August 12th, 2007
After visiting friends in Whitby, we went up to Stacey Rd in Newtonville for a couple of hours, catching VIA #44, CN #371, VIA #57, and CP #122 before getting rained out.
Newtonville, Ontario
(map) This community is about an hour East of Toronto. Through the area the CP Belleville sub from Toronto to Montreal, and the CN Kingston sub on the same routes run parallel.
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VIA #44 whistles as it passes under the Stacey Rd overpass.
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CN #371 comes around the corner.
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VIA #57 heads for Toronto.
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CP #122 Expressway makes its way east as the rain gets more intense.
August 18th, 2007
We went to Guelph station for VIA #84 and #85, and Georgetown for CN #384, #148, #422, #398, GEXR #432, CN #393, #394, #435, GEXR #431, and VIA #87.
Guelph, Ontario
(map) The city of Guelph is my home town and is just East of Kitchener-Waterloo on the GEXR Guelph sub, and the Ontario Southland Railway/Guelph Junction Railway track, the other end of which is at Guelph Junction.
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VIA #84 cleans out the crowded platform.
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VIA #85 enters Guelph station.
Georgetown, Ontario
(map) Georgetown's CN Silver is the site of the junction between CN's Halton sub and the CN-owned, GEXR-rented Guelph sub. It is between Guelph and Brampton on highway 7.
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CN #384 passes Georgetown station with its trademark cut of intermodal.
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CN #148 passes looking quite normal.
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CN #422 passes with two empty 8-axle flats.
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CN #398 takes the north track through town.
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GEXR #432 passes Georgetown station with 3835 leading long hood forward.
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CN #393 pulls through Georgetown station with an IC SD70 trailing.
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CN #394 pulls through Georgetown station.
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CN #435 rumbles through Georgetown Via station.
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GEXR #431 passes through the station on its way to the Guelph sub.
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VIA #87 performs its station stop at Georgetown Via station.
August 19th, 2007
We went to Guelph station for VIA #84, #85, GEXR #432 with 9 EMD export units, and GEXR #431 with a freshly painted new scheme Saskatchewan grain car.
Guelph, Ontario
(map) The city of Guelph is my home town and is just East of Kitchener-Waterloo on the GEXR Guelph sub, and the Ontario Southland Railway/Guelph Junction Railway track, the other end of which is at Guelph Junction.
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VIA #84 stops at Guelph station.
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VIA #85 stops at Guelph Via station.
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GEXR #432 acting as an EMD extra passes long hood forward with GEXR 3835 - RLK 2211 - LLPX 2236 - DRS 66426 - DRS 66424 - DRS 66425 - SNTF 060DR13 - SNTF 060DS01 - DRS 66422 - DRS 66423 - DRS 66427 - DRS 66421. The 7 DRS units are Class 66s bound for the UK and the two SNTF GT36s are bound for Algeria's national railway, with the orange unit being for freight service and the blue for passenger service.
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GEXR #431 passes through CN Guelph Junction with a freshly painted new scheme Saskatchewan grain car a few cars back.
August 25th, 2007
On our way to a cousin's wedding in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we stopped in Durand, Michigan for a couple of hours, pausing briefly to see if we could find the TSBY's shops in Owosso. We waited in Durand for the daily Central Michigan train to come down, assured by a local railfan that it was scheduled to, but alas could not wait long enough. We caught CN #271 meeting CN #148 (parked just east of us from before we arrived), a Detroit-bound train, and what may have been CN #276 with 2 UP units at Durand, and an 0-2-0 steamer preparing for an excursion in Owosso.
Durand, Michigan
Durand is about a half hour west of Flint, Michican, and is the interchange point between the CN, the Central Maine, and the Great Lakes Central. The Amtrak station, a large historic station in the middle of a junction punctuated with a diamond, is a popular and excellent railfan location, further enhanced by the presence of a railway museum in the building.
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CN #271 passes CN #148.
Owosso, Michigan
Just a few minutes north-west of Durand, Owosso is the home of the TSBY. It has largely inaccessible shops and boasts a small museum which operates occasional steam excursions.
Durand, Michigan
Durand is about a half hour west of Flint, Michican, and is the interchange point between the CN, the Central Maine, and the Great Lakes Central. The Amtrak station, a large historic station in the middle of a junction punctuated with a diamond, is a popular and excellent railfan location, further enhanced by the presence of a railway museum in the building.
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CN 8014 leads a rack train south toward Detroit.
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CN #278 heads toward Canada with a pair of UP units.
August 26th, 2007
After the last of the wedding celebrations in Ann Arbor, we headed for Toledo, Ohio in the afternoon and then to Alliance, Ohio to meet a friend in the evening. We found a lot of interesting stuff, mostly parked, in Toledo in the two hours or so we were there, and caught a Wheeling and Lake Erie train parked under the Interstate 80 overpass, which caused us to jump off the next exit and backtrack, in the town of Parkertown, Ohio.
Toledo, Ohio
Toledo is a relatively large city on the Ohio-Michigan border at the western tip of Lake Erie, boasting several large yards and industries as well as the Ann Arbor railway shops.
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Two units head through Toledo light power.
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A pair of green FURX units leads a rack train out of Toledo.
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Four units, including CSXT 8888, move light power into Toledo Stanley Yard.
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A long CSX manifest freight leaves Toledo.
Parkertown, Ohio
Parkertown is a siding under Interstate 80 on an NS line where the Wheeling and Lake Erie has operating rights. It is between Sandusky and Bellevue.
August 27th, 2007
Not one of my best-ever days of exploring... we took off from our hotel in New Philadelphia, Ohio a bit north to Brewer, Ohio for the Wheeling and Lake Erie shops. We asked for but were not granted permission to enter the yard to see the shops and were told there were no trains scheduled until a few hours later. Disappointed and photoless, we headed south and east, crossing into West Virginia at Steubenville and working our way up to Wheeling, sometimes hearing but never finding any trains. We to enter the yard to see the shops and were told there were no trains scheduled until a few hours later. Disappointed and photoless, we headed south and east, crossing into West Virginia at Steubenville and working our way up to Wheeling. After crossing through Pennsylvania, we returned to West Virginia at Morgantown. We got off there and looked at the two sets of tracks straddling the river through town on the map. One showed on the map as a shortline we had no other record of, the other as CSX. A quick survey of the tracks showed that neither was accurate, with the CSX tracks being a bicycle trail and the other's use being ambiguous. By now coming up on 5 pm and still trainless on the day we headed south again, disappointed, only to see head/ditchlights coming under the Interstate 79 as we were getting on Interstate 68. Off the next exit, back around, into Morgantown, and off to find a shootable location for the mystery train on the mystery tracks. After a while, a slow, 120-car CSX coal train passed us at a small bridge we managed to find in time. From there we made Cumberland a few minutes before sunset, narrowly missing the Capitol Limited Amtrak train and getting a handful of units parked around the shops and the yard, making up for an otherwise abysmal day.
Morgantown, West Virginia
Morgantown is along a river at the junction of Interstates 68 and 79. It has only one track through town, an NS line that seems to host CSX traffic.
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A CSX coal train runs over NS tracks through West Virginia.
Cumberland, Maryland
Cumberland is the site of a large CSX yard and former Conrail locomotive shops. It is non-stop action with plenty of things to see from all sides.
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A train pulls out of Cumberland yard.
August 28th, 2007
Tuesday morning we woke up at our hotel in Hagerstown and, determined not to duplicate the previous day's failure to get anything went to what seemed like a safe shortline to catch something. We travelled across the mountains on secondary highways to Union Bridge, the home of the Maryland Midland, and found the yard inaccessible with no sign of life. After a few minutes driving around we were pleasantly surprised to see serviceable tracks up a street to a local industry, and upon cursory inspection found a locomotive switching inside. Overjoyed, we travelled back down the hill and set up to wait for the train to come out of the industry and head back to its yard. Within minutes, the lone GP9 popped out of the facility... and backed back into it. After two hours of playing hide-and-seek with a train that had no obvious intention of leaving and with no decent shots we headed back south, following the Maryland Midland tracks southward. We periodically checked backroad crossings to see the state of the tracks in a vain attempt to get ahead of any train that may have been running and were baffled to find the tracks grown in and abandoned one crossing after finding them shiny. We determined that the line ended in a gravel pit and was abandoned beyond it. Somewhere on this exploration our scanner antenna disappeared from its mounting on our roof, although curiously our scanner continues to function reasonably well without anything but the base. From there we went on to the Brunswick MARC station and sat there with a friend from the area we had travelled there to meet until it was time to go toward Washington, DC for dinner.
Union Bridge, Maryland
Union Bridge is the home of the Maryland Midland railway, some ways north of Fredericksburg. There is active street running in this town (mostly at night), however locals say this street running will be goon in the near future.
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A Maryland and Midland GP9 teases us at the top of some street running for a couple of hours before we run out of time and push on.
Brunswick, Maryland
Brunswick is a large CSX yard at the end of the MARC Brunswick line out of Washington, DC to the north-west.
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A CSX rack train heads west out of Brunswick as a manifest train enters the yard on the other side of the parking lot.
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A MARC train pulls to a stop at Brunswick station, reversing back toward DC and allowing a freight train to finally leave Brunswick as yet another freight leaves from the other side of the lot.
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CSXT 7509 leads a westbound out of Brunswick.
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A MARC train performs its station stop at the end of the Brunswick line.
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The Amtrak Capitol Limited darts through Brunswick MARC station.
Garrett Park, Maryland
Just outside the beltway, Garrett Park holds the CSX (and MARC) Brunswick line into Washington, DC
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A MARC train heads out of town on the Brunswick line.
August 29th, 2007
We stayed at our friend's house in Silver Spring, MD and took the DC Metro into downtown Washington, DC. As the CSX tracks merged in with our Metro line, a 3-unit gravel train pulled up along side us. As the Metro is substantially faster than the freight train, we got off at a station along the way, shot the gravel train, and boarded the next Metro just a few minutes later. Although we passed a large passenger yard just before DC union station with a wide variety of very interesting equipment, we took no photos of the various equipment including an Acela set and several Virginia commuter trains we saw parked.
Washington, DC
Washington, DC, is the capital of the United States hosting numerous busy passenger and freight lines travelling every which way.
August 30th, 2007
We stayed in Easton, Maryland after a late-night drive to the Maryland-Delaware penninsula, and headed directly for Federalsburg, Maryland for the Maryland and Delaware. We found the company's shops and office in short order, and a pleasant company employee when asked told us that the train was on its way to Cambridge, Maryland, and would be going across the entire network to the interchange with NS at Seaford, Delaware, before returning to Hurlock Junction. Acting on this information, we went directly to Cambridge where we found that the railway's self-touted tracks to the harbour in the city were abandoned and removed. Slightly frustrated, we started heading out of town, and went up a road toward a large grade crossing. As we approached, the crossing activated and we set ourselves up waiting for the Maryland and Delaware train with its small set of cars and rare CF7 locomotive to finish its work and head back east. After a long wait, it came back out and we chased it briefly, finding it too slow to chase and still get anywhere else in one day. From there we headed into Delaware to the interchange at Seaford hoping to find something - anything - there, but quickly decided heading north to the Norfolk Southern yard at Harrington would be a better bet. Sure enough, as we pulled into town we found ourselves pacing a covered hopper unit train of some description. Hoping to get ahead of it, we pulled off at a road where we found two locomotives sitting on the main. We looked around for a way to shoot the train but weren't able to find an angle. Hoping the train would proceed northward, we headed north a few miles until we found a good shot and began to wait. It quickly became obvious that the train wouldn't be coming so we returned to Harrington and found the train, complete with the two units that had been sitting on the main, sitting there talking to the Diesel Doc. We went into town, shot the yard power, returned to the head end of the train and shot what we could of it, then headed north for New Jersey. We crossed just south of Wilmington and quickly found a yard in Penns Grove with two NS trains in it. We shot them as best we could then took off northbound hoping to make it to Connecticut before it got too late.
Cambridge, Maryland
Cambridge is on the west coast of the Maryland-Delaware penninsula and is the end of the Maryland and Delaware shortline's operations.
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A Maryland and Delaware CF7 works at the end of the line in Cambridge, Maryland.
Linkwood, Maryland
Linkwood is a small town between the small towns of Cambridgee and Hurlock, Maryland along the Maryland and Delaware shortline.
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Maryland and Delaware's CF7 slowly trundles toward Delaware.
Harrington, Delaware
Harrington is the site of a small Norfolk Southern yard just to the west of Milford, Delaware.
Penns Grove, New Jersey
Penns Grove is just across the water from Wilmington, Delaware.
August 31st, 2007
We woke up in West Haven, Connecticut and after a brief exploration of New Haven decided it was a bit too urban for our schedule or taste, so we proceeded east along the electric line out, stopping at Bradford to go into the station there. As we parked an Amtrak electric (other than Acela) passed. We waited on the platform about 15 minutes and an Acela train passed. We continued eastward toward New London where we wanted to find the NECR/PWRR interchange, but got distracted by switching sounds in Old Saybrook where we got off the I-95 and found not one but two Providence and Worcester trains switching, as well as our second Acela for the day. We checked the Amtrak schedule and found no trains coming for about 20 minutes, so we took advantage to go east to New London with a train coming to shoot there. We crossed directly into Groton on the far side of the river through town and quickly found a wide open public parking lot facing a railway drawbridge where we waited for the Amtrak train we knew we were ahead of. We heard it coming around the corner on the other side of the river and watched it stop at Union Station and then one of the PWRR trains we had seen switching Old Saybrook crossed the bridge ahead of the Amtrak. After that we were out of time and headed north to Worcester to meet a friend before continuing on to Brattleboro, Vermont.
Branford, Connecticut
Branford is a small town just east of New Haven, Connecticut along the lakeshore commuter (Providence and Worcester) line.
Old Saybrook, Connecticut
Old Saybrook is the site of a wye and small yard at an Amtrak station most of the way to New London from New Haven.
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Two Providence and Worcester trains switch along the same track as an Acela passes through the station.
Groton, Connecticut
New London is on the west side of a channel and Groton is on the east along the south coast of Connecticut. It is the site of an easily accessible railway draw bridge along the Providence and Worcester as well of a small wye. New London also hosts the New England Central's southern limits and their interchange with the Providence and Worcester.
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The bridge over the channel between New London and Groton Connecticut drops to allow a push-pull Providence and Worcester and an Electric Amtrak train to pass.
