Eastern Railroad Discussion > North East PA 11/29-30/24: "It was a dark and stormy night..."

Multiple feet of lake effect snow are accumulating along the Lake Erie shore between Mentor OH east of Cleveland and Dunkirk NY starting on Black Friday and continuing through Saturday/Sunday. And as these grabs off the east facing North East live cam attest, CSX, NS, and even Amtrak are up to the challenge plowing through the snow.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/24 04:02 by JPB.

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Across the way, NS trains move perhaps a little slower than normal on its Lake Erie sub with a manifest crawling east at 0212 Saturday and 265 IM plowing west at 0401.

The snow just keeps coming and coming - "It ain't a fit night night out for man or beast!" as W. C. Fields would say. 

 

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I can't imagine the anxiety when going over a defect detector.

What search terms do I use to find these cams on internet?
U-tube?
I'll tune in tonight after work, thanks.

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

RailRat Wrote:
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> What search terms do I use to find these cams on
> internet?
> U-tube?
> I'll tune in tonight after work, thanks.

Lakeshore Railway Historical Society

Posted from Android

RailRat Wrote:
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> What search terms do I use to find these cams on
> internet?
> U-tube?
> I'll tune in tonight after work, thanks.

The live cams I watch are all Youtube and are set up by a few railfan or museum oriented entities such as Lake Shore Railway Museum at North East PA.

Perhaps the organization with the largest # of live cam sites is Virtual Railfan (search at YouTube for "Virtual Railfan" and you'll see their logo that you click on to get to their home page  - click on "live" to see their full offering of 60+ live cam sites across North America).

And there are other live railcam organizations, too, such as Live Trains and Steel Highway that can be found on YouTube.

Just a few more captures from today's Lake Erie blizzard:

- An eastbound CSX manifest on Main 2 has Amtrak GP38-3 752 in tow.tucked in behind a CSX SD70MAC
- Amtrak 48 speeds east on Main 2 running about 90+ minutes late
- And the first train on Main 1 in over 9 hours (since Amtrak 49 passed at a 0208) crawls west at about 10-15mph at 1102 pushing a bow wave of snow.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/24 13:30 by JPB.

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Thanks JPB for the posts. I’ve been watching live yesterday and today. Note the black line in the snow is actually the fence in front of the museum, that’s how deep the snow is!

Posted from iPhone

THIS 100%!


CSX2605 Wrote:
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> I can't imagine the anxiety when going over a
> defect detector.

Posted from Android

please explain to a non-railroader why defect detectors provide extra risk.

Thanks,
Don

Still snowing there this morning.
I watched last night, and rewound video to catch trains, very impressive and surreal as some trains kicked up swirling clouds of powder, at night., and some engines plowing thin "mustache" of snow.

Also very impressive how fast some of them were traveling!

Also noticed some engineers Honking a lot, presumably for the camera or museum? Unless it was a warning to someone too close to, or on the tracks?

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

dongregg Wrote:
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> please explain to a non-railroader why defect
> detectors provide extra risk.
>
> Thanks,
> Don

Perhaps the anxiety of having to stop the train, get out and walk it in that snow and weather, to find the defect?

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/24 07:29 by RailRat.

RailRat Wrote:
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>
> Also noticed some engineers Honking a lot,
> presumably for the camera or museum? Unless it was
> a warning to someone too close to, or on the
> tracks?

Constant blowing in these conditions keeps the horn bells free from getting snow packed in and becoming disfunctional.

RailRat Wrote:
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> Perhaps the anxiety of having to stop the train,
> get out and walk it in that snow and weather, to
> find the defect?

That is some of it. However, in this kind of weather, a LOT can go wrong.......