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

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

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!

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

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.

It’s Sunday July 22 and we go to the cottage in one week’s time. I can’t wait to go! I am hoping that since our cottage is so close to Washago that my dad will take me there to watch and video a few trains. The yard there is a decent size with lots of action on the Bala Sub. At Washago is also the junction with the Newmarket Sub which has been abandoned in 1995 north of Bradford to Barrie where the Allandale yard used to be and the tracks that used to go to Washago are gone which sucks. The Canadian used to use the Newmarket Sub untill 1996 then stopped and tracks were taken out. Its shame they are gone because they could’ve been used for future GO service. Then there is Gravenhurst and hopefully a few sightings of The Northlander or Canadian. We can hear train horns from the cottage at all hours of the day or night. Kahshe Lake is right between Washago and Gravenhurst so there should be plenty of opportunity to see something.

Lots to read in the papers these days about CP Rail and Via with potential buyouts and avoiding strikes. Seems there is always news about the rail buisness.

The ATCS Monitor project continues. My dad has replaced the rechargeable batteries in the scanner and bought a charger from eBay. Still need an antennae and to make some modifications to the scanner so we can plug it into the computer but we are getting there. I am hoping we will have it all working by late August or early September. Another good thing I found out is that CN runs a switcher train on the Newmarket Sub quite often switching cars at various industries I think. My friend and I went down and saw it about 2 weeks ago on a Friday morning at about 3am, it was awesome! We missed it going up though but at least we go to see it come back down. It was 2 engines and about 10-12 cars long.

Timing is everything. Seems that sometimes we get to the crossing and nothing happens for a while and other times we get there and things happen right away. This past weekend (July15) we decided to go earlier in the morning on Sunday since we didn’t go up north for the day. We got there minutes before a big freighter came through and then about half an hour later another one came through. This all happened between 11:00 and 12:00. After that there was nothing in either direction.

We waited until 1:00 and decided to call it a day. Would have been nice to come back later but my dad wanted to do a chicken on the bbq.

One of the highlights of the weekend was seeing “The Canadian” come ripping through on Saturday at a very fast speed. It was very intimidating and hardly slowed down at all. Was about 20 cars long and was totally awesome!

My dad was happy because we found the piece of trim that came off his car when we hit a raccoon last weekend at night after being at the Vivian crossing. The car is fine but the raccoon wasn’t so lucky.

We are slowly working at getting our ATCS program working. My dad is getting his scanner fixed up and from there we will get the program working.

Stay tuned.

The problem with watching and video taping trains is that you can’t always predict when they are going to be there. Since the Bala Sub is a pretty busy line we can pretty much go there any time and not have to wait too long to see something. The Vivian Crossing is great because there is a 6,000 foot siding there and many times there will be a “meet” and that’s so cool because somebody has to wait while the other guy goes through. That’s how we got to speak to the one engineer that night. I hope that happens again. Plus there is lots of room to safely park there andd set up the camera.

Fishing for bass is made easier by using a fish finder and if only there was something like that for finding trains! Well, guess what? There is a “fish finder” for trains called “ATCS Monitor”. It’s kind of complicated and we really don’t quite understand how it works but we are in the process of learning. It’s a windows based program and also requires a radio scanner which my dad has an old one. The scanner needs some work and learning the rest will take some time but we should be able to make it work so we can see what’s happening real time. Many times we just drive out to the Vivian Crossing and wait. It’s the waiting some times that’s no fun (my dad sleeps while we wait). If we get this program to work we can use it for other lines as well. My dad is now a Mac guy and isn’t so thrilled with PC’s any more. Should be interesting.