Canadian Railroads > March 9th in Halifax, NS

There was nothing terribly remarkable about March 9 of this year, but the weather was agreeable, and 120 arrived in town at about 10:30 that morning.  That's pretty much the "scheduled" time, but lately the train has been well after noon most days.  The first shot here is the big curve at Moirs Mill Pond in Bedford, between mile 9 and 10 of the Bedford Sub.  It also turned out that this was the first Z120 that I photographed, although it doesn't look any different from the old Q120.

Before the train could be yarded, a transfer of empty well cars had to go downtown.  ES44AC 3899 was the power for local 507 that day, and is shown here at mile 4.3, the former Southwestern Jct.  The cars would be stored in empty tracks at Halifax Ocean Terminals in the south end of the city.

With the transfer out of the way, Z120 was able to get a clearance for the track east of mile 5, and pulled down in the cut to yard the train.  120 is typically over two miles long, and since the crew likes to start yarding the train from the rear to minimize the moves, they typically need to haul down to mile 4 or so, before they start shoving cuts of the train into empty yard tracks.  As an alternative, they could use the Deepwater Spur (branches off to the north at mile 5) for headroom, but that ties up grade crossings at the Ceres container pier, which is not popular with the truckers there.

The south track is supposed to be re-laid in the cut to allow more efficient movement of containers from HOT to Ceres, and get trucks off the downtown streets, but so far nothing has happened with that.

GTD

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