Ride The Rails With Benny Plant

Here’s a video I took on March 17th. There was a meet which was good. The train stopped, 314 has a surprise on the end. Enjoy.

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n19CJ3Zj45s

This is the first time I have been here and it was pretty good. Here’s the video I shot. Enjoy.

I haven’t posted an msts video yet so I thought I would. I should have some real train vids up by the end of the weekend.

Yes I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted something and I’m sorry for that, I have been busy. I hope everyone is enjoying there holidays and had a nice Christmas. I will have some more railfanning stuff up shortly. I will have some vids and a few pics up this weekend, most likely Sunday. I haven’t done much lately, so this will be the first time in a couple weeks. Nothings new on the Newmarket sub, the CN local hasn’t been around, haven’t heard it in months and it may stay that way. On that topic, I will post a few vids of the Newmarket Sub in MSTS(Microsoft Train Simulator) form as MLT released a GTA route that covers 8 subdivisions in the GTA area. Anyway thats about it for now.

Take Care,

Benny

Sorry i haven’t made any posts in a while, I have been lacking as you can see. I have been working lots this summer so I didn’t have a much time as i did before. It was a good summer overall, did some good railfanning, worked, went to the cottage for a week which was good, didn’t see any trains though. The best experience this year was on August 30th because there was lots of action going on at around 6, there was train 106, 450, 114, 451. Got to talk to engineer on CN 450 which was cool. Sadly I only got two trains on camera as the battery was low. Heres the link to the video http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=m4iIIAWKdQA

Anyhow school starts on Wednesday Sept 3rd and I’m not really looking forward to it, but hopefully it will be ok

Thats all for now,

Cya!

Summer is almost here, and hopefully I will be able to do some good railfanning. I’m hoping me and my dad can go up to Brechin. They seem to uses to that siding one the most since it is there biggest one, its 13,000 ft or something. A strange thing happened on June 1st: we were sitting at Pine Orchard and we heard CN 106 clear the signal. Everything seemed fine until I see these 2 kids about my age waving to me on an empty intermodal car. It totally caught me off guard, I told my dad, but as soon as i pointed to where they were, they ducked. I have a video on youtube of it http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=DmKyzk1TLMY

Anyway, I’m hearing CN 545 more regularly now which is good, I hope to catch it sometime this summer. That’s about it, thought I would make a post of whats happening. Keep those comments coming!

Cya for now

On Saturday morning I was laying in bed and heard a train horn around 9:30 am. I was sure came from the Barrie Line. I was a bit confused at first because I know there is no weekend service as of now. I was thinking that perhaps one of the trains had some mechanical problems and therefore had to go down back to Toronto for repairs. Then about half and hour later I heard another train! Well now I was even more confused. After a while I figured they were doing crew training since CN crews are finished as of June 30.

Again on Sunday the same thing happened but there was more trains this time and all day. I think there were about 6 or 7. I happened to catch one going south while on a bike ride. That was pretty cool because I haven’t watched a southbound train before. Looked like there was only one guy in the cab though.

I really hope that the trains keep running on weekends until June so I can get some good videos since I haven’t filmed the Go train in a while.

Sorry for the lack of posts of late. I thought I would write about this event since there hasn’t been one for a while.

See ya

Pine Orchard was still a mudbowl this past weekend. My dad hasn’t even bothered to wash his prized Passat because he knows it’s just going to get all muddy again real soon. We need some warm dry weather to get rid of all that water. Pine Orchard is so easy to go to though. Never anyone there and lots of room to watch. We can see the signal(s) and the approach from either direction is great. What’s not to like? It’s also only about 15 minutes from our house and we don’t get shut out very often.

If you click on the picture here you will see 301 just coming up from the south across Vivian Side Road and if you look real close you can see three brand stinkin new locos (first was a SD70M-2,  second two were ES44DC’s) hauling 12,000 tons of freight. I know the weight because we heard the engineer talking with another train (450) as they met at Zepher. No wonder they needed three locos. It’s not every day you get to see three new locos on one train. It was quite a sight.

I just received my May edition of Trains Magazine and am looking forward to going through it. If my dad sees it I won’t get it for a while.

See ya!

Last year at this time things were much drier and a little warmer. This year it’s a different story. Pine Orchard for example is as mentioned …… “a mudbowl” and the north wind howls through there too. Even though it’s cold, the sun heats up the mud but the wind makes for cold spectating. I guess this is the in between season. Trying to see something without getting muddy while having good sight lines is a challenge. This season we look forward to finding new places to watch and video. We tried a few CP crossings in the fall last year but not much success. Sparrow Lake was great. Easy access and a safe place to park the car. Hopefully we can go there again next year. CN and CP cross somewhere near Mactier so with any luck we can get up there too. This between season stuff makes it seem like a long time before we can sit somewhere and enjoy the whole experience. On top of that our main computer is in the shop for repairs. That means no Microsoft Train Simulator for a while. Bummer.

See ya

As spring approaches, the snow melts and our car becomes a mud-mobile. My dad hates that part. For instance this past weekend Pine Orchard was a mud bowl and my dad did not want to drive into the access road where we usually go to watch. Where there was once nothing but plowed frozen snow was now muddy and ugly looking. So on Saturday night we decided to hangout at a crossing in Aurora where the detector is located (mile 32) between Woodbine and Warden south of Aurora. No mud there however we were completely shut out. Listening to the scanner we heard about problems with a meet in Pefferlaw with 107 and 306. We left to go home at 10:30 and there was nothing happening. The Leafs lost as well. Not a good night. Sunday was a different story. We decided to check out the Pine Orchard siding late in the afternoon. I had hockey at 6:00 so it made sense to check things out at Pine Orchard first then go to hockey from there. To make a long story short, what we missed on Saturday night was made up for on Sunday afternoon. Even though it was still a mud-bowl, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to see “a meet” so in we went (the car is so dirty now). “In the hole” was 451 and coming down the main track at very slow speed was 112. Listening to the scanner we could hear that 451 was worried that he was not completely in the siding. We saw that he was well inside and thus ok for 112 to squeeze by. 112’s conductor had to get off the train and set the switch by hand to continue on south. The picture here shows the conductor getting off the train. As 112 continued on his way, 451 started on his way north. Everybody leaving at the same time. Was fun to watch. There was still more to come. 105 then showed up on the main track and had to wait for 112 to come down from Pefferlaw for the siding here at Pine Orchard. By now it was 5:30 and we had to get to the rink so bummer that we couldn’t see the actual meet take place but maybe next time. The picture here is of the conductor getting off of 112 heading off to set the switch so he can carry on south.

See ya