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.

We have been to Pine Orchard many, many times since we first started going there in the spring and only one time was anyone else ever there. We decided to go there Sunday around noon and set up camp in our usual spot. We had been sitting for about 45 minutes when a York region cop car pulled in and very slowly came towards us. I was very nervous and thought we were going to be in big trouble. He pulled up right beside us on my dad’s side of the car.

It was all good and he was great. He was an Englishman and thought what we were doing was a lot like fishing…sit and wait for things to happen. He talked about trains in London and how there are so many more trains in all directions there all the time every day. He was just making sure that we were “good guys” and weren’t doing anything we shouldn’t or taking something that didn’t belong to us. Other than that, he was nice to us, wished us a fun time and off he went.

We thanked him for checking up on things.

Since there wasn’t any hockey for me this weekend we decided to head down to the Doncaster diamond in Thornhill. There is usually lots of action there as there are trains coming and going in all directions so we are never shut out when we go there. One of the benefits of going there is the great reception we get on the scanner since we are that much closer to the MacMillan yard. We weren’t disappointed, although we had to wait a little while for things to get rolling. 302 came thundering down the Bala Sub heading toward the Mac yard and I got the whole thing on tape.The funniest thing that happened was CN 368 heading east to the Kingston Sub from the Mac yard and was yapping away to the dispatcher at which time he saw us there with scanner and camera in hand. All of a sudden on the scanner we heard “Take my picture!” My dad and I looked at each other in amazement and started laughing. I think my dad got his pic but it’s on a film camera. The film is in for developing so stay tuned to see those pics!! The loco engineer was waving crazy at us out of his cab window laughing all over the place. It was so much fun!

Late in September my dad and I were able to spend a weekend at Kahshe Lake with idea of checking out a siding at Sparrow Lake. Our friend Steve Johnson had shown us where this siding was earlier in the summer so we decided to check it out with scanners, cameras and everything. The leaves were changing and the northbound trains appear out of this long chute of trees. It was really something to see. We had great luck as there were trains coming from both directions and both tracks were used tying up car traffic as well but I didn’t care about that!