Canadian Railroads > More Boxing Day Deals

After unexpectedly running into 120 at 08:30 Windsor Jct. (see yesterday's post) on December 26th, I continued north towards Truro, NS.  About 09:00, train 407 called the RTC to advise that they were ready to leave Truro yard after making their CBNS pickup.  Although they were about 20 minutes ahead of me, this wasn't a huge concern, since they had some slow running to climb through the Wentworth Valley, and the light for a westbound that early in the day would be pretty rough anyway.  I was able to take a leisurely drive to Springhill Jct. and then waited 15 minutes or so until the train arrived there at 10:36.  The low winter sun was causing a lot of shadows across the track, but I fired off a bunch of frames and then picked the one that had the best lighting on the nose.

After my previous experiance at Maccan (road closed due to high water), I didn't even give it a second thought, but was able to easily get to Moncton, NB before the train, find a place to park, and then shoot the train again, coming almost right into the sun, at mile 124 of the Springhill Sub at 12:07.  407 had made very good time, not only getting out of Dartmouth early and having a good meet with 120, but getting over the road from Truro to Moncton in slightly more than three hours.  A smaller than usual, holiday train (only about a dozen autoracks), probably helped with that.

As 407 was arriving at Gordon Yard, 406, the daily turn to Saint John, was just about to leave.  I picked up my railfan partner for the next two days at the Moncton VIA station, and we took off for Petitcodiac, about 20 miles to the west on the Sussex Sub.  With all the crude oil traffic that CN had been handling to the Saint John Irving refinery, this subdivision was upgraded to 40 mph a few years ago.  Oil is more sporadic these days (we did see loads of propane in the train, placard 1075), but that speed limit still makes for a spirited chase on this almost tangent track.  406 rolled past the former junction with the Havelock Sub at 12:50.  The SD75I leading has a switch broom at the ready on the nose ladder, but it doesn't look like the crew will need it today.  It had warmed up a few degrees since I left Halifax that morning, but was still -6° C, with a stiff breeze blowing.

GTD

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Nice strong winter light, and I like your two verticals in particular.
Fred