 and 5718, which are still on that job this week), so rather than wait for them to do their pickup in Truro, I headed for Pictou Co. instead to see the CBNS might offer. I arrived in Stellarton to hear 523 doing their locomotive brake test and radio check, and 305 was already west of town at Riverton, getting their train together for the trip to Truro. Once 305 had left, 523 picked up some cars of their own at Riverton, and I was able to get this shot of them running back to the yard in Stellarton at 10:09.

GTD

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523 seemed to have more work to do before they would be going up the Oxford Spur, so I decided to drive back to Truro and perhaps catch 515 (Truro local) or CBNS arriving. I did get 515 at Brentwood again, but this time the sun was out and against the train. With 515 not being much of an option, I drove back towards Halifax, hoping to intercept 511, the gypsum turn, on the way back from the mine. This plan actually worked out, with a pair of SD70M-2s leading 60 odd loads of gypsum under the ancient truss bridge to Oakfield Park at 13:13. It's now the time of year when the sun can be horribly high around the middle of the day, but the height at this location minimizes that effect as much as possible.

511 made it to Windsor Jct. just as VIA 15 was due, but the passenger train was delayed about 10 minutes, making for a pretty good meet. I did get a couple shots of the Ocean, but without any height they don't look like much, so they won't see the light of day here.

I did however shoot a bit of video earlier in the day. Here is 305 at Eureka (a few miles west of Stellarton), with the usual overpowered train and a surprise behind SD40s. The former CN flanger was delivered to Truro, and then set off from the rest of the train. It might be going to the scrap yard there.

GTD

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Good stuff.

KG

Nice work; how many km did you put on to get these? Scale/distance in NS is a bit different than here; what I mean by that is that we were surprised (my wife and I) on our trip to look at the map and see how far something appeared to be, then find out it only took 20 minutes or something to get there. Is the CBNS train number system a hold-over from CN days?
Fred

It's only about 100 miles from Halifax to Stellarton, and now entirely 4-lane divided highway. Not sure about the train numbers, but they do seem to be holdovers from the CN era on those tracks.

It's PEI where you can drive from anywhere to anywhere in 30 minutes or less! :-)

GTD